NPR live streaming & LiveJournal Breastfeeding Icon Boycott Day

This morning, I discovered the public radio station’s (WABE 90.1) live streaming broadcast after a very unfruitful search for our portable radio. I’ve been too out of touch, holed up in my library-office as I am, day-in-and-day-out. I’ve missed listening to Morning Edition, and I think insulating myself from basic world news and events is also impacting my writing scope. NPR rawketh.

And for everyone either participating in or sympathetic to the cause: Happy LiveJournal Breastfeeding Icon Boycott Day. Power to the people.

I’m choosing not to delete my journal today, not because I don’t support and believe in the cause, but because I’m not convinced that that action would be an effective protest method. Personally, I like zhai‘s suggestion: “I think what everyone ought to do is organize an effort to simultaneously post naked primary user icons on the same day.”

I did, however, sign the petition and urge everyone else to.

   


Writing Stuff

Published:
– “The Archer of the Sun and the Lady of the Moon” is now out in the new issue (#9) of Paradox.

Received:
– Another painful glowing rejection from an editor via my agent for my middle-grade novel: “I love the concept and the literary, dream-like quality of Eugie Foster’s prose. I also appreciate that friendship is a main theme of the novel. However . . . ” And she goes on to say: “Clearly Eugie Foster is a tremendous talent . . .”

Waaah!! Today might be a good day for ice cream therapy. Or gin.

And we’re still waiting on a verdict from the editor who requested a picture book manuscript. *twitch* Waiting hard.

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15 Responses to NPR live streaming & LiveJournal Breastfeeding Icon Boycott Day

  1. mtfay says:

    Has your novel gone to Houghton-Mifflin or Scholastic yet? Did they also damn you with glowing praise?

  2. gardenwaltz says:

    well, i would sign the petition but it is unbelievably vague and i would not have any confidence that lj would understand the point of my protest. i think a more effective protest would simply be to add a breastfeeding icon and let them deal with it. hmm…i have many icons of my girl nursing, but do not believe in displaying her or myself in my journal. i will have to consider options. another factor is that i do not have any nursing photos which show the aereole for the simple reason that it is not viewable when the child is nursing. that is a key fact which many breastfeeding opponents fail to realize. the reality of discreet nursing should be an effective balm and going out of my way to find less discreet images seems puzzling.

  3. aliettedb says:

    Ouch, those rejections sting. Definitely a day for ice-cream, I’d say.

    I’m adding Paradox to the list of magazines I must attempt to find while in the US…

  4. pabba says:

    Could your userpic being any more awesome?

  5. However… What did they say? What did they say? How come they passed?

    • Eugie Foster says:

      Basically, they didn’t think it had the right commercial appeal for them. I’m getting this sentiment, and assorted variants thereof, pretty consistently.

      This novel is a quieter story than a lot of the stuff for kids I see being published currently. I think it’s similar in mood to The Cat Who Went to Heaven by Elizabeth Coatsworth, which I consider a timeless classic, but maybe quiet stories are a bad financial bet these days where everything is extreme action and flashy FX.

      I truly believe in what I wrote, and my agent does too (and I have great conviction in my agent), but these relentless, albeit complimentary, rejections are getting pretty disheartening. Guess I left my thick writer’s skin at the dry cleaner’s.

      Sigh.

      • Hmm … I wonder if a smaller press would be more appreciative of its literary value than its market value. Maybe your agent will try some of them next.

        • Eugie Foster says:

          From what I know about children’s lit. publishing houses, my agent has been targeting imprints that seem to have a liking for multicultural and/or thoughtful material, but yeah, all of them have been industry big boys rather than smaller, inde presses. Still, I think it’s best if I leave everything in that department in my agent’s capable hands. I’m really a babe in the woods when it comes to book publishers. And, well, I’d really like to have it find a home at a major publisher. Meep.

          And if I plunk my “putting things into perspective” cap on, it hasn’t received that many rejections. My short fiction averages more per story rejections than what I’ve gotten on this work. So I’m far from giving up hope or despairing, it’s just . . . dispiriting.

  6. dean13 says:

    That is a great protest icon.

    I listen to NPR after the fact via their audio postings of “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered”. With the Windows Media Player you can selectively listen to the segments at 1.4X and 2X normal speeds.

  7. basletum says:

    Some editor will grab that novel up eventually. You’re getting way too much praise in those rejections for it to not be inevitable. And as long as it’s inevitable, it’s really only a matter of time, right? 😉

    LJ wants to ban breastfeeding icons that happen to show a nipple? Sheesh! While I can understand a desire for common decency, banning something as trivial as that is getting a bit extreme. One of the icons, if I’m not mistaken from the picture I saw, showed the Mother Mary breastfeeding the Baby Jesus. Why would that be a problem? It’s not like Baby Jesus drank from a bottle, or Buddha, or…you get the picture (no pun intended).

    All Hail the Holy Nipple! Fountain of Life!

  8. nojojojo says:

    Sorry to hear about your novel rejection; I know how those hurt. =( ::ehugs::

  9. sruna says:

    What an interesting thing to protest!

    /chuckle

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