Aim for 100 rejections a year. Kim Liao at Lit Hub has a suggestion: aim for many rejections
In late 2011, a writer friend was sharing her experiences of having months of uninterrupted writing time at her residencies at the Millay Colony, Ragdale, and Yaddo. I was staggered by her impressive rates of acceptance. You probably have one of those friends, too—you know the one I’m talking about, that friend who is a beautiful writer, but who also seems to win everything? I could barely believe that she had the balls to apply to—let alone, get accepted to—several residencies, a prestigious fellowship, and publications in journals I had actually heard of.This seems another version of Linus Pauling's "The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas, and throw the bad ones away."
I asked her what her secret was, and she said something that would change my professional life as a writer: “Collect rejections. Set rejection goals. I know someone who shoots for one hundred rejections in a year, because if you work that hard to get so many rejections, you’re sure to get a few acceptances, too.”
I like the moral of this story about a pottery class:
David Bales and Ted Orland describe a ceramics class in which half of the students were asked to focus only on producing a high quantity of work while the other half was tasked with producing work of high quality. For a grade at the end of the term, the “quantity” group’s pottery would be weighed, and fifty pounds of pots would automatically get an A, whereas the “quality” group only needed to turn in one—albeit perfect—piece. Surprisingly, the works of highest quality came from the group being graded on quantity, because they had continually practiced, churned out tons of work, and learned from their mistakes. The other half of the class spent most of the semester paralyzed by theorizing about perfection, which sounded disconcertingly familiar to me—like all my cases of writer’s block.---
One place to submit to (and hopefully not be rejected) is Korea Lit. From their submissions page:
All submissions must have some Korean element in them.---
All submissions must be in an original work of short fiction or poetry and written in English.
All short fiction submissions must be between 1000-8000 words. For poetry, less than 500 words.
...
-We are a new publication, so at this time we cannot offer payment for any accepted submission. We hope that this will change in the near future.
Shelly Terrell at Teacher Reboot Camp has long pushed for greater computer use and less-paper teaching. She is big on lists. This is one of many that could apply to web-content and education: 18 ideas to bring a textbook to life.
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How to measure the creativity of a one-year old.
...protecting a razor head with a binder clip or wrapping shoes in a shower cap for travel. These ingenious ideas are the result of divergent thinking (DT), or an outside-the-box approach that generates novel, creative alternatives to persistent challenges. DT drives adaptive innovation and is important when problems require a shift in perspective or the development of flexible, original solutions.This divergent thinking can be measured in one-year olds and the results are consistent when testes are repeated.
From the end of the article:
It also appears that copying others does affect DT, as related research shows that children who watch someone else with high DT tend to improve their own DT scores, while those who watch low DT behaviorsreduce their own DT.---
Having trouble deciding on your next D&D character? How about just a fantasy book character? Try this character generator. NOTE: foul language warning for those worried about that sort of thing. I don't worry about reading such words, but am not eager to have them splashed across my monitor: The image is
Hmm. I thought blogger gave me more control over image size. The image is slightly shrunk.
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In Canada, in the '80's and probably still, AM and FM radio had rules over what they could play. To keep AM viable, the relevant Canadian ministry gave FM stations a cap on the top ten hits per hour. Steely Dan is apparently a really good but not quite great group who had a lot of hits just low enough in the charts to escape limits. well, I seem to remember reading that somewhere years ago so maybe one critic thought so. This post at Boingboing explains why radio stations today play who they do.
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I have never used emoji. Well, I have used the smiling face and one or two other faces. Kyle McLachlan is an emoji master! If it is not clear in the embedded tweet, the actor who played Paul Atreides* in Dune was asked to summarize the plot of the movie. He did so in one Tweet.
What other movies could be summarized in this way?🌏💧✋🕋🗡🚀🏜☀️🌡🌶💯🚱⏳🌅🌑😡💉😱😈💀💥🌛🌙🐭💥🚶🏻〰🐛️⌛️👳🙏💥😴🛌😳💥🐛💥👊⚔👑 #dune https://t.co/bXwpdYC8jz— Kyle MacLachlan (@Kyle_MacLachlan) August 16, 2016
*So embarrassing. I misspelled the name the first time I attempted it.
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