The Office of Letters and Light Blog

Introduction and Recipe for One OLL Intern

Hello, campers! I’m Ben, your new OLL intern, and summer camp counselor!

I’ve spent much of my life working at one summer camp or another, but this one may be the strangest. I’ve worked at space camp and adventure theater camp, but I’ve never worked at a camp where I only meet the campers online before! I’m thrilled to be here, and eager to help with Camp NaNo. Areas of my expertise include fireside storytelling, surviving camp food, avoiding dehydration, handling homesickness, and of course pranking other cabins.

Wondering what makes an OLL intern? Read on for the recipe below:

Recipe for One Letters and Light Intern

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“Bye Bye Bye” - N’Sync

Well, today is my last day as an intern here at Script Frenzy. When I think about it, it’s amazing how much my life has changed in the duration of just four months. There have been a lot of transitions: leaving my apartment to move back home, leaving UC Berkeley, and now leaving the Office of Letters and Light. However, I know all these endings will lead to new beginnings. 

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Later Guys!

Today is my final day interning at the Office of Letters and Light, which is pretty nuts considering it feels like it was just last week that Tim asked me to write my introductory blog post. I can’t believe that Script Frenzy and all of its writing madness is already over, and that my time with OLL has come to an end. But despite the brevity of my internship, I’ve had a ton of fun working with the OLL staff, and I’ve gotten a taste of what it means to work at a nonprofit.

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Didn’t Finish the Script Frenzy Challenge? It’s OK, We Tried

In middle school, I had a science teacher who, if you didn’t turn in your homework for the day, would make you stand up in front of the whole class and give a reason why. Of course, science was never my strong point, so, at least once a week, I would have to stand and explain where my homework was. Now that I think about it, maybe this was my first brush with creating fiction.

I never went with the classic, “My dog ate it,” but did try to explain my lack of homework with excuses such as: “My soda exploded on it,” “I left it at the library,” or “My mom threw it away”. Those are believable, right?

Anyway, what I’m trying to get at here is that excuses are for excruciatingly boring homework assignments, and maybe work—not for the mad joy of Script Frenzy. And because of that, I admit with a clear conscience that I didn’t finish my script this April. Unfortunately, I fell about sixty pages short.

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Cutting Back on Online TV

Since going off to college I haven’t had access to a television. At first, I thought it was going to be great: I figured I’d end up wasting less time being brainwashed by commercials and nonsense like Keeping Up with the Kardashians, and instead spend my time doing something more positive (like going outside!). Unfortunately, that’s not how it went down. As soon as I went off to school, I discovered Hulu and Netflix’s Watch Instantly, a.k.a. the kryptonite of productivity.

It started out small. I used to visit Hulu once a week to catch up on 30 Rock, or Lost; it was when my friend told me that I could stream full-length movies and entire TV series on Netflix that things really got out of control. Before I knew it, I was watching all sorts of shows and movies online that I didn’t even care about. I began following mediocre series out of boredom. Now it’s gotten to the point where I can’t get dressed in the morning without watching The Daily Show or The Colbert Report online. I feel a need for constant passive entertainment.

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A Contemporary Education.

In the past few weeks of my internship, it has become more and more apparent to me that my formal literary education has guided me in one direction: towards death. That is, my bookshelves are lined with authors that are no longer capable of writing because, you guessed it, they’re all dead. From Woolf to Wilde to Joyce to the Brontes to Frances Burney, I like my books old, and my authors’ reputations set in stone.

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Fruit Frenzy: An Analogy

I’m a fan of a wonderful little iPhone game called “Fruit Ninja”. Have you heard of it? I’m sure the majority of you have, since it’s always ranked as one of the top 10 apps. Anyway, to get to the point (or to get to a point) I was playing the game today in “Arcade Mode”. It was amazing—I was slashing oranges, apples, and my favorite: watermelons. Then, almost out of nowhere, the highly anticipated yellow-and-red-striped banana appeared. I slashed it and a frenzy began—the “Fruit Frenzy”, that is.

Suddenly my small iPhone screen was being bombarded with fruit. Combo after combo, my score was growing until I surpassed my high score of 892. After a celebratory mental high-five to myself, I had an epiphany: “Fruit Ninja”, and its “Fruit Frenzy” could be used as an analogy for Script Frenzy. 

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Perfecting My Writing Workspace

Last night after finishing all of my readings for school I decided to put off writing my script (AGAIN!!) by meticulously cleaning and organizing my bedroom. I live in a very old and extremely strange Berkeley apartment that’s pretty much two bedrooms and a bathroom connected by a narrow hallway with an oven, sink, and refrigerator crammed into it. It is in no way the nicest place I’ve ever lived but as my roommate says, “It’s a one star apartment that we love.” But since we can’t really hang out in our hallway, I end up spending a lot of time in my room so it’s very important to me that it’s clean and comfortable enough for me to eat, sleep, study, and hang out with friends in. But with Script Frenzy upon us, I’m trying to take it a step further by converting my modest bedroom into a chamber of creativity.

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Well, this is embarassing.

So, I know that lying is wrong, but every day when I log in to my Script Frenzy account and still have no more additional pages to add to my count, I have the urge to lie. That’s because on Day 10 I still only have 2 (TWO) pages. There you go; I said it. I have set myself up to be a Script Frenzy failure.

However, in an attempt to be a glass-half-full kind of person, there are still twenty-one days left. If I write about four and a half pages every day, I still have a shot at winning that pretty certificate. The trouble with that is the amount of self-discipline I will need. Or maybe not self-discipline, but concentration and willpower.

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Laissez les bon temps rouler

This morning my best friend sent me an email inquiring about my new job at The Office of Letters and Light, and then promptly retracted her inquiry, realizing that it must be a branch of the Ministry of Magic and discretion should be honored (though she also mentioned how jealous she was that I get to have run-ins with Harry, Ron, and Hermione). I can’t think of a better segue to my introduction as this perfectly describes my excitement to be a part of OLL!

My name is Kristen and I am OLL’s new Development Associate. While my primary focus will be grant writing, I’m hoping to tap into my long-lost creative side in the process. I currently attend the University of San Francisco, and am working towards a Masters in Public Affairs and Practical Politics, with a concentration in Nonprofits and Policy. As you can imagine, most of my writing these days is very dry. Nonetheless, it serves a wonderful purpose that I become more passionate about everyday.

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What’s Your Writing Playlist?

I have this theory that music can influence your mood, and in turn, influence your writing. Has anyone done a study on this? If not, I’d love to be a test subject.

The majority of the time I tend to stray away from listening to music while writing creative pieces. However, once in a while, I find a song that perfectly fits the mood I’m trying to convey. Most recently that song was “Breathe Me” by Sia. It’s a sad, but breathtaking tune that really helped push an emotionally complex short story I was working on. I don’t even know how many times that song looped through my headphones during my writing process. I just know that the song was a perfect mood-setter.

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The (relative) calm before the Frenzy.

Lately, I’ve been having some major anxiety. I keep getting that feeling that I’m forgetting something. Then I remember: April is only a few days away, and all I really have is an idea. The idea is fairly promising (I wrote about it in an earlier blog post, for those interested), and it even has some potential to become more meaningful than I first thought. But there’s that lurking, rookie feeling that I’ll never reach 100 pages in 30 days.

So far my process has consisted solely of imagining and then creating deep and realistic characters. Because of that, it’s also the only part of my script that I’ve started. I have a lengthy character list that instinct is telling me to cut down, which is proving rather difficult. However, I figure I’m going to take the “only write during April” rule quite literally and leave the rest for this Sunday. This lack of general outline is yet another source of great anxiety. I’m usually a huge fan of outlines; they are my road maps.

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