My Nano ML’s journey has begun, kind of

I went to meet some writer friends and fellow Wrimo-ers at a new coffee shop this evening, scouting it out as a possible Nanowrimo venue. One of the friends is a many-times Hamilton ML, and I’m joining her as Nanowrimo Co-ML for the first time ever. We decided that the place, the Mulberry cafe, would be a pretty good place for a Kick-off party, because we can reserve their gallery room, but maybe not so good for a write-in as the only tables with outlets are also closest to the loud music.

I’m very excited about being a Nanowrimo ML for the first time, but also a bit nervous about the responsibility, and of having to keep up with my friend. I’ve been ML for Script Frenzy before, but that was always fairly small and low-key. I’m going to need to up my game for November. It should be a fun challenge.

I also got two short scenes finished for Block Revision, and Elizabeth Twist got a page and a bit scribbled in with her pen. (My Co-ML brought a netbook, but wasn’t able to get any writing done, blaming the music.)

So it was a great evening.

M is for Municipal Liaisons

The Script Frenzy A-Z challenge so far…

I have to walk a fine line in this post between tooting my own horn and admitting that I suck. 😉 For I am one of the few, the somewhat mighty, Script Frenzy Municipal Liaisons.

A Municipal Liaison is a local Script Frenzy facilitator to help encourage participants in the same city or region to come together and meet with local events – like social parties for the start, middle, and end of the month, or weekly ‘write-ins’ where everybody brings their laptop to a coffee shop and pound out a few pages together.

I haven’t actually done that much as a Municipal Liaison. I’ve welcomed everybody to the online forum and tried to moderate the discussion there as much as moderation was needed. I reached out to a neighboring region that doesn’t have an ML this year, and tried to keep an eye on them and help out. I threw a ‘Kick-off’ party for my own region on March 31st, at a favorite coffee shop – and nobody else showed up, as I suspected that they might.

The thing is, there’s only half a dozen or so writers in my region this year, and a lot of them are teenagers who can’t make it out to events, or otherwise aren’t interested. And – well, I’ve been busy with a few other things myself, such as the blog, and getting ready for Wizard World Toronto. I’ve been encouraging people to suggest good times and places for events, but nobody else has spoken up, and I don’t really want to declare an event all by myself and be alone again.

It looks like Script Frenzy is having trouble finding MLs in Ontario – as far as I can tell, there are only four of us on duty – there’s also two in Toronto and one in Ottawa. I hope that more people volunteer next year, because they’re a key part of the event, a personal touch that nobody else can quite match.

 

I’m still not sure what to write for Script Frenzy this year.

So – as you might or might know, I serve as local group leader for the Script Frenzy scriptwriting challenge – otherwise known as crazily trying to write a 100-page script in April. It’s an event that I’ve had a lot of fun with.

But April the 1st is drawing near, and I still don’t have – really much of a notion at a script idea this year. All I have is a resolution that I made long ago, that this time I wouldn’t be writing crazy flights of fantasy or far-out space adventures.

I want to write something vaguely producible. As in, if I scraped together some money, some friends, and got a video camera, I could shoot it (or get one of the friends to shoot it,) and edit it myself. Not that I’m necessarily going to – but something that I feel would be within my reach. I guess I’m thinking something indie-video.

But I’m not sure where that leaves me. I know that there are certain story ideas that have excited me without involving magic, space, or for that matter, spies, ninjas, and big guns (which would also be hard to direct on a shoestring.) But I haven’t figured out what could maintain my interest over thirty days and one hundred pages.

I’ve been meaning to go through the ‘Dares’ and ‘Adopt a Plot’ section of the Script Frenzy Forums, and comb through every notion to see if there’s something that I could adapt, or at least something that inspires me. But it’s hard to focus on getting a new idea when I always have more hours of editing to do.

So, blog followers, do you have any ideas for me? Put on your brainstorming caps, nothing is too stupid. 🙂 I’d love to hear any notion you put forward.

Best wishes for Chris Baty

I’ve always vaguely wondered what it was like to have truly exciting news that I couldn’t speak about because of a ‘gag order.’ Now I think I know, though it wasn’t really an earth-shattering experience.

As you might or might not know by now, Chris Baty, that crazy man who somehow turned National Novel Writing Month from a group of friends doing a dare into a worldwide force for creative derring-do, has announced that he is following in the footsteps of other departed Office of Letters and Light staff, and resigning his position in order to go down the path of writing full-time.

Here’s where the ‘gag order’ bit comes in. Chris B actually shared the news with all of the Nanowrimo and Script Frenzy local representatives two weeks ago, and asked us to keep it under wraps until he’d sent out the news to all participants, which happened last night.