HOW TO MAKE PEACE WITH THE SHARK OF REJECTION

YOU CHOSE TO SWIM IN 

SHARK-INFESTED WATERS

We all did when we became writers.

You don't step into the ring 

unless you can take a punch

But you will be knocked down 

more than you will win.

That's just the nature of the business.

The key is to find the strength and will 

to get back up.

In 1923, Babe Ruth held the record for ...

HOME RUNS in a season

HIGHEST BATTING RECORD

and

He STRUCK OUT more times 

than any other

Major League player 

that season.

He said:

"It's hard to beat a person who never gives up."

"Every strike brings me closer 

to the next home run."

"Never let the fear of striking out 

keep you from the game."

Ray Bradbury started out young as a writer --

at 12,

writing on the only paper available:

Butcher's Paper

since it was the Great Depression.

He kept on getting rejected. 

 He promised himself that he would quit if he could not sell a story by the 500th rejection.

You guessed it: 

he sold a story on his 500th attempt.

"You have to learn to take rejection, not as an indication of personal failing, but as a wrong address."

Ray Bradbury said:

"Man has always been half-monster, 

half-dreamer.

Once you understand that,

then you can write a full story."

Writing is not a sprint.

It is a marathon.

And you win a marathon by 

always moving forward.

And enjoying the race doesn't hurt either.

Listen to the wisdom

of Ray Bradbury

and

grow as a writer:

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON WRITING ...

“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living.”
 -Dr. Seuss


Some neural scientists suggest that music confers no survival advantage and describe it as “auditory cheesecake.”

On the other hand, they suggest that fiction can, like gossip, be biologically adaptive.

 “Fictional narratives supply us with a mental catalogue of the fatal conundrums we might face someday 

and the outcome of strategies we could deploy in them."

Neil Gaiman mentioned the same thing in the YouTube video of yesterday on my blog. 

The brain, by itself, 

would have no mind. 

It requires the cooperation of the body in order to think and feel. 

It is this interaction between the brain and the body that causes the mind. 

Speaking of actually using the body, here is an interesting fact:

 A new study that compared the different brain processes used for writing by hand and typing 

has found that there are cognitive benefits to putting a pen to paper. 

These findings give support to the continued teaching of penmanship and handwriting in schools.

By the way, how legible is your handwriting these days?  :-)


Writing is more complicated because it integrates the following three brain processes:

• Visual: Seeing what is on the paper in front of you.
• Motor: Using your fine motor skills to actually put the pen to paper and form the letters to make the words.
• Cognitive: Remembering the shapes of the letters requires a different type of feedback from the brain.

 As adults, we know that writing by hand is a much slower process than typing on a keyboard. 

And we’re all in a hurry to share our every thought with our social networking worlds. 

But, as an experiment, sit down and write a letter.

 See how different it feels to actually hold the pen and to have to plan out your thoughts. 

It’ll be good for your brain. 

Handwriting may be slower, and there is no spell check, 

but this is precisely why picking up a pen and writing your thoughts down on paper may actually help you exercise your brain.

 The latest findings from the real neuroscience of creativity suggest that 

the right brain/left brain distinction does not offer us the full picture of how creativity is implemented in the brain.  

Creativity does not involve a single brain region or single side of the brain.

 Instead, the entire creative process–

 from preparation to incubation to illumination to verification– 

consists of many interacting cognitive processes (both conscious and unconscious) and emotions. 

Depending on the stage of the creative process, and what you’re actually attempting to create, 

different brain regions are recruited to handle the task.

 Alice Flaherty, one of the most renowned neuroscientists researching creativity 

states an important ingredient to be creative is dopamine: The more dopamine that is released, the more creative we are.

 Typical triggers for events, that make us feel great and relaxed and therefore give us an increased dopamine flow 

are taking a warm shower, exercising, driving home, etc. The chances of having great ideas then are a lot higher.

Also being distracted helps:

 Jumping into the shower can turn into what scientist call the “incubation period” for your ideas. 

The subconscious mind has been working extremely hard to solve the problems you face 

and now that you let your mind wander, it can surface and plant those ideas into your conscious mind.

So are you stuck in your novel?  Hop into a warm shower!

NEIL GAIMAN on RAY BRADBURY

I was going to write a post on Ray Bradbury and his impact on the world.

Then, I read what Neil Gaiman wrote (a sure way of realizing how feeble your own prose is):
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2012/06/ray-bradbury-in-memoriam-and-in-green.html


"I finished the piece I would have put up on my blog about Ray Bradbury just as a couple of emails from the Guardian came in asking if I would send them something please, honest really please.

So I sent it to them, unread and raw, and an hour later it went up on their website.

It starts,

'Yesterday afternoon I was in a studio recording an audiobook version of short story I had written for Ray Bradbury's 90th birthday.

It's a monologue called The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury, and was a way of talking about the impact that Ray Bradbury had on me as a boy, and as an adult, and, as far as I could, about what he had done to the world.

And I wrote it last year as a love letter and as a thank you and as a birthday present for an author who made me dream, taught me about words and what they could accomplish, and who never let me down as a reader or as a person as I grew up.


Last week, at dinner, a friend told me that when he was a boy of 11 or 12 he met Ray Bradbury. When Bradbury found out that he wanted to be a writer, he invited him to his office and spent half a day telling him the important stuff:

if you want to be a writer, you have to write. Every day. Whether you feel like it or not. That you can't write one book and stop.

That it's work, but the best kind of work. My friend grew up to be a writer, the kind who writes and supports himself through writing.

Ray Bradbury was the kind of person who would give half a day to a kid who wanted to be a writer when he grew up."

You can read the rest of it at

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jun/06/ray-bradbury-neil-gaiman-appreciation.

IN THE LIGHT EAR OF REASON, SOFT MADNESS SINGS

Where do we go from here?


As a species? As a culture? As storytellers?


Where does the answer lie? In words. The words that drive us or haunt us or both.


I just finished watching the disturbing horror DVD, PONTYPOOL :


Shut up or die Shock jock, Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie), has been kicked-off the airwaves and now works at a small-town morning show.



Another mundane day on the job quickly turns deadly when reports pile in of people developing strange speech patterns and evoking brutal acts of violence.



Before long, Mazzy discovers that the behavior is actually a deadly virus being spread through language. Does he stay on the air in hopes of being rescued, or is he providing the virus with its ultimate leap over the airwaves and into the world?



It got me to thinking ... as all good science fiction and fantasy does.



When the last raven has taken flight from the final corpses of humanity, will the word be to blame? Short answer? Yes.



The deadly words flashing over the computer screen in dark missile silos : commence launch sequence.



The whispered words of Moslem extremists urging their volunteer warriors to expose themselves to deadly viruses and then stroll through the world's airports.



The false assurances to the United States President that the budget to scan the stars for incoming asteroids is much too high to continue.



Most likely, the words will be something entirely different ... but altogether just as lethal.



As a science fantasy writer, my view is much more provincial :



Where will my genre go next? THE PASSAGE suggests it will go in the expected direction : after the dollar.



LORD OF THE RINGS, the three that was really only one, took us back to the mythic beginnings of literature. The ghost of blind Homer probably stood at Toilken's shoulder as he wrote.



It was the time of Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft. An era of legend and dark threat from beyond the ken of Man. The wave of those tales broke upon the cold, uncompromising atomic age.



Then, with the advent of Einstein, the hard science tale took over. Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein wrote tales where the scientific idea overshadowed the narrative.



Freud, Jung, and B. F. Skinner finally had their due. And other ideas of science took prominence : psychology and sociology. Philip Jose Farmer, Clifford D. Simak, and Ray Bradbury. Mankind was no longer sure of who was heroic anymore.



The fifties brought us THE INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. Who could we trust?



The sixties brought us Philip K. Dick who suggested we couldn't even trust ourselves or what we viewed as "reality."



Dick's famous statement overshadows that period and its darkness even reaches up through our times : "Reality is that which refuses to go away when I no longer believe in it."



And now fantasy's mist enshrouds us : TWILIGHT, HARRY POTTER, LORD OF THE RINGS, HARRY DRESDEN, ANITA BLAKE. Darkness has encircled us, murmuring it was always there in the shadows of our souls.



Which leads us back to my original question : where do we go from here?



Hollywood seems to think it is the time of the adventure story, gilded with fantastic trappings. Do we do a H.G. Wells and go to an unsure near-future as in INCEPTION?



I choose to do a synthesis, involving solid storytelling with an understanding of technology's affect upon Man with psychological probing of what it means to be human in an uncertain present.



Fantasy appears real when there are firm rules, where darkness dwells in the corner of every soul, and the heroic protagonist finds the greatest battle is within.



It is opposition which sculpts the best fiction : the heart pitted against the mind, the spirit struggling against the flesh, and fragile hope outmatched by overwhelming hate.



The best stories are the ones that are concerned least with what I've been talking about. Their main goal is to touch the heart and to haunt the soul. In essence, their authors just want to tell a good story.



What do you think fiction is heading? What do you want to do with your stories? And for whom do you write? All of us reading these words would like to know.



Words. Careful. They worm their way into your consciousness like an antibody ... or a virus.
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Speaking of which :