It just got personal

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Sara overheard an immunologist at work talking about the link between pollution (specifically diesel particulate emissions) and allergies. This would partially explain why allergies are on the rise in the developed world, and specifically in cities and along highways. After a little research of my own, it seems that these types of pollutants stimulate our Immunoglobulin E (IgE) production, which in turn causes us to have a quicker biological response to allergens (an allergen “memory”). You can read more here.

So between this and the increase of allergies due to global warming, I am positively doomed.

I have to say, this makes me feel better about my work. Reducing dependence on foreign oil is a worthy crusade to begin with, but it’s sort of esoteric for me personally. Until now! Now it suddenly has a direct impact on my life.

In fact, I didn’t have allergies at all until I went to college. Since then, my allergies have been worse every year. And now, dealing with the kids’ eczema, which is essentially a hyper-sensitivity to allergens, I have to wonder if this has all somehow been caused by our polluting lifestyle. I always assumed it was just sort of destined, genetic-wise, but maybe that’s not true.

In any event, how about you get your pollution out of my nose?

Writing Year 2

/ Shane / 1 Comment

This year:

Stories Written: 2
Number of [Submission-Ready] Words: 8,600
Number of Story Submissions: 39
Number of Rejections: 34
Number of Acceptances: 0

Total:

Stories Written: 9
Number of [Submission-Ready] Words: 52,800
Number of Story Submissions: 62
Number of Rejections: 57
Number of Acceptances: 0

Wow, I can’t believe it has been another year already! I thought I had time to catch up a little bit on the writing. I guess not!

Only 2 new stories this year?? On the surface, it’s sort of pathetic compared to last year. However, on further inspection, there are some good things and some bad things. One thing to note, I changed it from “Number of 1st Draft Words” to “Number of [Submission-Ready] Words”. I’m not keeping track of the length of first drafts anymore, because what’s the point? So this number will reflect the size of the first draft that I’m ready to send out (which may be draft 3 or so).

The bad is that I only wrote 2 stories (this does not count the work in progress, which is a little over half way done). Of course Oliver was born in April, but even considering that, my goal for the year was 4 or 5 new stories. Did not get it done! On the other hand, the good is that I actually managed to keep the stories in the mail, more or less. You would expect there to be more submissions with more inventory (a very little more inventory in this case), but at least I was keeping them in circulation, even if I wasn’t writing.

Overall, I would say I had more positive rejections, including an honorable mention from Writers of the Future. Still not as close as I’d like to be by the end of year 2, but making progress nonetheless. What can I say, life (and accordions) intervened.

My goal for next year is going to be 4 stories again. That goal is apparently not as easy as I originally thought! However, my main goal right now is not to miss a quarter of Writers of the Future. I’m hoping that will give me the extra motivation to get it done!

The way I figure it, writing stories is practice. The more you practice something, the better you get. If I practiced more, I’d get better faster. If I don’t, it will just take me longer, but I’ll get there eventually.

Onward and upward!

Quote Monday Goes Cannibalistic

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Me: “Evie, help me pick up.”
::Evie gets something out and throws it on the floor::
Evie, laughing: “Oops! I forgot we were picking up, not messing!”

Evie: “I saw tv when I peeked in her room.”
Sara: “Florence watches tv in her room? What does she watch?”
Evie: “Commercials.”

Sounds like she gets the same programming I get.

Me: “His name was Manmeet.”
Sara: “How do you spell it?”
Me: “M-A-N-M-E-E-T”
Sara: “So it’s like ‘nice to meet you’, not ‘nice to eat you’!”

Me: “So Ariel, what do you eat under the sea.”
Evie: “Well, we don’t have any meat or anything. No pigs or chickens…”
Me: “No pigs? So you don’t have bacon?”
Evie: “Yes we do. We just make it out of dead mermaids.”

Joss Whedon

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Nobody on the Internet needs less hero worship than Joss Whedon. He has plenty. However, I have always been a day late and a dollar short to the Joss Whedon party, so there’s no reason to stop now.

Although I was a very early supporter of the (now generally reviled) Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie, I didn’t start watching the most excellent tv show until season 4 or so, and I had to catch all the back episodes on reruns, as well as catching up on Angel. I even managed to be late to the Firefly party, despite watching the first couple of episodes as they aired. I thought the show was terrible and stopped watching. Later, people told me, “You have to watch this show Firefly, it’s awesome!” and I said, “Ha, nice try! I watched it on tv and it was awful.” Well, it turns out that there were some issues with the show when it was on tv, specifically that the episodes were aired out of order. When I was eventually convinced to watch the show in the correct order (way after everybody else), it was indeed a pretty good show. And I’ve never even seen Dollhouse.

So, compared to most of the rabid Whedon fans, I hardly even register on the meter. Therefore, how do I find myself writing a fanboy blog post?

There are two big reasons: Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, and the musical episode of Buffy, Once More with Feeling. Here’s a guy who is a television writer/producer/what-have-you, and he’s written two distinct “musicals” that I would put up there with many of my favorite musicals. If you haven’t checked out the music from these, I would highly recommend it. Yes, you can tell they are a little more amature than a big budget production (especially in the case of Buffy, when the actors and actresses are not normally singers), but that makes them a little more endearing. And it also makes it all the more amazing that the songs are so catchy. (Heck, I started out hating the Serenity theme song, and even that eventually grew on me! Burn the land and boil the sea, but you can’t take the sky from me)

So lets give it up for a guy who has consistently provided smart, funny, quality entertainment since before I was out of high school, and who somehow managed to write a couple of pretty fantastic musicals along the way, with less to work with than a lot of people.

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Not too long ago, Evie and I were looking for another chapter book to read before bed, and we fortunately ended up with Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin.

We first became fans of Grace Lin as an illustrator (“Round is a Mooncake“, “Red is a Dragon“, “The Seven Chinese Sisters“). However, it turns out her sister lives in our neighborhood, and we had the opportunity to meet her. “Where the Mountain Meets the Moon” had just been released, and received a Newberry Honor, and we just happened to be looking for a new book. It was kismet.

Evie and I both loved “Where the Mountain Meets the Moon”. It was a total change of pace from “Little House on the Prairie”. I had heard it described as “the Chinese Wizard of Oz”, and I have to say the description was pretty accurate. The story boils down to a young girl taking a journey to a wise man, meeting friends and having adventures along the way, only to discover she already had what she wanted.

Grace Lin talked about how she wanted to write an American take on Chinese story, and I think she really succeeded. The stories felt very authentically Asian, even though they involved things that probably would never really be in an authentic Asian folklore (independent young girls for starters). That’s probably why it was such a fantastic change of pace, and just what we were looking for.

Anyway, Evie predictably liked a story that involved a young girl and a dragon. She still talks about it now, even though we’ve read a few books since. I would definitely recommend it for kids, especially girls.

As a side note, in our house, we now call mini-wheats “Minli-wheats”.