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.