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Rejected!

Received my first rejection slip for Ron the Body the other day.
(Some of you might have pieced together I’m still writing the third draft. How can I get rejected when it ain’t done? Simply because I fired off a pitch to an agent when I hid the quarter-mark; you only need the first few chapters and a synopsis. I figured, correctly, it would motivate me to get the rest of draft 3 written but fast.)
It’s not the first rejection notice I’ve received – I’ve been shopping around in move and Fell Legacy for a while, with no success. But both of those books are tough sells – a publisher has every right to second guess whether they could bring them to market. They’re both pitched a bit askew from easy genre fit. (in move sits somewhere between contemporary, popular and young adult lit; Fell Legacy is a fantasy novel treated as horror movie/character study.) Plus, they’re far from perfect works of fiction – I’m still finding a voice in in move and in Fell Legacy I never really mastered the prose style I tried. So rejections for those have been easy to understand. Heck, sometimes I’ve received actual responses rather than form rejections, which have been invariably positive in the process of saying no.
It is, however, the first time I’ve tried to get interest for Ron the Body, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t care about getting a no. The reasons for my sanguine response to previous rejections don’t really apply here. Ron fits clearly into the subgenre of contemporary lit that uses a fantastical element to explore its ideas (c.f. The Time-Traveller’s Wife and The Fortress of Solitude). And my craft has improved out of sight. Ron is good to go. More than anything else I’ve produced, it could hold its own on a bookstore’s shelves.
But you know what? I’m actually surprisingly cool with getting bounced back. (If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be blogging this, for one thing.) The old thing about needing to rack up a whole bunch of rejections seems to have been taken to heart somewhere along the line. I don’t bear any ire towards the agency that said no, and I don’t feel discouraged about the potential of the book. There’s any number of reasons they could have said no, including that they thought it was terrible, and I’m cool with all of them. It’s all part of the game, right?
So, then. This post marks the beginning of the rest. Onwards.

The Attitude-Behaviour Gap

A lot of my thinking about sustainability kept coming back to the fact that good intentions often don’t become action. This is a special case of a general psychological problem, the gap between attitudes and behaviour. It’s been tackled a bunch of times over the years, but never comprehensively or convincingly explained. (And it won’t be by me either, my Masters research is looking at how being in a group can help to bridge the gap, not figuring out what causes it.)
Anyway, PsyBlog published this a few days ago: a nice little article on what the attitude-behaviour gap is, and a description of Lapiere’s famous Chinese couple study from the 30s.

You see it all the time. People say they’re worried about global warming and yet they drive around in a big gas guzzler. They say that money isn’t their God, yet they work all the hours. They say they want to be fit but they don’t do any exercise.

If you are curious about the whole human behaviour thing, do take a look.
Also of interest: Why we do dumb or irrational things: 10 brilliant social psychology studies

How I Spent My New Years

Over at d3vo you can see the 3-minute video taken at the New Years bach, where everyone says what their best moment of 2007 was.
Mostly of note for those who were there. You know who you are.

The Debased Electorate

Glenn Greenwald (18 March) on Barack Obama’s “A More Perfect Union” address:

The entire premise of Barack Obama’s candidacy is… that Americans are not only able, but eager, to participate in a more elevated and reasoned political discourse… But in Obama’s faith in the average American voter lies one of the greatest weaknesses of his campaign. His faith in the ability and willingness of Americans to rise above manipulative political tactics seems drastically to understate both the efficacy of such tactics and the deafening amplification they receive from our establishment press.

The Times of London (21 March):

Polls show Barack Obama damaged by link to Reverend Jeremiah Wright
Barack Obama has been significantly damaged by the controversy over his pastor’s inflammatory remarks and the issue has become a serious threat to his presidential ambitions, polls suggest.
The surveys released yesterday point to an erosion of Mr Obama’s support among independents, a bloc that has previously backed him in overwhelming numbers, and particular alienation among white, working-class voters who will be critical to the general election in November.
They appear disturbed by the Illinois senator’s refusal to disown the Rev Jeremiah Wright in a keynote speech he delivered on Tuesday…

Zine Launch Tonight!

Continuing the theme of “words starting with zin, tonight is the launch of the zine “Seven Copies Of The Scream”, 6-8pm in Wellington’s Welsh bar.
For more info look here.
If you are overseas, well, you’ll just have to wish you were here.
(And tomorrow, we’ll discuss zinc, man’s best mineral friend!)

Olympics and Politics?

Kiwi equestrian gold-medal winner Mark Todd’s comments that if he went to Beijing he’d make some kind of protest against China’s abhorrent actions in Tibet are a sign of an undercurrent of concern that athletes around the world must be feeling.
It would be wrong to take Todd’s comments as too much of a sign – he’s an atypical case, an older athlete making an unexpected comeback at the twilight of his career and already with some gold in his closet – surely he has less to lose from official censure than the vast majority of young competitors. Additionally, it’s plain from the article that his comments were dug out by an enterprising reporter, rather than something Todd had intended to say. Still, Todd knows about the media and knew what he was doing. And the questions he answered will keep coming, everywhere around the world.
The current violence in Tibet, where an absence of free information flow is apparently concealing brutal state repression and perhaps the murder of citizens, is already casting a shadow over the games. For us in the West, Tibet is China’s greatest PR disaster, and the Olympics its greatest PR coup. The appeal to draw these two storylines together will prove irresistible to the world media.
China has already put pressure on governments to ask their athletes to sign a pledge not to speak about politics at the game. A number of athletes have spoken out saying they don’t intend to engage with politics at all. But that’s only to be expected; it would be an athlete with poor survival instincts, or a special case like Todd, who announces now their intent to cause a stir in Beijing.
There is a moral dimension to the Olympics, and I expect it to come to the fore in Beijing. It won’t be the first time there’s been a memorable protest under the five rings.

Zing!

Letters to the editor are best when you say out loud “ZING!” after you read each one. Try it on these gems from Monday’s DomPost:

“I have begun to notice Young Greens sporting badges stating, “I only date guys/girls that vote Green”. I find this bewildering because I would have thought that judging or having a prejudice against someone based on their political beliefs is against basic human, as well as democratic, rights.” – Oliver Gibbetson, Northland

ZING!

“So, Wellington Mayor Kerry Prendergast isn’t happy about the sum the Government will pay to deal with tagging. Perhaps she might consider topping it up with some of the money spent by the council-owned Art Centre to decorate its car-park walls with graffiti – I mean, street art. Mixed messages, anyone?” – Yvonne Guy, Wellington City

ZING!
Hoo boy, it’s a pleasure to encounter such rapier wit in this day and age.
(Elsewhere on the same page, Dave Hansford of Makara delivers a takedown to the shameful high-profile climate change skeptic piece by the ludicrous Muriel Newman, and the even-more-ludicrous climate change skeptic Vincent Gray does some ZINGing of his own.)