Archive for November, 2011

Ripple: Rejected

Posted: November 30, 2011 in Living and Life, short story
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Well, I hate to say it, but Ripple got rejected. However, they did give me some feedback that cheered me up a bit. First, the editor of the Grove, the magazine I submitted Ripple to, said it was amazing that I had written such a story when I basically taught myself how to write fiction (while my high school was a good one, it specialized more in essay-writing for college instead of fiction-writing, but with this economy and job market can you blame them?). The editor and his staff also agreed that the second draft was much better than the first draft, so that’s something positive. In the end, it all boiled down to the fact that they had a lot of submissions, a lot more than usual apparently, and some of the work was a bit better than mine (and probably came from upperclassmen). Well, hopefully the next short story I write, whenever the inspiration strikes me, will be good enough to publish somewhere. Wish me luck.

PS The quarter is almost over on campus, and I am so glad! Honestly, I loved my classes and I had a ton of fun, but I just want to relax before winter quarter starts and I start a whole new round of classes and a whole new crazy schedule. Just gotta get past exams, and how hard can they be?

You know what, don’t answer that last question. Just leave posts encouraging me to do well in school and in my writing.

Update: Ripple

Posted: November 20, 2011 in Progress Report, short story
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A few posts back I said that I was working on a sci-fi story called Ripple, and that I was sending it to one of the local literary magazines on campus. Well, I met with the prose editor of said magazine, and he offered me some suggestions about ways the story could be improved (this magazine is unique because it takes the time to meet with its contributors and give suggestions for improvements).

Needless to say, they had a lot of suggestions on how to better the story, and I’m pretty sure I used all of them. When I was done, the second draft of Ripple looked a heck of a lot different than the first, but I think that’s a good thing. I’ll find out soon enough whether or not they liked the second draft enough to put it in the magazine. If yes, then I’ll party. If not, then no hard feelings; I’ll just try again till I get published.

Oh, and a happy Thanksgiving to one and all. Enjoy the turkey while we remember that the Native Americans were kind enough to give us their corn and we repaid them by sending them to the worst pieces of real estate we could find! Don’t deny it, we did do that and they won’t ever let us forget it.

Review: Captain America (film)

Posted: November 3, 2011 in Review
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I just had my last midterm of the quarter today, so I though I’d celebrate by going to see a free movie at the Union this evening (for those of you who don’t know, the Union is the place where the Student Government, several different important offices, and some classes are housed, as well as social events and club meetings). This week they were showing Captain America. I had virtually no knowledge of Captain America, except that he fought Nazis and that he was somehow supposed to be an Avenger in the 21st century (oh, he was cryonically frozen in the Norwegian ice? Oh, that makes perfect sense–not!). I didn’t even know that the villain’s organization was the same name as my fictional gang (I’d swear in court on that!). So, I was wondering how my first impressions would go.

Well, the movie lived up to its hype: the characters were believable and the actors that played them brought the right emotions to the screen. The villains were menacing enough (though that salute of theirs is a little ridiculous), and the scenes had the right emotion and drama. Special shout-outs to Chris Evans as Captain America/Steve Rogers, the latter person a very relatable character, Hugo Weaving for doing an amazing job as a villain again, this time as the Red Skull, and Tommy Lee Jones as the irrascible Colonel Phillips.

Just one complaint: the villain’s weapon of choice was lasers.

Lasers. God, you had to use the oldest futuristic weapon in sci-fi technology.

Even worse, they were blue lasers. And not just any shade of blue, they were fairy-princess blue! Hard to take those battle scenes seriously when you’re about to be taken out by Cinderella’s fairy godmother. I’m laughing just typing about it.