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!