Chris Baty's Blog, page 238

Embrace the Geek

Last week, I went to the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo for the first time. It was, in fact, my first real “con” experience, at least of that scale. I’d contemplated going before, but when they announced a full reunion of the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation I was finally sucked in.

It feels appropriate that it was TNG that got me to a con, since that show was really my first foray into geek culture. These days, I sort of dabble in the pool of full-fledged fan geekery; I don’t read comic books or dress up for movie premieres (except for the brown coat I wore to the opening night of Serenity), but I will get fanatically attached to certain TV shows and am pretty literate in internet geekery.[[MORE]]The con itself was really fun, although it was absolutely mobbed with people and there were a lot of folks who had pretty lousy experiences thanks to the crowds. I was mostly in it for the panels, and I saw some great ones aside from the full TNG reunion - the Battlestar Galactica panel was so good that it made me completely reassess my feelings about how that show ended, and now I’m really dying to rewatch the whole thing. 

Wil Wheaton’s panel was another highlight; he answered my question (about how TNG would have been different if it had been on in the age of the internet, given how much fandom has changed as a result of the web), and gave NaNoWriMo an off-handed endorsement. Someone else asked him what advice he’d give to people who want to write more, and since I am loud and prone to inappropriateness, I yelled out “Do NaNoWriMo!” He immediately responded with, “that’s actually not bad advice,” so I’m claiming this as an official celebrity endorsement. 

But leaving aside the great and nerdy panels, what really struck me was the diversity of the crowds. Pretty much everyone there was some kind of geek or other, but every one of them was embracing their geekery. And it made me realise that, really, everyone is a geek about something if you look at it a certain way.

One of the definitions of geek is “a person with an eccentric devotion to a particular interest.” A nerd can be defined as “an intelligent, single-minded expert in a particular technical discipline or profession.” Who isn’t devoted to any interests? A boring person, that’s who. Who doesn’t want to be an intelligent expert? Nobody I want to hang out with.

John Green’s got a great quote on the subject: “When people call people nerds, mostly what they’re saying is ‘you like stuff.’ Which is just not a good insult at all. Like, ‘you are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness.’”

Maybe you’re a geek about an obscure science fiction show from the ’90s. Maybe you’re a geek about a sports team. (That one is much more mainstream acceptable, for reasons I’ve never really understood. I’m a pretty die-hard hockey fan, so how come that’s allowed to be cool but being a die-hard video game fan makes you a geek?) Maybe you’re a nerd about writing a 50,000 word novel every November. Whatever you’re a geek or a nerd about, I’m pretty confident in guaranteeing that there’s someone else out there who’s a geek about the same thing. (If you’re a nerd about writing a novel every November, I am 100% confident in guaranteeing this.)

Embrace your nerdy geekiness, my friends. Shout it from the rooftops. If someone tries to call you a geek or a nerd, tell them you refuse to apologize for your enthusiasm about the miracle of human consciousness. Go out into the world and find your like-minded geeky friends, and let’s see what we can do to make the world a happier, nerdier place.

There’s no better place to start than here. What are you geeky about?

-Sarah

(Photo of the TNG reunion by Flickr user Ricky Leong.)

Script Frenzy end-of-event stats: Hot off the press!

The sixth year of the Frenzy had a combined total of 20,284 Frenzy adult and Young Writers Program scriptwriters who wrote 356,622 pages from all around the world. We had eleven fantastic Cameo writers, who shared tips about everything from adapting a feature script into a TV show to rewriting and selling a script.

I loved reviewing the Frenzy stats so much that I thought I’d share them with you, too! I’m going to make this a regular practice from here on out because digging into these numbers is just so juicy! I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!

General Stats

For Script Frenzy main:

• 16,358 Frenzy participants.
• Wrote 312,363 pages.
• This averaged out to 19 pages per person.
• We had 1,832 winners, which gave us an 11% win rate. 

For Script Frenzy’s Young Writers Program:[[MORE]]

• 3,929 writers.
• Wrote 44,259 pages.
• This averaged out to 11 pages per person. 

Website Traffic

In April, we had 266,084 visits, and 1,215,021 page views. 

Top 50 Script Frenzy Cities

1. New York

2. London

3. Los Angeles

4. Toronto

5. India/China border

6. Chicago

7. Sydney

8. San Francisco

9. Seattle

10. Melbourne

11. Denver

12. Washington

13. Portland

14. Philadelphia

15. Vancouver

16. Austin

17. Houston

18. Helsinki

19. Madison

20. Eugene

21. Calgary

22. Berkeley

23. Montreal

24. Manchester

25. Phoenix

26. Albuquerque

27. Vienna

28. Paris

29. Dallas

30. San Antonio

31. Colorado Springs

32. Minneapolis

33. St Louis

34. Brisbane

35. Boston

36. Ottawa

37. Edmonton

38. Perth

39. San Diego

40. Bristol

41. Indianapolis

42. Dublin

43. San Jose

44. Columbus

45. Adelaide

46. Burbank

47. Salt Lake City

48. Nashville

49. Beaverton

50. Singapore

Top 50 Script Frenzy Countries

1. United States

2. United Kingdom

3. Canada

4. Australia

5. France

6. Germany

7. Netherlands

8. India

9. Mexico

10. Finland

11. New Zealand

12. Philippines

13. Austria

14. Ireland

15. Other

16. Spain

17. Sweden

18. South Africa

19. Belgium

20. Argentina

21. Portugal

22. Brazil

23. Singapore

24. Japan

25. Denmark

26. Malaysia

27. Switzerland

28. Norway

29. Italy

30. Russia

31. Turkey

32. Colombia

33. Venezuela

34. Indonesia

35. Hungary

36. South Korea

37. Israel

38. China

39. Poland

40. Peru

41. Romania

42. Morocco

43. United Arab Emirates

44. Pakistan

45. Hong Kong

46. Lithuania

47. Chile

48. Tunisia

49. Puerto Rico

50. Greece

That about wraps things up. Was this your first Frenzy? If so, how’d you do? Share your experience with us. If you’re a veteran Frenzier, what was it like this time around? Let us know, we want to hear from you.

Thank you for making the Frenzy such an amazing experience! I’m already looking forward to next year. I can’t wait.

Warmly,
Sandra

Map by Flickr user Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the BPL

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.[[MORE]]

Growing up I never had the problem of watching too much TV. Arguing with my sisters over whether we should watch the Disney channel, Nickelodeon, or Cartoon Network usually wore me out before I spent too much time sitting in front of the TV. But online programing is just too darn convenient. It’s too tempting to fill in a 25-minute study break with a commercial-free episode of Arrested Development or Parks and Recreation. Oh, the time I’ve wasted re-watching old episodes of The Office and waiting on my slow internet! You’d be appalled to know how long I’ve sat patiently staring at my screen waiting for an episode of Mad Men to buffer.

So I’ve decided to ease up on the over-stimulation. I’m going to stop re-watching old shows when I’m bored, and I’m going to try to bring down the number of shows that I follow to a solid two or three.

Have you gotten into the internet TV craze? What are your can’t miss shows?

- Jessie

Photo by Flickr user royalconstantinesociety

Camp NaNoWriMo?! What's that?

What is Camp NaNoWriMo, you say? Well, I’ll tell you! Launched in 2011, Camp NaNoWriMo is a pared down, camp-themed, non-November version of the 50K-in-a-month NaNoWriMo noveling challenge.

For anyone out there who can’t possibly wait until November to write their next novel—or for whom November is not a noveling possibility—Camp NaNoWriMo provides that same hard deadline and abundance of encouragement to get you from “blank page” to “rough draft” in one month.

Camp NaNoWriMo 2012 is running two month-long sessions for you to bash out the rough draft of your novel(s): in June, and then in August. Pick a month—or participate in both—to write while paddling a virtual canoe or in a web-based cabin, novel next to an invisible bear while eating imaginary marshmallows, or in the middle of a purely fictitious sack race! You can do all this and more at campnanowrimo.org.[[MORE]]

(Owing to some confusion over where in the world this magical Camp is located, I assure you that it is 100% web-bound. Camp NaNoWriMo’s address is nowhere else but 50,000 Internets Lane, the Internets, aka campnanowrimo.org. We wish it existed in tangible, life-sized Camp form too, but lumber for cabins and rubber for inner tubes is really expensive lately! Maybe one day.)

In summary:

-Head over to campnanowrimo.org

-Log in with your NaNoWriMo, or Script Frenzy username and password. (Or create an all-new user account if you don’t already have an existing one for any of our events.)

-Learn more about joining a cabin, getting sponsored, and all of Camp NaNoWriMo’s fun features.

-Plan for a June or August filled with noveling, Camp-staff pep talks, novel-tracking tools, web badges, winner rewards, and more bug and tent jokes than you can shake a perfectly sharpened hot dog stick at.

Tell your friends, grab your boots, and get ready to write! And be sure to comment below with the details of your summer noveling plan.

See you at the (100% website-bound and thus, non-hazardous) fire circle,

Lindsey

Unusual, Intriguing Novel Narration

I just finished reading Hannah Pittard’s 2011 novel, The Fates Will Find Their Way. It’s a naturally intriguing story: a 16-year-old girl goes missing without a trace, and her suburban classmates obsessively speculate—in both the short and long term—about what may have happened to her.

Pittard’s choice of perspective makes this narrative even more absorbing. The entire book is told in the first-person plural: the collective voice of the boys who dreamily wonder about the girl’s fate.

We interrogated each other for information, eager to be the one to discover the truth. As it turned out, we’d all seen Nora the day before, but seen her in different places doing different things—we’d seen her at the swing sets, at the riverbank, in the shopping mall. We’d seen her making phone calls in the telephone booth outside the liquor store, inside the train station, behind the dollar store.

The result is wonderfully opaque. A plural perspective can never be definitively pinned down, and so the narrative drifts and bobs—as elusive and unreliable as the certainty of Nora’s circumstances.

What books have you read that make use of unusual perspective or narration? Have you tried this technique in your own novels? How did it work for you?

– Chris

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.[[MORE]]

While there are a few exceptions (I love Salman Rushdie, Yann Martel, and a few others), my dedication to the books and authors from my English literature classes throughout college has led to some troubles in the Office. Whenever conversations lead to the question, “Shelby, who’s your favorite author? Who should we ask to write a NaNoWriMo pep talk?”, I give blank stares and consider busting out the old Ouija board (those would be some pretty tough authors to find contact information for).

With the Frenzy of April behind me, and the novel-writing of Camp a few weeks off, this seems to be the perfect time to round out my literary tastes with some post-modern, contemporary fiction. My real issue is this: there’s still so much older stuff out there that I haven’t gotten around to reading. How can I move on to the literary movements of today when I’m already behind on the literary movements that spanned the history of the written word?

But, alas, I’m feeling myself pulled toward the new millennium (finally), which brings me to you. Where should I start? Who should I read? What are your favorite books of the past few decades?

- Shelby

Photo by Flickr user MrOmega

I am here!

You may already know me, even if you don’t think you do. I’m known colloquially as Dragonchilde, the all-seeing, all-knowing moderator of the NaNoWriMo and Script Frenzy forums.

Dragonchilde is the handle I chose for myself way back on November 3, 2002. I started writing on November 4, and had over 16,000 words that first day! I hit 28k on November 6. I finished on November 20, 2002. 

I also apparently invented NaNoWriYe. (Seriously, I had no idea.) 

Since that fateful November, I’ve participated in NaNoWriMo every year. Some years I’ve won, others I’ve lost. My current win record is 50k in ten days.  I don’t recommend that, by the way. I couldn’t use my right hand for a month thanks to carpal tunnel.  

In 2003, I volunteered as an ML for the Macon, Georgia region, where I helped build a strong region of great writers, including the most precocious and fun young writer I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. She started college, this year. (You know you’re getting old when the people who started NaNoWriMo at 12 go to college!)[[MORE]]

In 2007, I got the single most exciting phone call of my entire life. THE Chris Baty, yes, the author of No Plot, No Problem, who created the event that had absorbed my life for nearly five years, called to offer me a job. See, I’d been volunteering as a moderator under the esteemed Cybele May, forum goddess extraordinaire, who had decided to retired from modding.  Chris Baty wanted me, little old Dragonchilde, to be the new Forums Moderator for OLL!  

To my credit, I didn’t scream.  (I did after we hung up, though.) My answer then was the same as it has been every year since, when asked if I’d like to renew my contract:  ”You couldn’t pay me to say no!”  

Last month, I got another call, this time from Tavia Stewart, and she had a very-nearly-as-exciting question to ask me: “Would you like to be a full employee of the Office of Letters and Light?”  

And thus, the Lead Forums Moderator was born. No longer to be merely Dragonchilde, adjunct contractor and east coast representative of the Office of Letters and Light… no, now I am to be Heather Dudley, Lead Forums Moderator and wielder of great power! 

As the great Uncle Ben once said, though: “With great power comes great responsibility.”  

What does this mean to you? Well, strictly speaking, not much. I’ll still be the Woman on Deck in the forums. I’ll still be in the eastern time zone, in my home town in Georgia.  I’ll still be there for you to ask questions of, and I’ll still be there to let you know when you’ve posted in the wrong forum. I’ll just be doing so under my real name. Dragonchilde will live on, as she always has, but you’ll see me around the forums under my full name: Heather Dudley.

Really, though, most of the change is behind the scenes. I pledge that I will continue to ensure the event forums on all of our websites are unique, friendly, and the stellar place they’ve always been for writers worldwide.  

I will tell you one thing about all this, though: You never really stop squeeing that you got to beat Chris Baty in a word war in a Berkeley coffeeshop during November. 

So tell me, my friends, what’s your fondest memory of the NaNoWriMo forums? 

Facing Graduation

The past few weeks have been pretty wild for me: in addition to all the Script Frenzy craziness, I’ve been finishing up my bachelor’s degree and trying to envision what the rest of my life will look like. Last Thursday was my very last day of college classes (maybe forever). I’m still finishing up papers and preparing for my final exams so it hasn’t completely hit me yet, but when I do stop and think that I may never again stare creepily at a cute guy in class, or participate in an argument over the meaning of a phrase in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” I don’t know whether to smile or throw up—right now I’m leaning towards barfing.

I’ve been a student my entire life, and it’s become a pivotal part of my identity. I also just straight-up enjoy learning and working with inspired professors and students; who wouldn’t? If I was certain what I wanted to do with my life I would pursue that career, or a higher degree, but I don’t so the only plan I have is to embark upon a vague soul searching mission—exciting, but also really scary. I might just lose it during my graduation ceremony and accost the head of the English department crying, “Please don’t make me leave, I don’t know anything else!”[[MORE]]

But I have found some comfort in knowing that just because I’m not attending lectures or writing papers doesn’t mean I have to stop learning. Lately I’ve been blue when I think about all the classes I wanted to take but never got the chance to, the fact that I’m graduating without having read Ulysses (that’s an embarrassing one), and of all of the extracurriculars that I wish I’d tried but never got around to. Until two weeks ago I was really plagued by the feeling that I’m not well read enough or even generally intelligent enough to be classified as educated. I guess I figured I’d have more answers by now.

But during astronomer Alex Filippenko’s special lecture for graduating seniors, he cited a quote by Socrates that gave me great comfort: “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” Approaching education in this manner convinces me that my college experience has definitely been a success as I’ve fostered a genuine hunger for learning—what does it matter that I haven’t already read every single classic? Within the last four years I’ve transformed from someone that wants A’s to someone that wants to understand; I’m confident that I’ll be able to continue challenging myself once I’m on my own.

Graduating is still kind of a bummer, I’m going to miss Berkeley, and my life here, but leaving doesn’t mean I have to change completely.

Is anyone else graduating? For those of you who already have, do you miss school? How have you continued to learn independently?

- Jessie

Photo by Flickr user beejjorgensen

Alternatives to the Caffeine Crawl

I’ve been pretty tired lately. Between Script Frenzy and some big personal projects, I’m working a lot, and thinking even more. Staying alert has necessitated a sizable influx of caffeine, and I’m stockpiling my supply like a fiend.

But today marked a decidedly low moment, as I actually reheated some coffee we brewed in the office last week. We’re talking at least four days old and cold as the rock at one of those weird ice cream mix-in places. Sad as it was, I needed the quick fix to get through my afternoon.

Help me, folks. I know that us Wrimos and Frenziers love our caffeine, but what other energizing wake-up methods did you make use of this past month? How do you non-chemically spur yourself on through a marathon writing session—or just a marathon work day?

– Chris

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. [[MORE]]

Bear with me here. “Zen Mode” is equivalent to the first week or so of Script Frenzy. It’s relaxed, laid back—no bombs to interrupt your hard work in sight. Then we have “Classic Mode”, which can stand for those run-of-the-mill mid-month days. And finally, as we finish up this last week, we are are playing  on “Arcade Mode”—in my opinion, the best mode.

In “Arcade Mode” there’s more pressure; and I’ve realized that pressure is something that I need in order to push me to write. Under pressure, I’ve found I can actually have what I now deem as “Fruit Frenzy” moments—where I’m able to spit out pages of writing as quickly as those digital pieces of fruit jump across the screen. Well probably not as quickly, but still.

So, that was my analogy, because analogies are fun. Do you have any Script Frenzy analogies, or anything that reminds you of Script Frenzy in everyday life? Do you have “Fruit Frenzy” writing moments?

Also, if you are a “Fruit Ninja” player, what’s your high score? Mine: 929!

- Aliza