Chris Baty's Blog, page 245

Thank You, Chris Baty!

As he's told you, our own Chris Baty—founder of NaNoWriMo, Executive Director of the Office of Letters and Light, and Supreme Kicker of Pants—will soon be leaving our organization to write (and tend llamas) full-time.

But we can't just let him walk out the door without another round of appreciation.

We're compiling a collection of video thank-you's to Chris for all his hard work and inspiration. Check out the example from OLL board member Jason Snell, and then post your own as a response. (Click on the YouTube comments section, then "Create a video response." You can also post a text thank-you there if you'd prefer not to film.)

When he's not collaborating with our new ED Grant Faulkner (or pricing bulk llama feed), Chris will be enjoying your videos during his last days in the office. Thanks in advance for sharing your gratitude!

– The OLL Staff and Board

Our December Nap

Well, Wrimos, the time has come for all of us OLL critters to hunker down in our caves and nests for the traditional holiday nap.

The office will reopen on Tuesday, January 3. Until then, have an excellent end-of-2011 and a happy new year!

Best wishes,

Lindsey, Chris A., Sarah, Tim, Chris B., Dan, and Jez

This Is Why I Teach

Elementary teacher Nancye Blair sent along this video and blog post. We love hearing about how the Young Writers Program inspires students and educators—as Nancye discusses how her kids spurred on her own word count. Find out why all of Nancye's students can say, "I am an author."

Last month, I took on a challenge that I did not believe that I could accomplish and that I did not even intend to fight to achieve. That challenge was writing my first novel alongside sixteen of my fourth and fifth grade students as part of National Novel Writing Month. When I first looked into the NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program, I saw it as a unique opportunity to encourage my students to write while participating in a global endeavor. Having a clear beginning and end point, along with the knowledge that other kids were simultaneously writing all over the world was very motivating for my students. That, plus the idea that they would receive a real printed copy of their novel launching them to "real author" status, set the group of us into motion.

When the students sign up for the Young Writers Program, they are given the option to choose a word count goal to work toward. NaNoWriMoYWP recommends various word count goals for each grade level, allowing teachers and students to take on the challenge at a level appropriate for their individual ability, time, and motivation. I shared these recommendations with my students, along with an all day write-a-thon opportunity that we would have at the beginning of the month. Though a couple of students did ask what the minimum they could choose was, most shot for goals beyond recommendations, even when I tried to talk them out of it… even when their parents tried to talk them out of it. And so, they prepared to begin with goals starting at 2,000 words and quickly rising to several at and above 9,000.

What I did not realize when I signed up for the program was that, even though my students were able to set their own word count goals, the automatic word count goal for an adult is 50,000 words. To be honest, I do love to write, but it's what I love to write that is important at this point. I was a philosophy major. I typically write theory, non-fiction.

50,000 words sounded impossible.

To me.

Yet to my students, 50,000 words seemed like just the right kind of challenge that their teacher should take on if they were going to be writing between 2,000 and18,000 words themselves. Whether or not I thought I could do it, these sixteen students believed I could do it. So, I signed up and signed a contract with all of them committing to the goal.

As November started, we wrote. Before school, during school, after school, even meeting at a local restaurant on a Saturday to work on our stories. The kids were excited. Even a handful of students who traditionally dread writing tasks in class excelled in this project, surpassing their goal by hundreds or thousands of words.

In eight years of teaching, there is no project in which I have participated that compared to the way this one promoted:

Goal setting,

Task commitment and anti-procrastination measures,

Encouragement between peers,

Self-motivation outside of class, and

Two-way inspiration and shared energy between teacher and students.

Five days before the challenge was to end, I will admit that I had only written 23,000 words, not even 50% of where I needed to be. To be honest, I was ready to quit. Not quit writing, but quit trying to reach the goal. Sure, I would write more, but looking at the unbelievable workload still ahead of me, it was seemingly impossible to reach the 50,000 word goal.

But then something happened. As I was working on my computer, I checked the NaNoWriMo website. Throughout the month, the students and I had been posting updated word counts. Even though it was the last Saturday of Thanksgiving break, their numbers were going up. Going way up. Some were even starting to surpass their goals. Seeing this growth in my students, seeing them posting updated word counts even during Thanksgiving break, and seeing them rise to this incredible challenge changed me.

I was inspired. I was not just inspired to write; I was inspired to finish by November 30th. Over the next four days, I wrote day and night, even with a full teaching schedule… and completed 27,000 words. At 7:46pm on November 30th, I wrote my fifty thousandth word.

I never could have written this novel without watching them write theirs. Never would have finished this challenge if I hadn't watched them fight for each and every word. They were a true inspiration.

So, on the second to last day, when I walked into the lunchroom and my fifth graders were asking for my "number"… and I shared 40,000, not nearly where I should have been at this point in the month, I was rather surprised when one of the students who had already completed nearly all of her 9,000 word goal looked up at me with the biggest smile on her face, saying "You are so inspiring!" Me? The one who had nearly given up with less than half of my novel done just four days before the deadline?

Yet, they continued to surprise me. Later that afternoon, a student who had finished a week early came by my classroom "just to check on me." And on December 1st, when I showed up with donuts and supplies to show them that I was proud of them, it was those same students who came running into my classroom to tell me that they were proud of me.

My students are now more empathetic, more genuinely interested in each other. They are significantly better writers and significantly more confident in their abilities than any score on a standardized test could have possibly achieved. And where a five paragraph essay had once seemed daunting work, now sitting and writing a thousand words sounds like child's play to these incredible students.

And the added bonus? Watching this group of kids write novels was infectious. What started out as a class project spread to two other whole classes… and, on the second to last day, to four other 4th graders who committed to reaching a 400 word goal in just one day. The school librarian is even thinking about ways to promote reading the works of these motivated students once we have copies in the library. Copies in the library? Wow.

So, NaNoWriMo, you have changed our lives for the better and taught us that we are capable of achieving much more that we could have possibly imagined. And you turned us into a family in the process. Thank you.

A Book-Loggy Year

Back in January, I wrote about my New Year's Resolutions here on the blog. Public accountability, after all, is a great motivator, and I was hoping that by declaring my intentions to all of you, I'd be a little more likely to stick to the resolutions.

My big resolution was to keep track of all the books I read in 2011, and thanks to the suggestions in the comments, I ended up with a GoodReads account. When I set that account up, I set my reading goal for the year at 100 new-to-me books. (Re-reads don't count.)

I am here today to admit that I failed. I'm at 78 books right now, and I'll probably manage another 5 or 6 before the year is out (mmm, holiday reading), but there's no way I'm going to make it to 100 books. I had a couple of lags in my reading—the month I spent in Vancouver waiting for my sister's baby to arrive, the time after I dislocated my knee and couldn't get to the library, pretty much all of November—but I'm confident that I can make it to 100 in 2012.
Despite not making it to my goal, I am absolutely thrilled with my resolution. The number of books was really a side challenge to myself, and the resolution itself was to keep track of the books I read. And I did. Every single book I read for the first time in 2011 is logged on my GoodReads account. I'd finish a book (usually in bed, which is where I do most of my reading) and immediately pick up my phone to update my GoodReads account.

And although I don't have any data to back it up, I think this might be the most new books I've ever read in a year. I'm very prone to re-reading rather than finding something new, but as a result of my challenge to read 100 new books, I made an effort to seek out new material instead of just picking up an old favourite. GoodReads helped with this, too: I added friends with similar taste in books and requested things they loved from the library.

When I left the library to take a full-time job with OLL back in June, I was worried that I'd fall into previous bad library habits. I was never very good at returning books on time back in the days before I worked at the library, and I was concerned that without the ease of picking up books that looked interesting, I'd slack off in my reading. But I've read 39 books since leaving the library, which means I've maintained the same pace pretty much all year long. (The big gaps? April and November. Apparently I am unable to write and read at the same time.)

Of the 78 books, I gave 12 of them 5 stars, which is actually more than I thought. Discarding the ones that were more of a 4.5 (my one complaint about GoodReads is the lack of half-star ratings), I'd say five of them were genuinely 5-star books: The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, The Homecoming of Samuel Lake, Bossypants, The Sky Is Everywhere, and my hands-down favourite book of the year and one of my new favourite books of all time, The Night Circus.

My plan for 2012 is to jump-start the 100-book challenge with a solid amount of reading in January and February when it's too cold to do much else and work isn't quite so hectic. That means I need some recommendations, so hit me with your favourite books that you read in 2011. And thank you again to everyone who suggested GoodReads. It has changed the way I read in so many positive ways, and I can't thank you enough.

– Sarah

Photo by Flickr user decade_null

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.

 1. It's a strangely simple pleasure, but one of the most exciting events 'round these parts is lunchtime. (I would personally advocate that, as a culture, we habitually underrate lunchtime. It deserves much more credit than it receives.) A few of the local highlights include La Familia Taqueria for Mexican, Bakesale Betty for a deceptively simple sandwich with the tastiest jalapeño coleslaw around, Chris Thai for swoon-inducing green curry, and Shangri-La Vegan for the best home cooking I've ever had the pleasure of masticating. (I love that word.)

2. We have this binder, sporting a cover page emblazoned with "NaNoWriMo Thank-You Letters!" It contains, well, exactly what the cover indicates. It's great for a mid-afternoon pick-me-up when you're exhausted and need a little reminder that there are people all over the world who get so much from the program. I have thoroughly enjoyed flipping through the pages and reading over the heartfelt messages.

3. Chris Baty, on occassion, prints out reminders to himself, and tapes them to the wall across from his desk.

4. NaNoVideos are fun to watch—but they're even more fun to make. (As long as I'm not the one in front of the camera.) At what other workplace would I get to throw stuffed animals at coworkers, or dress up like a wizard, or hide in closets with the lights off? You've all watched the outtakes video, correct? If you haven't, then pause for a second and go do so. Back? Now imagine all that hilarity, times 42. It's a nice little break from sitting at a desk, and we have great hopes that the videos brighten all of your days as much as they do ours.

5. Sometimes, we get presents! These are occasionally items from our Amazon wish list, and other times they are surprise gifts from MLs or other lovely Wrimos. It's probably the most exciting thing in the world to see that UPS man coming through the door with a box, then throwing off your headphones to rush and hover while someone slices it open with a pair of scissors. (We should really add a box-cutter to that wish list.) A random sampling of the things we received this season: a kitten poster, countless cards and letters, pickled fish, tooth-shaped erasers, a coat rack, a bouquet of fruit, a moose doll, and more sweets than we could possibly eat (but somehow managed to anyway).

6. Anyone who has never been inside the OLL office invariably thinks we are either a print shop or a cult of some literary variety. (And, it should be noted, the latter may not be entirely untrue. In a good way, of course.) Not a day has gone by that I haven't looked up to see someone peering intently through our windows. The subject of most interest is the Chris Baty doll (and now his pet llama, too). Sometimes they peer in the door, and that's when they realize there are people inside, half of whom are staring back. It's one of the high points of my day to watch the window-peeker spin around suddenly, and saunter nonchalantly off, trying oh so very hard to shake the embarrassment.

7. Dan will do anything short of murder for peanut-butter-filled chocolates.

8. Sometimes, you just need some nuts. Every so often, there's that moment around 3:00 PM when everyone recognizes our simultaneous craving for peanuts, looks up at each other, and someone says "Stabbytown?" That's the pseudo-affectionate name given to the ratty (and, as you might have gathered, sketchy) convenience store just down the block from the office. Stabbytown North also exists, up the block the other way. Trips to either of these establishments are not undertaken on one's own.

9. Nuggets of wisdom drop around here like the pigeon poop does from the streetlights outside. That is to say, plentifully and with a tiny plopping noise. For example, from Chris Baty: "The wise man leads by not playing Black Eyed Peas songs." And, from Lindsey Grant: "Bubble tea is a little like drinking somebody else's cold." I've learned more about the way the world works from conversing with these fine folks than from anything else I've done in the office.

10. This is the most encouraging, passionate, humorously sarcastic, and committed group of people I have ever had the joy of working with. Every last one of them is so dedicated to what they do, and actually wants to come to work. It has been such a pleasure to come in to their cheerful faces every morning.

11. Music plays a big role in life at the office. Most of the time, we live in Headphonelandia, but on Friday afternoons, things get rockin'. The Friday Jams playlist includes such jems as Queen, Toto, Cheap Trick, and Stevie Wonder. If Chris Baty is in charge of the jams, there is a higher chance (read: nearly 100%) that the Mormon Tabernacle Choir will feature.

12. At the heart of every good office, there is coffee.

Goodbye, OLL. And goodbye, my dear Wrimos. It's been a blast and I really hate to go, but I know we will meet again.

– Paige

A Creative Path for 2012

Lately, I've been lurking in the Big, Fun, Scary Things forum. I like it there. So many of you are so positive, and have such exciting goals for the new year. As I read these lists, something else impresses me: they're so definitive.

Definitiveness, or the lack thereof, has been my creative bête noir for the better part of 2011. I have a drive to make stuff, but so much of the time, I'm not certain where I should direct my efforts. Instead of starting work, I choose from any number of avoidance methods: new lists, notebooks, Google Docs, etc. As a result, the 12-month graph of my productivity is more of a sad scatter plot than a proudly rising slope.

I want to better define my creative path in 2012. I know my strengths as a writer; I just need to determine—for once and for all—how they can best be used. In short, I'm ready to get going on my 10,000 hours as soon as I figure out how to spend them. So, will it be creative nonfiction, art/culture essays, humor pieces, odd little short stories, or some other form I've never even considered? Time to answer this question and steer/steel myself for the hard work ahead.

Anybody else struggling with creative direction? What are your next steps going to be? Do any of you writers or artists with well-worn paths have advice to share? 2012 Chris, with laptop at the ready, thanks you for your company and guidance.

– Chris A.

Photo by Flickr user Lomo-Cam

A Nod to the Nog

The office is especially full of winter cheer today. We're counting down the hours to our annual staff holiday party, where we'll don our coziest sweaters and our finest nog-drinking mittens. Oh, and this year, we'll also be playing bocce.

The high point of the night is always the white elephant gift exchange. Man, it gets intense. Last year, the in-demand items included a Star Wars USB drive, a brass-knuckles coffee mug, and zombie card game. Who knows what strange and wondrous goods await this evening?

What are your office holiday parties like? Any good stories? (We promise we won't tell HR.) What's the best, worst, or weirdest thing you've ever gotten in a gift swap?

– Chris A.

Photo by Flickr user H. Michael Karshis

30 Covers, 30 Days 2011: Curtain Call and Thank You!

The office is only just starting to come down off the high that was NaNoWriMo. Every November, we're lucky enough to experience creativity that's tidal-wave in force, writing alongside hundreds of thousands of writers like you all around the world. That creative energy has some amazing effects, including the inspiration of our designers for the 30 Covers, 30 Days project, led by John Gall, who needs no adjectives.

If you can believe it, the 30 Covers, 30 Days tag is one of the most visited on our blog during November. We were so lucky this year: more people than ever were discussing the beautiful, and often provocative covers. A bit of a breakdown:

The art our book cover designers created were for books written by an international collection of Wrimos:

Austria
Uruguay
Malaysia
South Africa
France – 2
Canada – 3
Australia – 3
United Kingdom – 3
USA – 12, with 3 from the Young Writers Program

The genre breakdown went like this:

Fantasy – 6
Literary Fiction – 5
Science Fiction – 5
Young Adult – 4
Mainstream Fiction – 3
Mystery – 3
Adventure – 2
Humor/Satire
Romance

In case you were buried in writing your novel this month, take the time now to enjoy the covers that were created by our incredible team of designers! We want to extend one more round of thanks to:

Jessica Hische
Scott Buschkuhl
David High
Darren Haggar
Jenny Carrow
Jacob Covey
David Gee
Mark Abrams
Paul Sahre
Tal Goretsky
Chip Wass
Chris Neal
Edel Rodriguez
Jesse Reyes
Chris King
Chin-Yee Lai
Bráulio Amado
Elena Giavaldi
Jon Contino
Abby Weintraub
Roberto de Vicq
Jennifer Heuer
Ingrid Paulson
Henry Steadman
Jamie Keenan
Mark Lazenby
Zut Alors!
Charlotte Strick
Laurie Rosenwald
Roberto de Vicq again!
And finally, thank you. It's your novels that are inspiring the designers, and everyone here at the office every November. The sheer number of incredible synopses on both the main site and YWP were staggering; my reading list for the future is hundreds-deep with the hope that your novels are edited and polished to a high gleam in order to hit bookshelves soon.

Thank you so much for a fantastic NaNoWriMo 2011, and a bigger than ever 30 Covers, 30 Days. We'll see you for Script Frenzy!

– Tim

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.

In my childhood home, my favorite Thanksgiving ritual was laying out the sliced bread (half white, half whole wheat) in the turkey pan to stale overnight for the next days' stuffing. Invariably, that bread would be a little stiffer in the morning. Yay for science!

We always have lasagna on Christmas Eve, and share a decadent meal of sauerbraten with friends on Christmas Day in a tasty nod to my German heritage.  (My favorite non-food ritual is that we watch The Sound of Music as a family every single year. This is made even more entertaining by my five-year-old niece who knows all the words to every single song and seems to have known them since she started talking. It's astonishing.)

And then on New Year's Day, we prepare the superstitious meal of black-eyed peas, collard greens, and cornbread for good luck and prosperity. Delicious and nutritious!

As I become a real adult (getting there, slowly), and now that I live pretty far from my family in Atlanta, I love to see what traditions get preserved and which ones have started evolving into other new and equally random rituals. My S.O., for example, always has cracked crab with his family on Christmas Eve. I like crab, and I really like this twist on holiday fare! Making a crabby mess on a newspaper-covered kitchen table is just fun. And yummy. Maybe in the coming years we could try a cracked-crab lasagna.

What do you celebrate in your family, or where you live? Are your memories and adulthood celebrations as food-centric as mine? What is your favorite holiday, and holiday tradition?

– Lindsey

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.

The other thing about memoir is that I stayed away from it on purpose because of how gendered it was considered in literature. Though there is plenty of memoir written by male authors, there's still this idea carried over from the early 20th century that men write the crazy-big fiction, and women write about their lives. At the time, I was afraid of being just another lady who wrote about her life, but now I understand that tackling memoir can be an even bigger project of its own, and perhaps more deserving of respect. And it makes me anxious because my tried-and-true approaches to fiction writing never seem to work on memoir.

Recently, my boyfriend asked me to edit a story about his grandfather, and all the changes his family inherited after his passing. I remember him saying to me, frustrated: "I hate memoir. Whatever you do with it, it always comes out sounding like a draft."

"What if you wrote everything and then pared it down after?" I suggested. It was usually the thing I did when I had too much to say and didn't know how to say any of it.

He looked at me, disbelieving, and said, "How could I possibly write everything?"

Yeah, I had no idea what I was talking about. It's hard to capture a person you've known your whole life in a limited number of words. It's hard to put real catharsis into language. Because in those real moments, you're not thinking in words, only feeling. And you're not imagining, only remembering. And though imagination has always been a nice place to retreat, in this case, I always feel like there's nowhere to retreat to.

My internship with OLL ends this week, and for my last blog I wanted to share with you something that's been obsessing me like crazy. So no advice this time, just questions: What's your writing roadblock? And do you have any specific tips on writing in this genre? Or any genre, for that matter.

– Ari

Photo by Flickr user Lionespa