Correspondance

So today's entry is going to be a little different from usual. Before everything gets lost in the shuffle of cranking out words, and arranging things for Script Frenzy, I want... No, need, to pass on a bit of correspondance that I've been having with the folks down at The Office of Letters and Light. On Feb 16th, "Tim", and intern for the director of Script Frenzy sent out a notice to all MLs asking for people to nominate someone from our region to be featured on the site in something similar to the WriMo report from the NaNoWriMo website. We just had to provide a short summary of their general awesomeness, and let it go at that.

I thought long and hard, as there are so many people in the Sudbury region that I believe are deserving of 15-minutes of fame. In the end, I chose my official unofficial co-ML, and sent this off (18 hours ago):

Hello Tim!

You asked if there was anyone whose awesomeness would be great to showcase. As much as I would love to put myself up for dibs, I'm not nearly as awesome as my unofficial Co-ML, so I'm going to tell you all about her, and what makes her awesome.

Julia Muldoon (username PiscesMuse) signed on this year to the Frenzy for the first time, still hot on the heels of Sudbury's greated NaNoWriMo to date. She's come up with a tonne of ideas for us this year, and has been spearheading the organizing of an overnight write-in at Laurentian University, similar to the outstanding one we had for NaNo which yielded 18 unique participants and saw most of us crash through the 50k word mark. With her energy, I'm certain we'll be seeing a nice chunk of participants for this year's "From Dusk Til Dawn" event. Julia has also been brainstorming Sudbury's version of a Scripter's PDA, has done a lot of the running around to get event locations and themes hammered out, and other general energetic madness. She's been doing all of this, but without being able to take the official title of Co-ML as it will be her first Frenzy.

Julia also plans on working on a musical for this year's SF. With her background in theater and love of musicals, I know it'll be a blast and that in all likelihood, we may even end up hearing a couple of songs performed!

If I could think of anyone to feature, it would definitely be Julia. She's a great candidate.

About an hour ago, I received a reply from Tim:

Hi Shawn!

That's so great! Thank you so much for taking the time out to nominate Julia, it's much appreciated. And hey, nothing wrong with self-nominating! We'd love to feature you, too!

Oh man, it does sound like Julia's doing some pretty awesome stuff up there in Sudbury, especially in such an unofficial capacity. We'll definitely do our best to tip our hats to her.

Thank you again, and, actually, if we could feature you, too, that'd be great! Do you mind sending me a little bit of info about yourself? Hope to hear from you soon.

At first, I didn't want to reply. I mean, as much as I sometimes love to blow my own horn, I don't like bragging or taking all the credit when it isn't due. But inevitably, I gave in because it was requested, and wrote the following:

Hey Tim.

I guess I could send some information about myself, though I don't feel nearly as qualified to talk about myself in as glowing terms as I can talk about everything Julia's been doing for the area. I think it's still an inspiring story, and something I have the Office of Letters and Light to truly thank for it.

I first picked up on NaNo back in 2004 (though I forgot my original password by 2005 and had to create a fresh account) as a suggestion from my poetry workshop classmates while I was in the midst of getting my degree in English at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. I had more or less given up on writing short stories and novels up until the event and it set me back on course.

By 2006 I had moved up to North Bay, and got involved with the much smaller NaNo group up there. At first, there were no events planned, so I proposed a handful on the group forums, and we all met up on campus at Nipissing University, where I was getting my Bachelor of Education with a focus on multimedia technology. Unfortunately, the last half of the month I was up in Timmins on my placement, so was unable to do any guiding of events.

When Script Frenzy launched in June 2007, I was all over it. I was excited, and I was alone. As much as I wanted to get something out of it, it's a lot harder to keep yourself going without a group of people checking up on you to make sure you succeed. I missed the activity, and the comraderie that I had found in Ottawa during the first years of NaNo, or in North Bay where I was helping to get things going. In 2008, I put up some flyers around Timmins, but there was little interest in writing.

By Fall 2008, I was in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. I figured it being a bit of a larger city, it had to have a good writing base. With no ML in sight for NaNo, I hastily applied just before the deadline. We had a great turnout, and for the first time beat North Bay in word count. I signed on as ML of SF in 2009, but was disappointed by the turnout. The same light advertising that I had done for my first NaNo as ML was a total flop for SF.

So for NaNo 2009, I got some advertising for both NaNo and SF out at the Northern Lights Festival, where I was sharing a booth with the Sudbury Writers Guild and the Sudbury Hypergraphic Society. As November approached, I got with a few of the previous year's veterans, and we came up with some plans. Advertisements went up, we got a cease and desist order that I had to rectify with the city, but our goal was achieved. And with the help of some of those veterans (Sylvie / sinful_cinnamon especially) and a couple of new people (chiefly Julia / PiscesMuse ), it was a huge year with overnight write-ins, launch parties, TGIO party, and a dozen write-ins at a half-dozen different locations.

The thrill of arranging and seeing these events go off were truly inspiring for me, and despite all the work involved, I loved every minute of it. It gave me a hope to get out of my dead-end job and maybe do something with my degrees. So I applied for school, again. And I got in to my program. The program? Event Management at Algonquin College in Ottawa. I loved organizing events so much, that I figure I may as well do it for a living.

Even before receiving my acceptance notice, I was looking for people that I thought could work together to keep NaNo, and Script Frenzy, going and growing. I found Sylvie for the one, as she was instrumental this past year, and I found Julia for the other. I've taken all I've learned from NaNo and SF, and I'm passing it along to them as we get the ball rolling and events organized for this year's SF. We're going all out on the advertising, getting the events organized, and ensuring we have good locations (even on April Fools).

In the end, I'm sure this year's SF will be just as fantastic as this past year's NaNo, and I hope to have the photos to prove it. If Ottawa is still vacant for an ML for next year's SF, I hope to fill that spot and give the city a heck of an event to match the ones that set me onto this trek way back in 2004.

So you see Tim, it's not me that's done anything particularly awesome, its the OLL that deserves the recognition and the spotlight. Without the OLL, I never would have figured out what to do for my future, with schools closing left and right up here, my old goal to be a teacher would remain unrealized, and I'd continue to be stuck where I was: selling electronics most people don't really need. Instead, the events headed by the OLL have given me a direction, and I'm just happy to give back as much as I'm able, when I'm able.

Send my thanks to Chris, Lindsay, and everyone else up there at the OLL. You all do a bang-up job every year, and I'm thrilled to be a part of it in my own way.

I'm going to be borrowing a part of that letter and using it as my future bio, because I think I've done a bang-up job of describing what I've been up to
the past few years, and I've done it without bragging. The letter does give my true and honest opinion of everything that's been happening over the past few years, and gives thanks where it's due. I know there are a couple of people out there that are doubtful, concerned, or just plain confused about why I chose to apply for another program, and I hope that this answers those doubts and sways people the way that I feel. Quite honestly, my greatest fear is that this last letter was probably the greatest piece of writing I've done to date.

Back on to writing, I finished up outlining Blackfoot this morning. Turns out I'm writing a novella, not a short story. It also turns out that it's a modern fantasy, as opposed to a dark fantasy. Surprises all around! Time to get off and do some writing, the opening needs to be retooled to fit the story's new structure and goals, and I hope to crank out a few thousand words before tonight's write-in.

Keep on writing!

Out of a Rut

So I've been working myself out of that little rut that I fell into this past week. Changed the background colour of my "paper" and started fresh with a character idea. Ended up spitting out about 1000 words of a new piece I'm tentatively calling "Blackfoot". Not sure as of yet whether that's going to be a short story or a novella, but I think it's going to fall into the dark fantasy category (or maybe just fantasy, we'll see).

Been starting to get the ball rolling on Script Frenzy 2010. I've thrown some posts up on the SF boards in my region, the Ontario region, and the Ottawa region. Basically I extended the new ML for Ottawa (when they get one) a helping hand, and let both Ontario and Ottawa know about SudSprinter. Currently neither region has an ML. Since it looks like I'll be going down to Ottawa in the fall to obtain my graduate certificate in Event Management, I'm hoping to join in, or take over as the SF Coordinator for that area next year.

I've also been posting in the ML forum. It's from the ML forum that I pull my next segment. The ML from Vegas mentioned having trouble getting people involved in the event. So I came up with a nice, long post about some of the things I've done, or plan to be doing this year. Here's my post:

There are a lot of things that can be done to garner attention and people in your project. Here are a few ideas I've had.

One thing I did this past year was attend a number of local events and conventions (not that we get many this far north), and handed out flyers to attendees (with permission from those in charge of course). There's still a bit left before the kick-off, so you may be able to give that a try.

Get an article in local arts flyers and newspapers. Just a short bit about what Script Frenzy is about, where to find more information, and your Script Frenzy contact information so interested people can get in contact with you. I've been fortunate up here to have some connections within the local arts community, so I can get in their newsletters.

The standard getting flyers up in businesses and on hydro poles is an option, but be careful and check local bylaws first. I got hammered last year with a cease and desist order for my hydro-pole usage because my area has some very strict guidelines about what exactly you can do in these regards.

Use social networking as a force for good. Facebook, twitter, myspace, and even the new Google Buzz are all good ways to get the word out for your event. If you're anything like me, you've got a lot of contacts on most. Paper your contacts once about the event, and add on a notice that they should pass it on to anyone they may feel wants to join in the madness. This can do wonders for expanding your base.

Advertise it as a way to meet local writers. That's a part of how I managed to get in contact with a lot of people this past NaNo. Sure, we're not novelling in Script Frenzy, but we are working on dialogue, which is an important part of any novel, and anyone writing a script, just might be one of those people that likes to write other things. Using it as a way to unite the writers in your area, so they can form their own, perpetual writing groups is a great way to go. Those writing groups will recruit on their own in time, and they'll drag their members back year after year (as I've now seen with the Sudbury Hypergraphic Society, The Underground Writers, and the Monday Night Writing Pack, the status of the Late-Nighters remains to be seen, but I'm hopeful).

I'm sure that sounds like a lot of work, but trust me, they'll notice. I've received a great many pats on the back from my NaNo group this year, including those that participated last year, and the two that were around the year before. It's a beautiful thing seeing stuff come together like this, and when it happens, there's no thought of giving up nine days in.

Hope this helps!

If there were any doubt that Event Management was the right track for me to embark upon, I'm sure that single post, in combination with everything else that I've done for NaNo and Script Frenzy in the past two years, should dispel those doubts. The only problem remaining is the question of money. Not going to focus on that at the moment though, since I know that a good event coordinator can bring in a fair amount from contracts.

Anyhow, I've some outlining to do, and a couple more e-mails that I need to get sent out. Should be more info flowing here in the near future!