Author: Shane

Alas poor Tivo, I hardly knew ye

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Well, after 8 long years together, my Tivo is officially kaput.

Here today, gone tomorrow. It was working one day and not the next. In some ways 8 years doesn’t seem like a long time, but then I think about how that Tivo has been with me longer than Evie and I do feel a little sad. I suppose 8 years is a pretty long time for a piece of electronics.

Of course, this meant an immediate, 2 hour re-wiring of my entire entertainment and computer networking systems. I tore everything apart and put it back together so, as Sara put it, everything can basically be the same. What’s that you said about having laundry to fold? But now I know it’s done properly, and I can sleep easy at night. Oh, and I removed about 10 pounds of excess copper wire from our living room.

I guess this is officially going to put the final kibosh on my tv watching. I just can’t imagine sitting down at a certain day and time to watch a show. That seems so…anachronistic. But I can’t really justify spending any money on a DVR, when we hardly watch any tv anyway. (Can you believe we’ve been without cable for more than 3 years already? Based on my calculations at that time, we’ve saved around $1750 so far by not having cable.) Off the top of my head, the only two shows I can think of that I’ll miss are Downton Abbey and Supernatural, which are both available online for free anyway.

I have not regretted reducing my tv watching time at all, so I guess the silver lining is even that much less tv watching (and thus, more time for other things. Certainly right now I have a lot more projects I want to do than time to do them. So it’s probably all for the best.

But it does sort of seem like the end of an era, losing a device that’s been with me for so long and that I once described by saying, “TV with no Tivo is like having electricity without anybody ever inventing the lightbulb. What’s the point?”

I guess it’s back to living in the dark for me. Fortunately, that is increasingly where I want to be.

Quote Monday is afraid

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Evie: “I’m afraid.”
Me: “Afraid? Of what?”
Evie: “Astronauts.”

Ollie: “Mama, there’s lots of monsters out there in the fog. For real.”
Sara: “Did you have a discussion about this?”
Me: “No.”
Sara: “I don’t know why he’d say that.”
Me: “Because it’s freaking SCARY out there!”

I’m with Ollie on this one, that Maine fog is no joke man.

Evie: “If I had to make a painting for this museum, I would paint a woman standing next to a table, and on the table is a skeleton, and the lady is screaming. It would be called, There’s a skeleton on my table!”

Ollie: “I love you Pizza.” – Surprisingly, he’s not actually referring to food here. Ollie’s not too good with names, even for the people he loves, but he’s not afraid to just make up his own.

Search Term Roundup

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“if the zombie apocalypse comes it will be hard pretending not to be excited” – RIGHT??

“genital guillotine” – No. Just…no.

“quotations on jock itch” – Nothing says inspirational quote like jock itch.

“ewok weight training” – As in, weight training programs for ewoks, or tossing those little buggers like medicine balls?

“wisconsin camping babes” – Clearly looking for a family reunion wrap-up.

“chemotherapy jokes knock knock” – Knock, knock. Who’s there? Chemotherapy. Chemotherapy who? Cancer is not funny.

“gorilla,bacon, peanut butter and mustaches” – Possibly the new tagline of my blog.

“chainsaw licking” – Not a sport for the weak of heart.

“how to get crumbs out of teeth” – So you can master google, but not toothbrushing?

“tickling nala’s footpaws” – I swear that had to be Evie googling that

“moustache tied to train tracks” – Now that’s a hilarious prank!

“fort wayne ww2 hitler” – I think the connections are pretty obvious when you think about it.

“volcano pirate birthday party” – YES! Not sure what the connection is between volcanoes and pirates, but sign me up.

Quote Monday is a little crude

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Sorry guys, a little short this week…

Ollie, pointing to heaven: “Remember when I was up there and I was tooting and it was all falling down on Mama and Evie?”
Me: “No, I don’t remember that.”
Ollie: “Well I do.”

Evie: “[Name Redacted] does a dance. I’m not sure if it’s polite.”
Me: “It’s probably not polite.”
Evie: “Well, I’m not sure if I can do it as well as him, but here it goes.”

Dealing With Rejections

/ Shane / 1 Comment

I am perhaps the least qualified person to write this post. Not because my stories don’t get rejected, far from it! In fact, I recently passed my 200th rejection. I’m unqualified because those 200 rejections never really got to me.

When I first started out, I read story after story of how many rejections some famous (or not-so-famous) author got before they became a famous author. Literally every author has this story. If you’re around long enough, you collect rejection letters. That’s just the way it is. So when my truckloads of rejections started rolling in, it didn’t bother me. Everybody gets these, I’m part of the in-crowd! I assumed it didn’t bother me because I was prepared, and I assumed you just got used to it and that’s what it took to be a writer. (To be fair, I also kind of assumed that my stories sucked, so I especially expected rejection.) Let it roll off your back or give up.

However, now that I’ve gotten to know a lot of writers, I discover that this is not really true. A lot of people have trouble dealing with it. Most people. Yes, you have to get used to it to some degree, because you *will* get a lot of rejections no matter how great you are, but people have different degrees of ability to bounce back from that. Some people trunk a story after 2 or 3 rejections, convinced it is awful. Some people sink into depression every time they get a rejection. Some people can’t send out stories in the first place, for fear of future rejection. Whatever 30 seconds of disappointment I felt before totally forgetting about it altogether was essentially bullet-proof compared to most people.

For whatever reason, I never take rejections personally. That’s what everybody tells you to do, “Oh, don’t take it personally!” but I think people still do. As a human being, they can’t help it. For me, though, it really never is personal. Again, maybe this is because I was well prepared in advance? Maybe I took all the advice like, “A rejection just means that story wasn’t for that editor on that day” to heart? I don’t know. But for whatever reason, for me it’s like: Didn’t like it? Shrug. Maybe on the next time out. No reflection on the story, much less on me or my writing.

Egomania on my part? Perhaps.

I think perhaps it’s just that my personality seems to be well suited for it. This is why I am a terrible person to write this post; I’m not sure I have any advice that can help. How can I tell someone not to be bothered by something? Have a good attitude? At the end of the day it comes down to the same tired platitudes: expect rejection, don’t take it personally, don’t let it bother you. But at least know you’re not alone: when it comes to rejection, all writers are in the same boat. And furthermore, even if rejection DOES get you down, you’re not alone either! Some of the most amazing, prolific authors still go to pieces over rejections, possibly even more than you do.

I will say that rejections are a little harder to take, now that I get better rejections. In the beginning I was just throwing stuff out there, with not a lot of hope that anything would stick. Now I have better stories and I know the markets better, so sometimes I’m just *absolutely sure* a story is good for a market, which makes it more disappointing to be rejected. Also, getting a series of “almost!” rejections for a story can be frustrating.

And then you send it back out to the next market and get to work on a better story. That’s the only part you can control.