Chris Baty's blog

Scenes from Formal Friday

Chris Baty — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 17:11:07 -0700

So the last Friday of the month, everyone in the office wears fancy clothes to celebrate the fact that we don't really have to wear fancy clothes the other days of the month.

Here's our new shipper captain Bradford rocking the Formal Friday attire on the sidewalk in front of our office today.

And a shot of my tie. Which is the best internet-themed tie I could find at the thrift store. And yes, that square at the very top of the tie reads "28.800 bps".

How awesome is that?

Does anyone else have any weird office dressing traditions they'd like to share?

Chris

Introducing NaNoWriMo True-Life Tales

Chris Baty — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 21:47:29 -0700

Hey everyone!

So two weeks ago, I sent an email to the NaNoWriMo mailing list that contained the following bit:

YOUR SUMMER WRITING ASSIGNMENT: A NANOWRIMO STORY
Every year, we hear hundreds of touching, hilarious stories from participants about the unexpected impacts that NaNoWriMo has had on their lives. Last week, I talked to Jenn, a NaNoWriMo 2002 winner. Jenn has an agent interested in her novel (yay!), but she's fallen into the abyss of perfectionism and prolonged rewrites, with no end in sight (booo).

Last month, Jenn's mother took matters into her own hands by offering to help Jenn with the down payment on her first home. Jenn and her husband have been wanting to buy a house for years, so this was a really big deal. The offer, however, came with a catch. Jenn's mom isn't mailing the check until Jenn finishes her novel.

That's NaNoWriMo in a nutshell: Helping families withhold generous gifts from one another since 1999. Whenever I hear a story like Jenn's, I always wish that we had some easy way to share it with the community at large. Which is why I was so excited when NaNoWriMo volunteer Drew Patty made a suggestion: Why not invite participants to send in stories of the surprising effects NaNoWriMo has had on their lives, and then run those tales on the NaNo blog all summer?

Drew Patty, I think, is going to be president some day.

So here's our shout-out: If NaNoWriMo helped you find true love or wrecked your life or opened some doors you hadn't thought would open, and you're willing to have us share that story with the world, please send it in! Stories should be 100-1000 words. Know that we will be sharing these stories far and wide, so please don't include anything you wouldn't want your mom to know about.

We've even created a magical Stories Submission area just for your tale. Don't be shy! Write it up and send it in!

Almost immediately, great stories started arriving in my inbox. We've been reading through all of them these past few weeks, laughing, crying, and eating a lot of these strange, fleshy sour-watermelon candies that Cybele brought up from LA on Thursday.

Sorry. That last bit didn't have much to do with anything. But these are very odd candies.

Anyway, we've given our fantastic new employee, Lindsey, the task of posting one True-Life Tale every weekday for the next few months. We hope you love reading them as much as we loved getting them. And it's not too late to send your story in! We'll keep running them sporadically through the fall.

And I have an update on Jenn, the Wrimo who needed to finish her novel before she could buy a home. Jenn caught her third noveling wind over the 4th of July weekend, and has been making huge strides on the rewrite ever since. Things are looking good for her having it done by November.

And that, my friends, is a tale with a truly happy ending.

Off to eat a few more of those pink candies,

Chris

Pep wanted

Chris Baty — Fri, 7 Mar 2008 16:19:20 -0800

Okay! So. Pep talks. We want to invite a bunch of great, kind-hearted authors to write them for us again this November. The feedback we got back last year was that you really liked the ones from authors who addressed the NaNoWriMo experience or the first-draft-wrangling process.

Just for fun, here's the list of people we invited last year (please excuse the misspellings---this is from our brainstorming doc):

A.M. Homes
Alice Walker
Anne Lamott
Anne Rice
Arundhati Roy
Carl Hiaasen
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Chinua Achebe
Christopher Paolini
Daniel Handler
David Eggers
Deanna Rayburn
E.L. Konigsburg
Edwidge Danticat
Garth Nix
Gary Soto
Haruki Murakami
Heidi Julavits
Ian McEwan
Isabel Allende
J.K. Rowling
Jane Smiley
Jerry Spinelli
John Grisham
John Irving
John Updike
Jonathan Safran Foer
Jonathan Franzen
Joyce Carol Oates
Julianna Baggott
July Blume
Katherine Paterson
Louis Sachar
Mary Gaitskill
Naomi Novik
Neil Gaiman
Nick Hornby
Nora Roberts
Patricia Maclachlan
Philip Pullman
Philip Roth
Sandra Cisneros
Sara Gruen
Stephen King
Sue Grafton
T.C. Boyle
Toni Morrison
Ursula Le Guin
Uzodinma Iweala

Some of these folks sent us the nicest notes in response explaining that they didn't have time to do it. We'll give them a try again this spring, hoping they'll be less busy. Thanks to your feedback to last year's post on this same topic, we'll also be sending out invitations to…

Jonathan Lethem
Janet Evanovitch
Jasper Fforde
Margaret Atwood
Meg Cabot
Piers Anthony
Orson Scott Card
God

Who else would you like us to bug for a pep talk?

Chris

ps: I'll be back writing weekly pep talks in 2008 (in addition to those of our guests). Thanks to everyone who said they missed them! I missed writing them too, and look forward to yelling at you in the fall.

Michel Gondry: Script Frenzy participant?

Chris Baty — Mon, 3 Mar 2008 14:41:43 -0800

So today, I was eating my triple-decker club sandwich (Monday is deluxe sandwich day to help offset the Mondayness of Mondays) and was reading the Onion interview with filmmaker Michel Gondry (Be Kind Rewind, the Science of Sleep, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, etc.).

Be Kind Rewind is his latest, and you can get the gist of the movie through the trailer (in fact, having seen Be Kind Rewind, I would say that once you've seen the trailer, you've pretty much seen the entire film). Anyway, I like Michel Gondry, and he said something in the interview about the film that really resonated with me…

"It sort of fuses this idea I've had for years, believing that people could create their own entertainment and they would enjoy it better, because they are in it. …[I]t's like watching a home movie. You don't watch it for the technique, you watch because it's reminiscing on good moments you spent with your friends. It reflects you. It belongs to you. So I was thinking people could, instead of spending their money to go and see a blockbuster, make their own movies."

I think my NaNoWriMo novels and Script Frenzy screenplay definitely evoke that spirit. They're so much more than just atrocious pieces of creative writing because they're my pieces of atrocious creative writing. Each one reminds me of my life at that point; the people I was writing with, the music I was listening to, and the things I thought were important and interesting.

I love the idea of a world where people get together and make their own movies, just for fun. Which is a great segue into the fact that we relaunched the Script Frenzy site this weekend. It involved a lot of late nights on the part of our tiny crew, but it looks great, and even has a few new features.

We've moved the event up two months to April, and expanded it to include novel adaptations, comic book and graphic novel scripts, and TV shows. Are you in?

Chris

Shiny stars

Chris Baty — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 15:02:29 -0800

One of the ways we increase the likelihood of having a complete mental collapse in November is by writing novels alongside everyone else. This year, we hung one of the sweet new Young Writers Program charts in the office and logged everyone's progress with the help of some inspiring shiny stars.

At the Office of Letters and Light, we run on shiny stars.

The results: six winners (including board member and bazillion-time winner Kara Platoni) and only one mental collapse.

I like those odds!

Chris

Greatest noveling song of all time?

Chris Baty — Tue, 6 Nov 2007 21:07:32 -0800

The greatest noveling musician of all time?

Noveling songs. So I'm going to go out on a limb and declare "Out of Egypt" by Sufjan Stevens as my favorite noveling song of all time. Which is weird because it's really just a hectic mix of piano notes, musical wheezes, and windchimes that I would normally fast-forward through in a heartbeat.

But pump that song through a pair of headphones while I'm staring at a Microsoft Word document, and my brain elevates itself right into a state of heightened noveling awareness that's unlike anything else I've encountered. I feel focused. Inspired. Fluid. According to the copy of iTunes on my laptop, I've played "Out of Egypt" 288 since I loaded it in two years ago. At 4:21, that means I've spent almost 21 hours of my writing life listening to it.

It's a big question: What is your favorite noveling song of all time?

The tip of the crazy iceberg

Chris Baty — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 23:50:48 -0700

So today I was thinking back over all the crazy things I've seen over the last nine years of NaNoWriMo. Someone getting the NaNo logo tattooed on herself. Our first New York Times bestseller. NaNoWriMo inching ever closer to outranking Aruba in overall population (take that, Aruba!). And then today I was forwarded an email that made me realize that we haven't even seen the tip of the crazy iceberg.

The email is posted below. It came to me via one of our great Municipal Liaisons, whose friend was the lucky recipient of my business offer.

Check it out:

> To: (email clipped)
> Subject: (book title)
> Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 19:11:33 -0400
> From: Chris Baty (Batyfam@yahoo.com)
>
> Dear (name),
>
> I found your book on Amazon.com and I was intrigued by the potential
> it had. I thought it would be the perfect opertunity for me to get my
> foot into publishing, which has been a goal of mine for sometime. As
> you may know I'm also the master mind as they say behind Nanowrimo
> which I am thrilled to see you're a member of. I look forward to your
> entry, and wish you the best of luck.

> The reason I am writing to you is because I would like to take your
> book and republish it. I noticed many errors that a good editor
> should have noticed. I wouldn't be able to begin looking at it of
> course till sometime in December, but I would like to offer you a sum
> of ten thousand dollars as a thank you for being my first oppertunity
> to publish, and to purchase the publishing rights. I would work
> closely with you, and even meet you a time or two in person seeing we
> are in the same state. Also it says in your book you have an agent. I
> would also like to speak with him and work out a deal with the two of
> you. If you could email me a phone number I can reach you at as well
> as one I can reach your agent at, I would greatly apreciate it.

> Thank you,
> Chris Baty

Wow! First off, this person somehow spells worse than I do. Which is especially awesome given the line about noticing errors that a good editor should have noticed. Second off, I love that he appears to be trying to woo authors by offering to publish their already-published works. Third off, Batyfam@yahoo.com? What is that even short for? Baty family?? Come on! Batyfam@yahoo.com is the kind of email address that my grandmother would have used to run her publishing scams from.

Geez.

I joke because I can't help it. But serious-time: If you or someone you know happens to get an email from me offering you an amazing publishing opertunity like this one, please know that it's fake. If I had $10,000, I would invest it in 500 pounds of sour Jelly Bellys and a small tree made of Milka Zartherb chocolate.

Not buy a book.

Even if it was a really good book.

And while we're on the topic, if you get approached by anyone ever offering to publish your novel based on something they read online or at the NaNo site, assume it's a scam and proceed very carefully. And please let us know as well. If your would-be publisher is legit, we'll celebrate with you (and try to borrow money from you!). And if it's not, we can post the guilty party's email here and laugh at their misspellings together.

It'll be great.

Chris

Photos from October 17th packing night!

Chris Baty — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 14:38:27 -0700

We had another big volunteer pack-in last night. Pizzas this time: One pepperoni and sausage, one plain cheese, and one strange vegetable thing with spinach and feta on it. Volunteers: Top-notch team of sticker sorters, poster-packers, and Young Writers Program chart-stuffers. Music: Postal Service Pandora station, Benny Goodman Pandora station. Photos: You better believe it. Thanks to everyone who came out to help!

Chris

Zach works the Pitney-Bowes postage machine

Shipper co-captain Sarah was totally the boss of all of us

Melissa=Queen of ML sticker packages

Kat just figured out her plot yesterday, and celebrates by sorting hundreds of NaNoWriMo donor items

Jennifer handles one of two office tape guns (we have a license for both)

Jason rocks the sticker-sorting with aplomb.

Brent mistakenly puts a latex glove from our poster-rolling station on his face. It had been a long day for Brent.

Photos from October 9th packing night

Chris Baty — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 13:00:27 -0700

Thanks to all the great volunteers who came by the office last night to eat pizza, listen to the Talking Heads, and help us get packages out to Young Writers Program classrooms and NaNoWriMo donors. Do you live in the Bay Area? We're doing it again soon!

Young Writers Program forums moderator Laura tapes up classroom kits

Karen counts stickers headed out to Municipal Liaisons

The sticker roundtable gets Extraordinary Helper donor thank-you packages ready

Chris navigates a sea of YWP classroom kits

Former Shipper King John returns to his old stomping grounds to pack up padded 'lopes for donors

A NaNoWriMo Guide to Your Worklife

Chris Baty — Tue, 22 May 2007 18:12:19 -0700

So I was reading this Lifehacker entry today, and was totally inspired by this guy who has apparently applied very NaNoWriMo-esque insights to becoming a millionaire while never going to work.

Read this and tell me if doesn't make of you think of November:

"If I give you 24 hours to complete a project, the time pressure forces you to focus on execution, and you have no choice but to do only the bare essentials.

If I give you a week to complete the same task, it's six days of making a mountain out of a molehill. If I give you two months, God forbid, it becomes a mental monster. The end product of the shorter deadline is almost inevitably of equal or higher quality due to greater focus."

Planning on starting my four-hour workweek tomorrow (so I'll have more time to work on my novel),

Chris