Rejection

In the past week I have received two rejections and am still unpublished.  One for an article about my Grandfathers exploits as a prisoner of war in World War 2 and the other a science fiction short story.  This is not a whinge or a moan about being rejected.  I just believe that you shouldn’t just talk about your successes, but also your setbacks.

If I am honest I was a little disappointed the article was rejected, especially after having positive emails from the publication in question.  But as my mother told me, it isn’t the staff member you have to impress but the editor!  The positive thing to come out of this is that I worked with a staff member of a magazine, swapping emails and following the whole process from start to finish.  Before submitting the outline and query letter I had never experienced this and now have the experience to look back on.

The short story though was always going to be a tough ask.  Science fiction is a hard genre to sell, and the market I chose to sell to has a reputation for a very high quality of writing.  Of course the positive side is that at least I can simply submit to another publication; the article would have to be rewritten to fit a particular style for a magazine but at 3000 words I will find plenty of opportunities to submit my short story. 

Finally, I have to remember that all the great writers have been rejected early on in their writing careers.  The great Iain M Banks was rejected a handful of times before finding success – in fact there is an idea he discussed in an interview that you have to write a million words of rubbish before being successful.  So I may have a while to go!

Does “copying and pasting” a word a million times count?

Christmas Dr Who, Elysium & The Mars Trilogy

It has been a while since my last blog, but with the changing of my job, Christmas, training for a marathon and spending time with my wife and baby boy, writing has taken a back seat.  But with the new job being a lot closer to home, with less commuting and less hours I expect to be back writing.

I’m still ploughing through the Mars Trilogy, which is very epic in scope and ideas, however it is very long winded and technical in places.  The writing though is nothing short of brilliant and as I type this I am only 200 pages from the end of the third book.  I believe I am in the process of a very rewarding experience – but it is definitely not a trilogy to read when tired with a new born in the house!

The wife and I thoroughly enjoyed the Christmas Dr Who and the last appearance of Matt Smith as the iconic character.  Although, I still feel David Tennants’ regeneration was done better due to being very emotional in places.  It seemed a little rushed at the end but the build up was very good and the way they dealt with him reaching his maximum number of regenerations was everything I wanted it to be, although I still don’t think they should have counted David’s hand becoming a copy of him as a regeneration! 

The actual episode did occasionally go into Christmas story territory, which they seem to do too much for my liking.  I appreciated its on at Christmas, but does The Doctor always have to have a Christmas adventure?  The highlight though was undoubtedly the aging of Matt Smith as he protected the planet he knew he would die on, over hundreds of years.  I don’t know if it was intentional but he seemed to look a lot like William Hartnell when he had aged.

Ultimately Matt Smith will go down as one of the very best actors to play the part.  He brought a lot of energy and slapstick comedy, whilst appearing to be a very wise man in a young mans body.  But as I have said in the past, I am very much looking forward to Peter Capaldi who from the few seconds at the end appears to be going old school on the part and channelling the doctors of old.

On my birthday we also watched Elysium, the Matt Damon staring movie.  It is set in a future where Earth is ravaged by war, where society is divided into two classes – the rich who live in a huge habitat orbiting Earth and the lower working class who live in an Earth where petty crime is rife and medical care is near none existent.  Matt Damon has a terrible accident leaving him with days to live and has cyborg parts attached to him to do a job for a local gangster and he has one goal, get on to Elysium (the name of the habitat). 

When this was initially released, I wasn’t sure, mainly due to a strange dislike for Matt Damon in any kind of action movie (well the Bourne movies) and also due to the mocking of him in Team America! But I have to say I very much enjoyed it.  There was some kind of irony that the habitat looked like a smaller version of the orbitals from Iain M Banks culture novels, a series of books whereby the culture live in a Utopian existence, and nobody is poor, yet in Elysium, the majority of Humans are poor and in need of help and the privileged minority live in luxury.  The very liberal Iain M Banks would have probably found similarities in todays society if he had seen this movie!.