I'm slowly, quietly, growing my collection of rejection slips for
different stories. The latest was less disheartening than the one
before, and perhaps the next will be even less so. I'm trying to learn
to burn this sensation as fuel; receiving a rejection yesterday, today I
chose my next target for the turned-down story, and I've come to the
sense that what I really need is more stories. Still, a part of
me wishes that my time as an English major had included some equivalent
of iron shirt kung fu training, with instructors breaking sticks over my
ego until what remained was impervious to pain. We're getting there.
As
I said, my experience trying to get these two stories published has
brought me to the idea that what I really need is more stories (kin to,
but not identical to, the eternal exhortation to write more).
Around
the beginning of October I get the feeling that NaNoWriMo was coming at
a bad time for me this year. It's coming the same time it does every
year, of course, but what I mean is that less that a week from its start
I don't have an idea for a novel that I'm excited about, but there are
several smaller stories I'd rather write.
After I had
complained fruitlessly to Girlfriend about this, she pointed out the
solution that was too good for me to come up with myself: to use
November to crank out a series of short story drafts in the same spirit
and volume as the novel I would have otherwise attempted. I slept on the
idea, and now I have seized on it: this November I will put out five
10,000-word short story drafts. At this point I have two ideas I
definitely want to pursue. The rest... will be an adventure.
Girlfriend wisely did not name the resulting event "NaShoStoWriMo" and I will
honor her forbearance in this matter by making the mistake for myself.
This year, NaShoStoWriMo is on.
Showing posts with label wanting it. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wanting it. Show all posts
Friday, October 25, 2013
Friday, January 13, 2012
Want/Do not want
Dipping my toes in the waters of trying to get things published, I've learned some interesting things. My first pitch to Cracked got turned down, on the basis that its appeal would be too narrow. I understood that. Someone's got to look at the bottom line. But I realized something important.
I didn't want to publish that article.
I wanted it to be published, yes. But the concept was a little weak. The research was a little thin. Without the flag of a major comedy website to fly over it, I don't think I would have been willing to put it out there with my name on it. I wanted someone to tell me it was a good idea, but in a vacuum, I wouldn't have called it a good idea myself.
It will return as an item in a broader, better article pitch.
Now, yesterday, I was having a little fun. I was doing some of my obligatory writing for the day but at the moment I wasn't feeling right to work on Nenle and Death (I got to it later). I happened upon something I knew about already: a poem called "The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den."
It's a neat little poem written in Classical (i.e. 2,000-year-old) Chinese, made up entirely of tonal variations of the sound "shi." It was whimsical and amusing, but the translations I found were clinical and not much fun to read in their own right.
Having some time on my hands and needing to write, I adapted the translations I could find into my own "translation," which was less accurate but more fun, I thought. Now, I used the word "translation" enquotedly there because I can translate Chinese like I can translate Koala, which is to say that I cannot, even a little. I took the thrust of the translations I read and gave them a rhyme and a rhythm.
The end product amused me, so I decided to post it here. First, though, I checked something. I discovered, to my surprise, that while it's written in a 2,000-year-old dialect, the poem is from the 1900s, by a linguist named Chao Yuen Ren. He was illustrating the whimsical point that simple romanization won't work for Chinese languages. The point, though, is that the poem is not in the public domain, and, much to my dismay, I can't just do whatever I want with it. So, sadly, my adaptation, which I think has the potential to get a smile out of someone, can't legally see the light of day for 15 to 40 years, depending on whose copyright laws apply. It made me sad.
This was the same day my Cracked pitch got nixed. The difference in feeling was an interesting lesson in the difference between wanting to publish, and wanting to be published.
I didn't want to publish that article.
I wanted it to be published, yes. But the concept was a little weak. The research was a little thin. Without the flag of a major comedy website to fly over it, I don't think I would have been willing to put it out there with my name on it. I wanted someone to tell me it was a good idea, but in a vacuum, I wouldn't have called it a good idea myself.
It will return as an item in a broader, better article pitch.
Now, yesterday, I was having a little fun. I was doing some of my obligatory writing for the day but at the moment I wasn't feeling right to work on Nenle and Death (I got to it later). I happened upon something I knew about already: a poem called "The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den."
It's a neat little poem written in Classical (i.e. 2,000-year-old) Chinese, made up entirely of tonal variations of the sound "shi." It was whimsical and amusing, but the translations I found were clinical and not much fun to read in their own right.
Having some time on my hands and needing to write, I adapted the translations I could find into my own "translation," which was less accurate but more fun, I thought. Now, I used the word "translation" enquotedly there because I can translate Chinese like I can translate Koala, which is to say that I cannot, even a little. I took the thrust of the translations I read and gave them a rhyme and a rhythm.
The end product amused me, so I decided to post it here. First, though, I checked something. I discovered, to my surprise, that while it's written in a 2,000-year-old dialect, the poem is from the 1900s, by a linguist named Chao Yuen Ren. He was illustrating the whimsical point that simple romanization won't work for Chinese languages. The point, though, is that the poem is not in the public domain, and, much to my dismay, I can't just do whatever I want with it. So, sadly, my adaptation, which I think has the potential to get a smile out of someone, can't legally see the light of day for 15 to 40 years, depending on whose copyright laws apply. It made me sad.
This was the same day my Cracked pitch got nixed. The difference in feeling was an interesting lesson in the difference between wanting to publish, and wanting to be published.
Subscribe to:
Posts
(
Atom
)