Welcome to another installment of Imposter Syndrome! A bi-weekly round up of writing misadventures.
Travel advisory
I’ll be at the Saskatchewan Entertainment Expo on September 15 & 16. If you’re in the area please drop by to say hello.
The lineup of comic guests is simply amazing. Not sure how I managed to sneak in there but it’s too late to kick me off the list now so they’re stuck with me 🙂
It’s going to be a great con so please check it out and help me get a new profile picture!
DOTHA
The Death of the Horror Anthology Kickstarter is coming! We’re set to go live on October 1st and you’ll have 30 days to join us in bringing this book back from the dead and safely into your hands.
To whet your appetite here’s a sneak peek at a panel from the story I’ve been working on with phenomenal artist Ariel Viola. Our story – Contrition – will be lettered by the talented Melissa Hudson. We can’t wait for you to read it in all its grizzly glory.
Stay tuned for updates and a link to the Kickstarter!
Scratcher
New reviews keep rolling in. Check out this one from Matt Ligeti the Comic Book Yeti – and you can still pick up the issues on Comixology or ComixCentral for less than $1.99 each.
Rejection
On June 1st I set myself a challenge: to earn 50 rejections before the end of the year.
You’re probably asking why the hell anyone would do such a thing.
Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. But the more I thought about it, the more it felt like a way to reclaim some agency over the rejection process.
Rejection is a huge part of the business and while we can logically accept that, it can still feel like you’re being slapped in the face with a wet fish.
My first rejections were soul-crushing moments I never thought I’d be able to move past. Over time, as the rejections mounted, I became better at dealing with them. Sure each one stings, but they no longer have the same world-shattering impact as they once did. I’m able to take time to acknowledge them for what they are – then get on with the process of creating new and better things.
To my mind, the thing about rejection is that it means you’re trying – as long as you’re treating it as a learning process So if I’m avoiding rejection it means I’m not trying hard enough.
To force myself out of my comfort zone I decided to set myself a rejection target. 50 rejections means I have to put content out into the world for judgment. It could be sending a pilot to a producer, submitting a film to festivals, applying for a convention table, pitching to publishers… the goal in each case is to take the rejection and learn as much as I can from it; realizing that each rejection is bringing me one step closer to my goal.
If you’re still reading this, you may be wondering how I’m doing? Well, surprisingly not as well as I hoped. I’ve only managed to hit 15 rejections so there’s still some way to go – but plenty of time to hit my target.
Back to the swamp
Sadly this isn’t where I reveal I’m writing Swamp Thing, although I was excited to see this news!!
No we’re back to the swampland again as this continues to be the most interesting area of debate in String Theory right now. Several papers appeared recently defending string-theoretic models of de-Sitter vacua, most notably these papers from Cicoli et al., Kachru & Trivedi, and Dasgupta et al. Essentially these authors argue that inclusion of a quantum/stringy corrections is sufficient to bypass the swampland conjecture and therefore allow for metastable de-Sitter vacua.
I’m not sure I’m convinced.
Others have taken a more pragmatic approach.
If the conjecture doesn’t allow for de-Sitter vacua then what is the dark energy from a String Theory perspective? One suggestion is Quintessence (a weakly coupled field from the early universe that even today continues to roll down its potential well) which has a lot of theoretical problems, although this recent paper identifies three important conditions necessary to constrain the dynamics of the Quintessence field – but whether it passes experimental tests remains to be seen.
Lots of interesting debate on this topic and I don’t think we’ve heard the last of it – so expect more updates next time.