Chris Baty's Blog, page 243

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 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:

Zadie Smith
Chang-rae Lee
Jennifer Egan
Kevin Wilson 
Joshua Ferris
Dana Spiotta 
Hannah Pittard 
Tupelo Hassman 
Jonathan Franzen 
Jennifer Russell 
Chad Harbach

Patrick Rothfuss
Peter Orner
Noah Hawley
George RR Martin
Kathryn Stockett
Stephen Hely 
Robert Olen Butler
Charles Yu
William Gibson

Who's on your list?

– Lindsey

An Austen Intervention

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a reader in possession of… any-sized fortune really, must be in want of a book.

There's much ado in my household with regard to debuting just now because my first novel, girlchild, goes on shelves this week. With girlchild being a debutante in her first season, I cannot get my mind off of Jane Austen, her work having taught me what little I know of debutantes and seasons, particularly from Pride and Prejudice. As I prepare to leave go of my little girl's hand and watch her waltz off into the world, I'm glad I brought my smelling salts. It is a swoon-y time. The parties! The gossip! The dresses!

girlchild's official launch party (might we call it a ball?) is Saturday night and she's already fussed over her dress. The jacket turned out beautifully, it hugs her in all the right places and is adorned with blurbs (sequins perhaps?) that make me blush. As the reviews come in, there is much gossip, a great requirement of any good society function. girlchild's dance card is filling up, at least according to its Amazon ranking, and much as I disbelieved Chris Baty when he told me I'd become addicted to monitoring that statistic, I do have it on speed dial. (I'm told another angel gets his Viking helmet every time Baty is right about something, and that guy is always right. I'm so glad he's gone.)

Parties, check! Gossip, check! Dress, check! So, why am I so nervous?

Dear me! Have I become Mrs. Bennet? No faith in my progeny, chewing with my mouth open, and forcing my dearest on whoever doesn't already have a book in his hand? Or, can we fault Mrs. Bennet (that is, me) for her awareness of the limited choices facing her girl children and a desire to see them held and loved and secure in this digitized world?

I never hoped to see myself as Mrs. B.

But here I am, nose to the embroidery hoop, where I've stitched this blog sampler, pretending not to worry and failing miserably. When no one's looking, I'm wiping the dirt from her face with my spit, straightening her jacket, pinching her cheeks to add color, and shoving her onto the dance floor. I acquiesce to fate. I wanted to be Elizabeth, I dreamt of being sweet Jane, but here I am, Mrs. Bennet, uncouth, uncertain, and only focused on seeing that my darling gets to dance all night.

If I'm Mrs. B when it comes to introducing my work to the world, who are you? What literary character best illustrates your feelings about your writing? Do you hoard it, like Gollum, eyes wide and jealous? Do you cobble your story together during the lightning flashes and scare the villagers with it? Do you fly it like the kite in Mary Poppins? Are there any other Mrs. Bennets out there?

Whoever you are, may all of your darling precious monsters fly to the highest heights of your imagination.

– Tupelo (aka Mrs. B.)

All You Need Is Love

Although some critique Valentine's Day as a Hallmark card holiday (and, yes, I've said those words as a young lad, much to my romantic peril), it's hard to argue with pausing in this crazy life to celebrate love—whether it's loving your sweetheart, your granny, your pet toad, your novel, or the meter maid you yelled at last week for giving you a parking ticket.

The only thing the Office of Letters and Light loves more than writing is love itself—so we want to spread amorousness to all on Valentine's Day in ways that are more fun than cheesy Hallmark cards (although we love many cheesy things, such as the fake roses in our office window).

Join us in a group hug:

On February 14, we'll be talking about our favorite movie love scenes on Facebook, whether they make you cry, cringe, or guffaw. Scarlett O'Hara? John Cusack in Say Anything? I've been tearing up at Downton Abbey lately.

Download a snazzy NaNo or Script Frenzy heart to post as your profile photo on Twitter or Facebook.

 

     

Love your novel by learning how to pitch it. The Book Doctors, Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry, are back for the second annual Pitchapalooza, February 1 to 29, for NaNoWriMo participants.

Flipping Valentine's Day: Generosity Day

If you're still a critic of Valentine's Day, then there's an alternative. Some creative folk (who probably did NaNo one year) have "rebooted" Valentine's Day as Generosity Day—"one day of sharing love with everyone, of being generous to everyone, to see how it feels and to practice saying 'Yes.'"

One way of saying "Yes" is to sign up for GoodSearch and designate the Office of Letters and Light as your charity. We have 6,100 supporters on GoodSearch, but we aim to reach 25,000 supporters by the end of 2012 so that we can improve our programs—for you!

Download the GoodSeach toolbar and with each Web search you'll contribute money to OLL. And if you use GoodShop and GoodDining (say, to buy chocolates and roses or pens and paper), up to 6% of each purchase will go to support OLL (we're sorry, but unfortunately many of the merchants and restaurants are only in the U.S.—they're working on a more global presence).

Love. Love. Love. In whatever way you can. Even if it's just writing a romantic scene.

– Grant

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?

I realized how much I love literature when I was in the fourth grade and I read Louis Sachar's novel Holes, after ordering it from the Scholastic catalog. Looking back, I'm not sure what about the book got me so darn excited but I absolutely loved it. I can remember telling the entire story to my mom over the course of an afternoon and asking her, "Isn't it genius how it all comes together?" After my brief obsession with Holes came a much longer obsession with the Harry Potter series. By the time I left elementary school, Sachar and Rowling had turned me into an avid novel reader. Although it was not until high school that I began to cultivate a more sophisticated appreciation of literature, I've known since the fourth grade that I want to work with readers and writers, which is why I'm so thrilled to begin my internship with the Office of Letters and Light.

I'm really looking forward to getting to know the OLL staffers over the course of my internship and to begin my first attempt at scriptwriting.

– Jessie

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

February is Pitchapalooza!

The Book Doctors are back with the second-annual Pitchapalooza for Wrimos. Read on to get the lowdown from them on what this means, and how you can participate!

You wrote your 50,000 words (or got pretty close!). You're a winner. You've been congratulated. You felt the high. But here's the 64-gigabyte question: What do you plan to do with your one wild and precious manuscript?

If you're like the approximately one gazillion writers we know, you want to get published. And you want to get published successfully. You want readers to devour your book ravenously; you want raves glowing in blog posts; you want bookstore owners to hand-sell your book so fast it's literally flying off the shelves; you want to trade barbs with Stephen Colbert; you want readings in front of rapt devotees; you want to go viral at the speed of one of those krazy kitten movies. But how?

This is where we, The Book Doctors, come in. It's our job to help writers make their dreams come true. It's what we did with our first Pitchapalooza winners, Nura Maznavi and Ayesha Mattu, whose book, Love InshAllah, just hit the shelves. In the last week, they were profiled in the New York Times, had one of the most talked about pieces on the Huffington Post, and cracked the top 500 of all books sold on Amazon. Then there's Pitchapalooza winner and NaNoWriMo veteran, Genn Albin. After she won Pitchapalooza, one of New York's top agents sold her dystopian novel in a three-book, six-figure deal. 

Now we're embarking on our second online Pitchapalooza exclusively for NaNoWriMo participants so that you, too, have a chance to win.

For those of you not familiar with Pitchapalooza, here's the skinny: You get 200 words to pitch your book. You then email your pitch to nanowrimo@thebookdoctors.com. Twenty-five pitches will be randomly selected from all submissions. We will then choose one winner from the group. The winner will receive an introduction to an agent or publisher appropriate for his/her manuscript. We will also award a fan favorite who will receive a free one-hour consult with us (worth $250). All pitches must be received by February 29, 2012. The 25 random pitches will be posted on March 5, 2012. Winners will be announced on March 15, 2012. Anyone can vote for fan favorite, so get your social media engine running as soon as the pitches go up!

You may be thinking, "I can't sum up my entire book in 200 words!" Let us say this: "Yes you can!" Your pitch is the first thing an agent, editor, publisher, bookseller, and often reader, will look at. In this age of one-minute attention spans, if your pitch doesn't blow the person you're pitching out of the water, you'll get that dreaded letter that starts: "Dear Writer, Unfortunately…"  We don't want you to get any more of those letters. So enter the 2nd Annual NaNoWriMo Pitchaplooza by sending us a kick-ass pitch for your kick-ass novel. Who knows, maybe this year, the golden ticket will have your name on it.

P.S. Like last year, we're offering free 20-minute consultations (worth $100) to anyone who buys a copy of The Essential Guide To Getting Your Book Published. Just attach a copy of your sales receipt to your email and we'll set up your consultation

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:

Avocado, red onion, and grapefruit over arugula. Also great with grilled chicken!
A classic niçoise: potatoes, green beans, egg, seared tuna, and optional olives and fresh corn. Mmmm. No sardines for me, please!
My newest creation: Beets, white beans, pistachios and feta over mixed greens. Add broccoli for color and toothsome fiber.
My mom's specialty: pears, toasted pumpkin seeds, manchego cheese and a sherry vinaigrette. This is best on baby romaine, but any lettuce will do. Call the ambulance—I'm on my way to heaven just thinking about it!

No matter the salad, add one or a couple of  these great vitamin and protein-packed ingredients to take your bowl of goodness from ordinary to extraordinary: pomegranate seeds, toasted hazelnuts (also called filberts), garbanzo beans, sunflower seeds, goat cheese, or raw asparagus coins (my new favorite). Oh, or bacon! (My real favorite. Let's be serious here.)

Bon appetit!

– Lindsey

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.

I miss drive-in theaters and pool halls. I was awarded the most-improved bowler in the junior division of my bowling league when I was 13, a dubious honor. Ulysses S. Grant is my favorite president, largely because of his horsemanship and his love of cigars (and I guess we share a name as well). I love visiting my parents in Iowa, where I grew up, and driving around on country roads taking photos of objects in states of desuetude. I plan to spend my later years mastering the art of tap dancing. 

How many times, if ever, have you participated in NaNoWriMo or Script Frenzy?

I unofficially participated in NaNoWriMo years ago one summer when I was house-sitting in New Mexico. I think this was before NaNo existed. I challenged myself to write 1,500 words each day for the summer to develop a novel, but I didn't quite hit my word count. I lacked pep talks, guilt monkeys, wombats, and write-ins.

I officially participated in 2010, however, when the inspirational zealot and whirling dervish of novel writing Chris Baty cajoled me into participating. It was really wonderful. I'd become a victim of my writing routine, which had plowed deep ruts into my creativity. I "wrote with abandon" for a month and developed a novel I'd been thinking about for years and took it in many directions, which I'll call daring, that I wouldn't have risked otherwise.

Script Frenzy held a similar revelation, but I enjoy doing it even more because I enjoy writing dialogue and it's easier to write a relatively finished script in a month. It's a good lesson to shake up your creative patterns.

What is your favorite thing to write about?

Transience. My characters tend to get addicted to their search and lose themselves in movement, forgetting that the place they came from holds the meaning they're looking for. It's like Blaise Pascal's quote, "All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone." My characters always think elsewhere is better, so they live in a state of abeyance.

What's the coolest thing you've done in the last five years?

Other than taking part in National Novel Writing Month? I started a literary journal, 100 Word Story, with some friends. I'd held my writing solitude too dear for a long time, so it's been great how this project has opened me up into a larger writing community, which is so energizing. Likewise, I started writing a script with a writing partner, which I'd never done, and I love the collaboration, all of the insights of another. I keep planning to go hang gliding, but haven't found the time.

When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I think I had some fantasies about becoming Batman. I still thought being President of the U.S. was a cool thing as well. And I remember begging my parents to let me grow my hair long because I wanted to be just like David Cassidy on The Partridge Family.

That said, I have many memories of going to book stores with my parents and staring lovingly at the journals and pens, as I still do. There's not a writing accoutrement I don't covet. I asked for a diary with a lock on it for Christmas one year. So I'm pretty sure I always I knew I'd be a writer, whether I was president or Batman.

What are you most excited about doing here at the Office of Letters and Light?

Creating. Creating joyfully. Creating with wildly spirited and funny and zany and daring people. And then creating some more.

What is your favorite thing on your desk, and why?

I love the styrofoam mannequin head that my daughter decorated in preschool. I like the mannequin's tawdry elegance, her stately grace, her assertion of mad dashes of color. She's got a disregard for naysayers' opinions. She knows herself.

If you could have one superpower, what would it be?

The capacity for endless gratitude and the ability to express it meaningfully to all those I have to thank for this crazy, blessed life.

Marathon TV Watching

The other day, I added the entire six-season run of The Larry Sanders Show to my Netflix Instant queue. I've been meaning to watch it for a while, and I plan to take it down in one big gulp—a few solid days of rigorous sitcomming during the winter months.

Obviously, I'm not alone in this style of marathon TV watching. DVD and video-on-demand have made the practice a common part of the cultural conversation. I can't jump on to my Facebook or Twitter feeds without hearing about someone working through a season or more. (A friend's run of Cheers was the most impressive.) Recent episodes of Portlandia and Up All Night have noted the intense commitment people feel to the shows they're mainlining. And many media critics have spoken up both for and against the "binge."

(Our office, meanwhile, houses some serious Downton Abbey marathonners: Sarah and Grant just knocked out the first season.)

Are you a fan of watching TV shows all at once? Why or why not? If you are, which ones have kept you couch-bound? Any notable marathons that you regretted or repeated?

– Chris A.

Photo by Flickr user jayneandd