The Office of Letters and Light Blog

Letters and Light Around the World: Tracy Dawson

It’s always fun to hear about kids and teens doing NaNoWriMo halfway around the world. Recently, we were sent an article about Tracy Dawson’s work in the small town of Parkes, Australia (population: 9,826), and we had to learn more. Here, she tells us how she got a program going in a tiny community with no previous writing support.

How did you hear about the NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program, and what made you want to get involved?

Our school had several visits from Dr. Matthew Finch during 2011. He told me about NaNoWriMo and I was very interested and knew several students who were budding writers.

Coming from a rural town without a tradition of a writing community, how did you spark interest among your students?

I mainly publicised NaNoWriMo in school—using our newsletter, signage within the library, communication with English teachers, etc. I also posted on my library blog, Nailing Jelly to a Tree.

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Would a Silent Movie Count?

As most of the staff here at OLL and Script Frenzy now know, I have no experience in scriptwriting. Like, really. None. But rather than feel intimidated, I’m trying to leap at the opportunity that will soon be presented to me this April. I even already have an idea. So what’s the problem, you may ask? Rather than forming my initial thoughts about my script as such, I can’t help but imagine it as a novel: heavy on description, omniscient narrator, light on character dialogue.

Which brings up the question: would a silent movie count? This prospect is becoming more and more appealing for me as I develop my idea. I’m hoping to write a murder mystery that takes place in the restaurant where I work. Imagine a busy Saturday night at a fancy steakhouse, and suddenly the waitstaff just start dropping like flies. But the surviving employees have to keep it secret from unsuspecting diners. Now imagine that as a silent film with creepy orchestra music. Scary, no? Or possibly some sort of dark comedy. We’ll see how it goes.

And now, with just that initial question, my brain is flooded with other script questions. How will my script actually play out? What would it look like with real people playing the parts? What would the set look like? I guess this means my murder mystery novel will be on the back-burner til November.

How do you all of you start your scriptwriting process? Does it start with a novelistic storyline, or do you usually hear your actors playing their parts early in the process? And are any of my fellow script writing novices facing similar challenges?

– Shelby

Photo from the Orange County Archives

Aliza, I Am.

I guess I should start off by saying that today is my first day working here as an intern with Script Frenzy. My first task? To write a little bit about myself. Sounds easy enough, right?

I’ve never been the best at writing on spot—even Facebook status updates take about 15 minutes of thinking through, editing, and re-editing. However, I’m trying to grow away from that, so this helps.

I’m currently an English major and creative writing minor over at UC Berkeley. This time next month I hope to know whether or not I’ll be accepted into the writing MFA programs that I applied to. Fingers are crossed. (I made sure to cross them as I typed that so as not to come across as a liar.)

What else? I’m a habitual abuser of hyphens, commas, and alliteration. Without spell-check I would be completely lost, and I love dresses, kittens, and reading.

What drew me to Script Frenzy was the program’s amazing intent. It’s like a world-accessible workshop course equipped with deadlines, goals, and fun! So far I’ve met some gorgeous, kind people who seem truly enthusiastic about their jobs.

I’m excited to learn more and become part of the Script Frenzy team!

– Aliza

First Day at the Office of Letters and Light

It is the very first day of my internship with Script Frenzy and what do you know, they’re already making me write. I’m a little nervous but mostly excited to be here.  As an English student at UC Berkeley, I’m used to doing a lot of writing, but this is actually my very first blog post ever—which I realize is pretty strange for someone in their 20s. Anyways, I hope I’m doing this right.

I was fortunate enough to grow up in Santa Cruz, California, one of the greatest places on the West Coast, or let’s face it, the world. I’ve always felt very at home in Northern California and I’ve been bouncing around the Bay Area since high school.  But I’m graduating from Cal this Spring and I plan on relocating to East Coast so I’m trying to mentally prepare myself for “seasons,” meaning snow in the winter and humidity in the summer. What are you supposed to wear in July when it’s 80 degrees out and raining?

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Hello, this is me.

On my first day of this internship, I’m having flashbacks to my 11th grade English class.  The one where I had to write a personal essay. The kind about myself. Eek. However, looking at those flashbacks now with a good extra six years of life experience I feel vaguely more prepared. Or I’ll fake it til I make it…

I’m Shelby, a recent Mills College graduate, trying to make my way in life with a Bachelor’s in English. When I was 12, I read Mrs. Dalloway for the first time, not understanding a word of it (no chapters! no plot! insanity!), but that was the moment when I decided I wanted to work in literature, whatever that means. Be it reading, writing, or helping others do a bit of both, it’s a pretty great life to lead. My 12-year-old self would also be really impressed with my senior thesis on Virginia Woolf, and I like to think that her opinion is all that matters.

I am a Bay Area native—although some silly people will debate the Bay Area-ness of the suburbs on the other side of the tunnel—with a love for crafts, finding the perfect parking spot, long sentences, and breaking the writing “rules” I learned in junior high.

This is a very exciting, though nerve-wracking, day for me. I’m looking forward to working with all of these eclectic, passionately literary people. And I’m looking forward to getting back into writing; apparently a two-month long hiatus between graduating in December and now is too long. So, yay! And hello!

– Shelby

Things You May Not Know About OLL

I’m bad with goodbyes. I mean, absolutely awful. It’s all never-ending tears and my blotchy red face. Far from attractive. The truth of the matter is, I’m a big ol’ softie at heart, and an incorrigible romantic to boot. And I have fallen so desperately in love with this office. This also means I’ll probably have to rewrite this post four times before it gets down to a palatable level of sappiness. 

I don’t feel I’m exaggerating when I say the Office of Letters and Light is the best place in the world to work. Everyone knows about the fancy-schmancy Google offices, with their beanbag chairs and special cafés. But do they have a hand-painted Tom Selleck? That’s what I thought. Mustachio aside, the OLL office overfloweth with people, objects, and moments chock-full of charm and delight. Let me enumerate them for you.

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Writing is Hard!

When it comes to writing, memoir has always been my greatest challenge. I don’t know how to write it. I’m always torn between trying to report accurately and trying to convey such accuracy into something cathartic and meaningful. Flannery O’Connor once said that anyone who survived their childhood had enough fodder for good memoir, but I always look back on my own childhood, and feel that it was generally happy and uneventful.

I once started writing about my short stint at a Lutheran school, and the narrative turned into me befriending a deaf kid who had auditory hallucinations, and how a lack of proper communication between us destroyed our friendship. Only, the story took off that way on its own. There was no deaf kid. There were no hallucinations. In the fourth grade, I was friends with a boy named Donovan who made fart noises during class, and I thought that was hilarious. That is all.

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Of Alcatraz and Theft

I fulfilled a longtime (and touristy) dream of mine last weekend: I went to Alcatraz. The prison, which housed such notable criminals as Al Capone and Robert Stroud “the Birdman,” is a formidable structure, standing alone in the wind on its rocky little island in the San Francisco Bay. The trip was informative and interesting, but my personal fascination goes beyond its historical significance, and into the literary. Alcatraz is often compared to Azkaban prison in the Harry Potter books, and I spent most of the audio tour imagining Sirius Black sitting in one of the cells. (I may or may not be planning to photoshop Dementors into the pictures I took.)

Fangirl-ing aside, the trip got me thinking in a more serious vein about writers and our penchant for theft. Not actual theft, of course (though I suppose, statistically, there are likely some shoplifting or bank-robbing writers out there). Rather, the practice of borrowing things from the world around us and writing them into our work, be it thinly concealed or not. There is a fine legal line to be cautious of, obviously: libel and plagiarism are serious offenses. But “creative repurposing,” as I like to call it (or, to be gentler still, “taking inspiration from the world around us”) is a writer’s realm. Some would even say it is our forte.

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Research Fractals

All this noveling reminds me of what has always been my favorite and most time-consuming aspect of writing: research.

Ever click on a Wikipedia page and find yourself clicking and clicking on the related links until each new page spirals in its own direction? That’s what research is for me. The same goes with library books, newspapers, and database articles. There are problems with researching like this. For one thing, you may never get your novel done. Because, let’s face it—it would take forever to learn everything about everything, and you could end up a perpetual scholar as opposed to a novelist.

However, even then, there’s still hope. One of my writing professors did research for ten straight years before publishing her magnum opus, which ended up winning the California Book Award (her editor measures her books by the pound, I guess).

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Words and Music

You guys, I’m going crazy. Partially because of my novel, but also because of this disgustingly catchy electro-pop song, the lyrics to which are stuck in my head: “You don’t float like a butterfly, or fight like Ali, Dress like Prince, but to the lowest degree.” The lines aren’t anything extraordinary. They’re sort of funny, maybe, but only when you consider how ineffective they are as insults. And yet, somehow, these lyrics sparked the idea for my entire novel. Consequently, I have recently listened to the song a number of times far exceeding ‘acceptable.’

Have any of you had this happen? Have you ever heard lyrics and thought, “Oh, I can use that!” I run our @NaNoWordSprints Twitter account occasionally, and my very favourite prompt to give is a challenge to incorporate lyrics from whatever the sprinters are listening to . Lyrics are a funny thing, you know. I’ve come to realize that the ones I appreciate most are witty, or play with language. I think we have a tendency to separate “writing” and “music” into two entirely different categories of “thing” — but lyrics are words too! And they can be a great source of inspiration for dialogue and plot, in particular.

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Guerilla Writing Tactics

Hey, Wrimos! Yesterday evening, after getting to 12,000 words, I treated myself to a delicious bowl of phở. For those unfamiliar, it’s a Vietnamese beef noodle soup that I’ve been craving ever since it started getting chilly (note: “chilly” where I live means plus or minus 50°F). It’s part of a rewards system I developed. I figured that if I pit myself against myself for the sole purpose of making my word count, I couldn’t go wrong. The only thing is that I really have to hold myself accountable.

I have come to terms with the fact that I’m a pantser. Up until two days before November 1st, I couldn’t decide what to write about. It was really the deadline-induced panic that forced me to commit to a single idea. And even though I use occasional rewards to encourage myself, that same anxiety about falling behind is the single greatest incentive for me to keep going.

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Feeding the Fantastic

In my writing experience, and perhaps in others’ as well, some styles of writing are held above others. I often hear about professors who declare themselves unfit to critique science fiction or fantasy because of their lack of experience with it, and it often seems that genre fiction and literary fiction were at odds with one another. I remember several students in my creative writing program who felt left out because they wrote science fiction or fantasy.

Though I respect the notion of needing the authority to comment on a particular genre, isn’t that the perfect excuse to explore the topic? Sci-fi and fantasy are both distinct, and there is a wealth of works in those genres that have crossed over into popular or literary fiction. Plus, there are subgenres to suit everyone’s tastes: dark fantasy, high fantasy, speculative fiction, diesel punk, cyberpunk, other things ending in the word “punk”—you get what I’m saying.

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