A Joss Whedon Valentine's Day Special

Along with a delicious homemade dinner from my boyfriend, I received another Valentine this week - the opportunity to meet two of my personal heroes. Yippee!

On Monday, February 9th, I began work at a new full-time job in mid-town Manhattan. It just so happens that one of my coworkers is friends with Chris Baty, the crazy man who began National Novel Writing Month, and Chris was in the city that very day, taking a tour of my office before attending the Tools of Change for Publishing Conference. When I heard that Chris was in the office, I had a real geek-out moment - which was even geekier than usual because no on else had even heard of, much less participated in, NaNoWriMo. My coworker was kind enough to introduce me, and the three of us conversed for 10 minutes on novel writing, word counts, George R.R. Martin, and Phillip Pullman. In my experience, all of the best writing-related discussions involve at least one of the above four topics, so it was quite a lovely chat.

Of course, 24 hours later, my hero-meeting on Tuesday would completely blow Monday's out of the water ... no offense, Mr. Baty.

On Tuesday evening, my BFF Alicia (a fellow die-hard Whedonite) and I went to see Joss Whedon speak about his new series Dollhouse at the Apple Store Soho event in NYC. We were only expecting to see Joss, so we were pleasantly surprised a few times that evening because ...

• Joss was there, and so was Eliza Dushku, Dollhouse's ass-kicking heroine, best known for kicking ass as Faith in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

• The opening act of Dollhouse was screened, with promises that it only gets better from there. The series "simmers before it boils", really kicking into high gear halfway through the first season's thirteen filmed episodes. Episode six has been guaranteed to blow our minds.

• Best of all, despite the protests of douchy Apple Store employees, Joss was kind enough to stick around for an hour after the event to sign posters and other fandom as well as take pictures with his adoring fans. Including me! Yippee!
  

I didn't bring any of my DVD sets for Joss that night, but I did get a free mini Dollhouse poster which he happily signed. Of course the best part of meeting Joss was being reassured that he is not a Hollywood diva. He is a genuinely nice, brilliant man, who surrounds himself with genuinely nice, talented people, whom he respects. There's a reason why Whedon alumni keep popping up again and again in new Whedon projects, including Amy Acker (Angel), Alan Tudyk (Firefly) and Felicia Day (Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog) as Dollhouse special guest stars. He likes them and they like him, and together, magic happens.

Dollhouse premiered on Friday night (Friday the 13th, exactly 5 years after the WB announced Angel's cancelation), and while critics and fans are unsure of where this will fit on Whedon's top ten list of best shows ever, I'm definitely willing to give it a shot ... and my fingers are crossed that the big-bad FOX executives will too, despite it debuting with an unimpressive 4.7 million viewers.

Dollhouse is a futuristic, sci-fi drama that revolves around Echo (Dushku), a young woman who has willingly subjected herself to being pimped out as an "active", an agent of a shady organization who can be imprinted with false memories and skills to use on highly covert missions. When her missions are complete, Echo is returned to the "Dollhouse" where her memories are wiped and she becomes, once again, a complacent and vulnerable human doll.

Even without a stellar pilot to reaffirm our commitment, most of Whedon's fans are trusting that regardless of how commercially successful the series is, we will not be disappointed. If the series is anything like its predecessors, Dollhouse will establish a uniquely inventive world with an ensemble of compelling, morally-grey characters (heroes and villains), whose struggles will unfold across a story arc that explores themes of faith, sacrifice, friendship, love, and humanity.

That, in essence, is a Whedon show, and that is why I have been a fan since I was eleven years old when Buffy premiered on March 10th, 1997.


Couldn't make it to the Apple Store event on Tuesday? Pretend like you were there too by replacing my head with your own in the picture provided above. Ah, memories. :)

No Plot? No Problem!

As the end of August nears, a very important month looms in the distance. It is a month of tribulation, trials, and tears, where patience will be tested and carpel tunnel syndrome intensified. Thirty fitful, sleepless nights, and thirty bleary-eyed, exhaustive days.

It's not the holiday shopping that will ultimately do me in, it's the writing. And I'm looking forward to it.

Last November, I participated for the first time in the world-wide writing challenge National Novel Writing Month (affectionately abbreviated as NaNoWriMo). I met the NaNo goal of 50,000 words but didn't fully understand what I did - and didn't - do right until I ingested (figuratively, not literally) the book No Plot? No Problem! by NaNo creator Chris Baty.

So, Mistake #1 was buying the book from Amazon in mid-October. Turns out there's a rush on the NaNo books in the weeks immediately preceding the novel writing month, and the book ends up out of stock and on back order. No Plot? No Problem! finally made it to my door a month later, but by that point I was too deeply entrenched in writing a book to bother reading one.

Mistake #2 was assuming that stringing together 50,000 random, more-or-less coherent words in one Word document was enough to declare myself a NaNo winner. Turns out that shoddily written or not, your book is supposed to have a beginning, a middle, and that thing that comes after the middle and, like, wraps it all up.

Well, two out of three ain't bad for a first timer, I suppose. I'll do better this November, and I'll be sure to keep Baty's (paraphrased) advice in mind:

• A deadline is all you need to write a book, and the 30-day deadline, while obscene, is not a bad place to start. Inevitably, along with a deadline, a writing utensil of some kind comes in handy.

• If you can sucker them into it, include others in your writing adventures. If you can't find someone to write with you, find someone who cheer you on, bet against you, or ridicule you mercilessly if you fail. Apparently, all forms of encouragement are helpful.
  

• 50,000 words/ month = approximately 1,667 words/day or 1.158 words/minute. Doesn't sound so hard, right?

• Write ceaselessly in 15- or 20-minute blocks of time and then reward yourself with chocolates. Mmmm.

• Make a list of all the things you like reading in good books and make another list of all of the things you don't like reading in bad books. Try to include the first list in your novel while ceremoniously burning the second list. It's as simple as that.

• Week two is the most painful and demoralizing week when most NaNoers throw in the towel if they don't have the incentive of looming failure and disappointed significant others to spur them on. It gets easier after 30,000 words. Week four is where you're supposed to, like, plan out how you will wrap everything up in the last 5,000 words or so. Damnit.

With No Plot? to back me up (or to rip to shreds in the throes of a NaNo-inspired fit of madness), 2008 is going to be a winner! Like, for real this time.

As If Filmmaking Wasn't Already Frenzied Enough ...

Inspired by the success of NaNoWriMo - the National Novel Writing Month competition held every November since 1999, the Office of Letters and Light began a new writing challenge in June of 2007: Script Frenzy.

And what is Script Frenzy exactly? Well, if NaNoWriMo is a month-long challenge to burgeoning writers and old pros alike to write a 50,000-word novel, then Script Frenzy is - you guessed it - a month long challenge to write a script. Instead of 50,000 words, the goal is to write 100 pages of a script in one month (average of 3 1/2 pages per day). Since the debut year, Script Frenzy has undergone a few changes, including moving to the month of April (instead of June), and opening up the challenge to include the acceptance of the following:

• original feature-length screenplays
• stage plays
• adaptations of novels
• short film scripts
• graphic novel and comic book scripts
• radio dramas

I participated in NaNoWriMo for the first time in November 2007 (my first blog post was to commemorate the event), and it was an exhilarating, demanding, and ultimately rewarding experience. With an intense last day of writing 14,000 words, I "won" the challenge with 50,074 words. Crappy words, but words.

Immediately after NaNoWriMo, I had big plans to continue working on my novel (which I still believe has real potential), but my month-long break from redrafting has officially extended to a three month-long break ... and counting. Entering another writing challenge could be just the thing to rejuvenate the Writera-lobe of my brain, tucked away somewhere on the right site, possibly between the Temporal lobe and the Cerebellum. But do I, a recently graduated film student, have ANY ideas for a feature-length script - of ANY kind?

Absolutely not-a-one.

Alas. Perhaps I will look into this "adaptations of novels" scripting option. Or write a one-woman show. Or just make it up as I go along. As long as I win!

If the writer's strike had lasted a bit longer, all those out-of-work creative types would have had plenty of time to indulge in a bit of expeditious writing practices. Do they mourn the missed opportunity or will they be frenzying in their off-hours anyway?

50,074 - Life After NaNo

In November 2007, I participated in a little writing challenge called NaNoWriMo (an awkward acronym for National Novel Writing Month), in which participants are challenged to write a novel ... in a month. Granted, the challenge is really just to write 50,000 words in 30 days - a rather short novel - which you don't even have to finish. And it doesn't have to be any good.

You just have to write it.

And write I did. At first I did my best to stick with the recommended 1,667 words a day, but by, oh, November 3rd, I was already losing it. Some days I'd come home exhausted from work and find contentment watching prepackaged plot twists and quirky characters on TV (Heroes and Pushing Daisies), rather than trying to write my own. Other days I'd be at a loss, so agonized over what to write next, that I just avoided sitting down in front of the computer at all. Ultimately it was the thrill of knowing that at that very moment, 100,000 other people felt a similar sense of overwhelming despair - and the desire to kick their asses - that kept me going.

Still, when November 30th rolled around, I had a mere 36,000 words written - 14,000 words short of my goal. For eight hours that evening, I sat in front of my computer and I typed, and I typed. And I typed. My hands shook from the effort. My body tensed, shoulders rounded, legs twitching. My eyes lost the ability to focus on the LCD monitor. Blindly, I continued to punch keys at random. My characters didn't know what the hell they were doing, but I kept writing, with every 1,000 word mark a mini victory. And with 5 minutes to validate the word count and 10 minutes to spare, I won NaNo.


The point of NaNo is not to write a Pulitzer winning novel in record time, nor is it likely that the printed manuscript will be worthy of anything more than leveling a lopsided desk. The point is just to write, even if it's crap. The point is to get in the habit of writing daily, something even great authors seem to have trouble with - or something that they claim to have trouble with - really, who can trust a fiction writer?.

Along with being able to smugly announce on December 1st that you have written a novel (never mind that it sucks), you get bonus points if the act of writing becomes a liberating experience and the drive to write a lot - fast - overpowers your obsession with editing as you go. The true serial novel killer is that damn OCD obsession we all seem to have as we struggle to find the perfect words and the perfect plot twists and the perfect character revelations, resulting in the closest thing we could get to the perfect novel, which looks suspiciously like a blank Word document.

You are a real winner when you hit the 50,000 word mark, Zen-ing out while writing those last 14,000 words, freeing your mind and your fingers to feel out the story together, to hell with perfect anythings.

So what is Life After NaNo? I'm not sure, as it's only a week later and my hands are still shaking, although the doctors are saying my hunched shoulders and new-found nearsightedness should clear up eventually. Will I ever finish writing my novel? Are my writing habits fundamentally changed, the OCD beast slain at last? Who knows?

Will I be participating in NaNo 2008? Hell, yeah!