The Office of Letters and Light Blog

Who puts pep in your step?

It’s time for the great, grand pep talk poll! Has your favorite writer 1) written a novel, and 2) not yet contributed a pep talk? If so, they should totally write a pep talk for the 300,000 Wrimos who will be dashing out the rough draft of their novel this November!

I’ve asked the staff whose pep they’d love to receive (their top picks are below). Now it is your turn to tell us what novelists’ writing advice you’d most love to read.

Take a look at our pep talk archive (and the photos above!) to see who has already written a pep talk in the past. Then post your top picks in the comments below! We’ll do out best to get as many yes answers from your faves as we can.

Here are the staff’s picks:

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Writer Fuel: Salad

Today I’d like to ponder an oft-overlooked but rife-with-potential dish: the salad.

That’s right, I said it.

I’m not talking about your run-of-the-mill, floppy iceberg lettuce and mealy tomato accompaniment. I’m talking about a glorious, multi-textured, ingredient-bonanza.

I have long respected the versatility of salads, and devote one night a week to making an epically large and experimental salad for dinner, and frequently bring a bag of ingredients to work for a custom lunch creation. What a mid-day treat!

Here are some of my favorites:

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An interview with Grant Faulkner, OLL’s new Executive Director!

On January 9, the OLL-iverse changed in a very important way. Our new Executive Director, Grant Faulkner, arrived at 3354 Adeline for his first day on the job. I sat down with Grant at his excellently appointed desk and we chatted about him, his life and loves, and what he’s most looking forward to now that he is OLL’s fearless leader. Here’s what he had to say.

Tell us a bit about yourself.

I tend to drop a lot of things, but I’m really good at catching them. I drive my car with a mug of coffee in one hand and a thumb on the steering wheel while singing to songs on the radio. Sometimes I’m also eating a bagel and asking my kids if they did their homework. I bring numerous books, journals, and pens on plane flights and stack them on my tray as if I’m engaged in a serious research project, but then end up reading Vanity Fair.

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The Play’s the Thing

Until last week, it had been about a year since I went to “see a show”: a stage production of Beauty and the Beast.

I was reminded then, as I always am when I go to the theater, how much I love plays and how I really ought to see more of them. And more regularly.

And then another year passed before I found myself happily—luckily—invited to see Cirque du Soleil’s Immortal Michael Jackson tour. Not your traditional stage play by any stretch, but still theater to be sure.

The intersection of story (a loose bio of Jackson), tribute to his life and loves, and spectacular performance-art-as-music-video certainly ranked this production in the “like nothing I’ve ever seen” category. The astronomical production value, the astonishingly ornate costumes, the interpretations of history and the music that ranged from the wildly creative and abstract to the literal,  the pyrotechnics (!), the acrobatics, and the sheer awesomeness of the music heard in a different context all left me slack-jawed, starry eyed, and one million percent dazzled.

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Calling all YA and Middle Grade Novelists!

We just caught wind of a tremendous opportunity for Wrimos who have written a young adult or middle grade novel. And it supports a wonderful humanitarian cause that also champions our shared passion for literacy and libraries!

Thanks to a contest hosted by literacy charity Book Wish Foundation, you could get feedback on your writing from literary agents and renowned authors like Ann M. Martin, winner of the Newbery Honor for A Corner of the Universe, and Cynthia Voigt, winner of the Newbery Medal for Dicey’s Song and the Newbery Honor for A Solitary Blue.

(We’re excited to see past NaNo and YWP pep talkers Meg Cabot and John Green are involved in this project, too!)

From Book Wish Foundation:

Visit http://bookwish.org/contest for full contest details. To enter, write a 500-word essay about a short story in Book Wish Foundation’s new young adult anthology, What You Wish For. Write the best essay about Meg Cabot’s story, and you’ll win a manuscript critique from one of the top YA literary agents. Write about Ann M. Martin’s story and the author of the mega-bestselling The Baby-sitters Club and the Newbery Honor-winning A Corner of the Universe could provide feedback on your NaNoWriMo novel.

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Mark Your Calendars! ABNA is Coming!

On our 2011 edition of the “I Wrote a Novel, Now What?” page, we list a number of free contests and writing challenges that you can enter this year. One of them is the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, which is accepting submissions through February 5!

Wrimos are no strangers to the ABNA; scores have entered, many have reached the semi-finals and finals, and last year a Wrimo won!

That’s right.

In 2011, Jill Baguchinsky was the winner in the young adult fiction category for her novel, Spookygirl, which she drafted during NaNoWriMo!

This from Amazon:

The Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award brings together talented writers, reviewers, and publishing experts to find and develop new voices in fiction. The 2012 international contest will award two grand prizes: one for General Fiction and one for Young Adult Fiction. Each winner will receive a publishing contract with Penguin, which includes a $15,000 advance.

Open submissions for manuscripts will begin on January 23, 2012 and run through February 5, 2012. If you’re an author with an unpublished or previously self-published novel waiting to be discovered, visit CreateSpace to sign up for regular contest updates. See the official contest rules, or read details on how to enter.

If you plan to enter, share the details about your novel here! We’d love to hear all about your masterpiece manuscripts.

Good luck, novelists! We’re rooting for you!

– Lindsey

Happily Holidayed

I love the winter holidays. In spite of the persistent (and often very bad) music, the frenzied crowds, and the abundance of naughty foods that make me a little cuddlier by January 1, I still give the Thanksgiving-to-New Years stretch of serial holiday-time a thumbs up.

For me, it comes down to tradition, many of which have little to do with the actual holiday we’re celebrating and more to do with, well… the food.

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NaNoWriMo: A Writer’s Vacation from Nonfiction

Eleven months out of the year, I write nonfiction. I tend to write shorter-form essays that don’t necessarily have a ton of dialogue or require the carefully crafted plot arc that a traditional novel requires.

So November presents itself as a delightful opportunity to take a break from my usual writing projects and subject matter, and exercise other writing muscles: dialogue, character development, long-form narrative arc, and the simple act of fabrication.

Now that the month has ended, I am slipping back into my nonfiction writing practice, trying to meet a deadline I conveniently ignored in favor of my luxurious November of fiction-writing. And right now, working on my nonfiction project feels a lot like stepping out of a bubbling hot tub and cannonballing right into the deep end of the swimming pool.

I know a lot of your are starting the revision process on this or a previous NaNo-novel. For those of you starting—or returning to—a new or different project in another genre, how do you make the transition? Are you gasping from the shock of it? Please share your project-hopping tips with me!

– Lindsey

Photo by Flickr user Matt Lehman

NaNoWriMo’s Gasp-Inducing 2011 Stats!

The end-of-event stats blog post has become one of my favorite NaNoWriMo traditions (and I derive great pleasure from looking at these stats posts from years past, too…). I hope you enjoy devouring this year’s numbers as much as I enjoyed compiling them!

General Stats Round Up!

For NaNoWriMo main:

• 256,618 participants, up roughly 28% from 2010’s total of 200,530 writers.
• We wrote a total of  3,074,068,446 words, up 7% from 2010’s collective word count of 2,872,682,109.
• This averaged out to 11,979 words per person!
• We had 36,774 winners, giving us a 14% win rate!

For NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers Program:

• 81,040 participants, up 19% from 2010’s total of 68,710.
• We wrote a total of 368,143,078 words up 40% from 2010’s collective word count of 262,303,074.
• This averaged out to 7,199 words per person.
• We had 16,334 winners, giving us a never-before-precedented 32% win rate!

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Unexpected Inspiration

Thanksgiving can be a tough speed bump in the November noveling process.

I’ve found that any momentum I may have worked up over the first three weeks gets slowed—or completely halted—by the festival of turkey and family time. I’d like to blame the tryptophan, but I think I am just an easily distracted person. Especially when I am being distracted by food and loved ones.

Compound this will my questionable decision to take my parents, in town from Atlanta, north to wine country this past weekend. It had the very real potential to sink my already sagging word count. I brought my AlphaSmart in the car with me, hoping that the two-hour drive there and back, plus evenings by the fireside would afford me the time I needed to work on my novel.

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Meet Our Team: Emily Bristow, Captain of Capital Ideas

Emily has long been a key player in the OLL-iverse as both a long-time ML and a remote staff member. You may know her in the forums as lazym. And now you can get to know her even better! I am proud to present the brilliant Emily Bristow.

Emily, how long have you been participating in NaNoWriMo?

I’ve participated (and won!) every year since 2002. This is, incredibly, my 10th  NaNo. I was a Municipal Liaison (ML) for the Austin, Texas region—go Penguins!—from 2004 through 2010.

When did you come on as the Captain of Capital Ideas? And, what is that exactly?

I became the ML Captain of Capital Ideas in 2008. NaNo was growing fantastically from year to year, and to support that growth we needed to get more serious about fundraising. Chris Baty asked me to lead a group of MLs to brainstorm ideas, hence the “Captain.” I thought it would be fun to compare regional donations the same way we compare word-count totals, so with the help of the amazing, multi-talented Lousy Writer 13, we launched the Donation Derby contest in 2009.

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The Life of a Winner’s Shirt

The 2011 Winner’s Shirt is now available in the online store!

I got to bring this shirt from design concept all the way to completed shirt, and I thought I’d take you through the journey.

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