Contact:
Tavia Stewart
510-628-0327
Tavia@ScriptFrenzy.org

FROM THE PEOPLE WHO BROUGHT YOU NATIONAL NOVEL WRITING MONTH . . .
SCRIPT FRENZY IS BORN!

The Office of Letters and Light is proud to announce a 20,000-word scriptwriting challenge

www.ScriptFrenzy.org – May 10, 2007 – There are some who say writing a script takes awesome talent, strong language skills, academic training, and years of dedication.

Not true. All it really takes is a deadline – a very, very tight deadline – and a whole lot of coffee.

For the last eight Novembers, we have been running National Novel Writing Month (www.nanowrimo.org), a month-long 50,000-word “seat of your pants” noveling adventure. With over 75,000 participants and 12,000 winners in 2006, NaNoWriMo has officially become the largest writing contest in the world!

Because we felt that one deadline-driven event a year was not enough, we decided to add another: Script Frenzy, which launches this June! Script Frenzy is an international writing event in which participants attempt the creatively daring feat of writing an original, full-length screenplay—or stage play—in a single month.

As part of a donation-funded nonprofit, Script Frenzy charges no fee to participate; there are also no valuable prizes awarded or "best" scripts singled out. Every writer who completes the goal of 20,000 words is victorious and awe-inspiring and will get a Script Frenzy Winner's Certificate and web icon proclaiming this fact.

Since the Script Frenzy site launched on May 1, thousands of people have already signed up. Many of those people are right in your backyard. In June they will meet at local cafes and libraries for collective write-ins, because if you’re going to attempt something as crazy as a 20,000-word script in a month, you might as well have company.

Sign-ups are taking place now. Please contact Tavia Stewart if you’re interested in hearing more about Script Frenzy or visit the event website at www.ScriptFrenzy.org.

About the Office of Letters and Light

The Office of Letters and Light has its roots in National Novel Writing Month, an organization founded in Oakland, Calif., in 1999 by freelance writer Chris Baty. In 2006, Baty and staff created the Office of Letters and Light to run National Novel Writing Month and launch similar new events. In September, 2006, the Office of Letters and Light was officially granted nonprofit status. For more information about all of our programs, visit www.LettersandLight.org.

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In June, I’ll be participating in the Summer Blog Blast Tour, organized by Colleen Mondor of Chasing Ray.  As I do my research on my assigned authors and prepare their questions, I think a lot about why we’re doing this.  Thus this week’s question:

How do readers benefit from author interviews?

Little Willow is a prolific author interviewer.  I always enjoy reading her interviews.  I also love the interviews at 7 Impossible Things Before Breakfast.  But I’m having trouble finding a way to explain exactly what I get out of these interviews.  Insight, of course, into the author’s process, but these interviews are always unique, asking new questions.  Everyone asks “Where do you get your ideas?” or “What advice do you have for aspiring authors?"  Little Willow asks questions like “As a reader, what is your favorite section of the bookstore?” while the ladies of 7-Imp ask “If you could have three (living) authors over for coffee or a glass of rich, red wine, whom would you choose?"  These questions show me the author as reader, which makes the author a person to me.

So what do you think?  What do you get out of author interviews?

Gelett Burgess. 1866– 36. 
The Purple Cow 
(Reflections on a Mythic Beast Who’s Quite Remarkable, at Least.) 

I NEVER saw a Purple Cow; 
I never hope to See One; 
But I can Tell you, Anyhow, 
I’d rather See than Be One.

Oh how I love this poem.  It is so silly.

This week’s question is brought to you by yesterday’s Free Comic Book Day, my pleasure in watching “Spiderman 3,” and my boyfriend’s birthday weekend.  Also my recent reading of Flight volumes 1 and 2, and my upcoming reading of Flight volume 3 and Kazu Kibuishi’s Daisy Kutter.

How can graphic novels bring unwilling readers into the literary world?

What I’m looking for here is a discussion of what makes graphic novels unique, what makes them literature, and what we can do to get reluctant readers to pick up a graphic novel.  For a long time, graphic novels and comics have been pooh-poohed as not “real books.”  This is a sentiment that advocates of kids and YA lit understand keenly, since children’s literature is also treated this way.  Graphic novels and comics are considered “kid stuff” by the uninitiated, and while those of us who are fans of graphic novels and comic books have fought against that for a long time, perhaps it’s time to embrace it a little and say “Okay.  These are for kids.  Let’s get them in the hands of kids!”  That’s not to say adult stories can’t be told in the graphic novel/comic book medium, but just that instead of kicking and screaming, “It’s not just for kids!” we should say, “It’s not just for kids, but it is an excellent way to draw kids into reading.”

What do you think?

Last Week’s Question: What is the purpose of a book review?

You can find answers at the original post and MotherReader.

My Area of Expertise: The Ancient Mediterranean.

The Lightning Thief, Rick Riordan
The Sea of Monsters, Rick Riordan
The Titan's Curse, Rick Riordan
Iris, Messenger, Sarah Demming
The Last Girls of Pompeii, Kathryn Lasky
Ithaka, Adele Geras
Troy, Adele Geras 
Nobody's Princess, Esther Friesner
Corydon and the Island of Monsters, Tobias Druitt
Corydon and the Fall of Atlantis, Tobias Druitt
Goddess of Yesterday, Caroline B. Cooney
The Shadow Thieves, Anne Ursu
The Siren Song, Anne Ursu


Other suggestions please?

At the beginning of the school year, the school newspaper sent a kid around to interview all the new teachers.  He had lots of questions, boring ones like "Where'd you go to college?" (which he managed to misquote me on), and less boring ones such as, "What cartoons do you like?" but the question that nearly stumped me because my heart was torn in two was "Who's your favorite superhero?"

In the end, he quoted me as saying I liked the X-Men, I think.  But what I really said was, "Spiderman!  No, wait, the X-Men!  Well, I like all the X-Men but I like Kitty Pryde the best.  So.... AH!  This is such a hard question!  I guess I'll go with Kitty Pryde and Spiderman."

This brings me to tell you about tomorrow.

Tomorrow is an important day.  Cinco de Mayo.  My boyfriend's birthday.  Free Comic Book Day.

It's appropriate that Free Comic Book Day is my boyfriend's birthday, as he is the one who got me into comics.  It's also appropriate that Spiderman 3 is coming out today, the day before Free Comic Book Day and my boyfriend's birthday.  It's such a unique confluence of events that brought us here.

So, go get a free comic book.  You might run into MJ there, in which case she'll say this:

(They actually made that a line in Spiderman 2 and I about died of happiness.)

Still more Catullus.  Latin text from The Latin Library; translation/adaptation mine.

V. to Lesbia Let us live my Lesbia, and let us love, and let us assess the gossip of too severe old men at a single penny! Suns can fall and return: When our brief light has once gone out, We must sleep one perpetual night. Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then another thousand, then a second hundred, then still another thousand, then a hundred. Then, when we will have made many thousands, we will mix them up, so that we do not know, nor will any bad person be able to envy us, when he knows there to be so many kisses. V. ad Lesbiam

VIVAMUS mea Lesbia, atque amemus, rumoresque senum seueriorum omnes unius aestimemus assis! soles occidere et redire possunt: nobis cum semel occidit breuis lux, nox est perpetua una dormienda. da mi basia mille, deinde centum, dein mille altera, dein secunda centum, deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum. dein, cum milia multa fecerimus, conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus, aut ne quis malus inuidere possit, cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.

A meme of my very own!

What’s the first book you remember reading?  Give us the title, author, date of publication, and your age when you read it.  Look it up at Amazon.  Is it still in print?

Mine is Stop!  Go!  Word Bird by Jane Belk Moncure, published in 1981.  I was three when I read it.  It is no longer in print.

(If you want to leave out any of the information aside from the title, feel free.  Especially your age when you read it, as some people may be embarrassed because they started reading especially early or especially late, though I can’t imagine anyone in the litosphere criticizing anyone else based on when they started to read.)

Here’s a new feature for lectitans: Reading the Classics.  I’ll be reading classic books and posting my thoughts on them, links of interest, etc.  The first book I’m using for this feature is J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan.

In case you didn’t know, Peter Pan is about Wendy Moira Angela Darling, her brothers, and their adventures in the Neverland with a boy named Peter Pan.  Peter ran away from home shortly after his birth, and refuses to grow up.

It may strike you as odd that I went to the age of 25 without having ever read Peter Pan, especially having been exposed to many incarnations of it.  I didn’t spend my life avoiding reading it.  I just never thought about picking it up, until I recently started reading J. V. Hart’s Capt. Hook and decided I should perhaps read the source material first.

Reading Peter Pan was like coming home.  As a child I watched the Betty Comden/Adolph Greene musical Peter Pan (starring Mary Martin as Peter) time and time again.  I loved that musical.  I still do.  The musical is quite faithful to the book, and so I found myself reciting lines as I was reading, and exerting great control over myself to keep from bursting into song.  I especially enjoy the aspects of Barrie’s writing that sound as though he himself were reading a child a bedtime story.

Peter Pan is on first glance a simple story, but it has inspired so many imaginations and led to so many adaptations and spin-offs that I can’t help but examine it on a deeper level.  I have nothing new to say about the book, I fear; its themes are clearly growing up and the passage of time.  What I find interesting and haven’t read a lot about is the contrast between Wendy and Peter.  Peter never wants to grow up, and Wendy is very eager to be a grown up.  She wants to do grown up things, keep a grown up house, raise children as grown ups do.  Playing at being a little mother is what Wendy does best.  I identify with her heavily, especially in the 2003 film adaptation, where she is the storyteller and likes to swordfight.  (The newest Wendy is by far my favorite Wendy.)

I don’t particularly like the Disney Peter Pan, though I find Disney’s Tinkerbell charming.  The musical is my favorite adaptation.

For me, the most interesting character is Captain Hook.  Cyril Richard’s Captain Hook in the musical first sparked my love of pirates.  Ask any of my friends or students, and they’ll tell you I have a pirate problem.  It didn’t start with Captain Jack Sparrow.  It goes all the way back to Capt. Jas. Hook and his beautiful red coat.  Captain Hook is an adult, but he lives in the Neverland.  How did an Etonian end up in the land of children’s imagination?  I guess I’ll have to read Capt. Hook to find out.

My favorite adaptation/spinoff from the Peter Pan story is Christopher Golden’s Straight on til Morning.  It’s a dark version of the tale, set in the summer of 1981 (a grand time if you ask me).  I highly recommend it.

Peter Pan seems above review to me; what is there to say about its quality?  Time. popularity, wars over its copyright, and its many derivative works have revealed all that’s necessary in that case, I think.  I enjoyed reading it.

For a comprehensive look at Peter Pan and the works it inspired, read Little Willow’s article, Peter Pan and Friends.

There has been much debate recently about blog reviews and their trustworthiness.  Becky has an excellent summary of the whole affair over at Becky’s Book Reviews.  This week’s question is inspired by this debate.

This week’s question:

What is the purpose of a book review?

Is it to make an audience aware of a book they might have overlooked?  Is it to steer an audience away from a book that may waste their time?  Is it bad to only write one kind of review: positive or negative?  Is it good to think about who might like a book, even if the reviewer finds it unsatisfying?

I’ve been pondering all of these sub-questions myself.  I haven’t weighed in on the great blog review debate, because I feel like I’m so new to the whole litosphere that I can’t make a well-educated statement.  For my book reviews, I will say this: I won’t review a book I didn’t finish, and I won’t finish a book I don’t like.  It follows, then, that I will only review books I like.  There is a great range, however, in my depth of appreciation for a book.  Some books (Millicent Min, anyone?) I adore.  Others I like but don’t love (The Last Dragon).  I don’t write traditional reviews.  When I write a review, I start with a quick summary.  I then try and get to the larger themes of the book, what the book means on a universal level.  Lastly, I recommend the book for certain reader groups.  I am not looking to be unbiased or provide critical analysis; that’s just not what I do here.  This is a personal reading journal, and so my reviews are personal reviews.  If you are looking for objective reviews, you should probably go someplace else.

Last week’s question: How much can we know about the author herself based on the content of the book?

This question provoked a lot of discussion.  You can find answers at the original post, Tea Cozy, Cats and Jammers Studio, And if I come to ledges… , Andrew Karre’s Flux Blog, Finding Wonderland, and Bri Meets Books.