Definitely shiny.

[mrissa]

I got my contributor's copy of Nature Physics today. It is so shiny. The paper is so heavy and glossy and filled with graphs and equations and physics. And my words.

Perhaps I am not jaded about this short story thing after all.

And -- oh, I'm not quite sure how to explain this part. I got published in Nature Physics -- me! -- by doing what it is I really do. I didn't have to spend years pretending, miserably and unsuccessfully, to still belong in physics. I could be a different kind of the shiny, the shiny I always wanted, right in there alongside the shiny I sometimes used to want.

See, this one is better than Nature. Because Nature is for people, but Nature Physics is for physicists. Who are very like people, but different. I've written stories for people for years now, and people have read them and loved them and hated them and not cared about them and done with them like people do with stories. But now physicists will be reading and loving and hating and being indifferent and like that. As I say: like people. But different. And I know that physicists read SF mags. But they read them as people. They read this one as physicists. But not my story as physics! That part's important, too.

You see? Maybe not. Maybe I'm not getting it across. Extremely excited. Distracted by the shiny. Your take-home point here is: shiny. Yes.

Comments

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I see. :)

[mechaieh.livejournal.com]

*beams*

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

Shinies to the shiny. Awesome!

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

While there's a URL (http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/v4/n2/full/nphys853.html), it's behind a paywall. And, sadly, bugmenot.com doesn't have a working login.

B

[athenais.livejournal.com]

My personal physicist says he looks forward to reading it.

[columbina.livejournal.com]

Shiny is good.

[intrepida.livejournal.com]

I think I understand what you're getting at. Very happy for you!

[lotusice.livejournal.com]

I understand this a whole lot.

And am positively thrilled for you.

Shiny. Emphatically. Shiny.

[brooksmoses]

I wonder what the easiest way for me to get a copy of Nature Physics would be.

Because, yeah, I understand. And, um, physicist. (Sort of.)

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I'm kind of the same way, only without the actually-being-thereness of it. The only way I can see being in Nature is via fiction, and I think I'd be more happy about it that way. It's a big complicated tangle, and it may well be similar to your less-tangled situation at heart.

Tell us when the story goes live, and then yay more words!

(also: I really, really like the icons of you and various expressions. This one and the angry one are perfect for what you want to convey; I can't help but add sound effects.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you like the icons -- I've always said that no picture conveys me being angry more than...me...being angry. Etc. So I'm glad someone else thinks so, too.

[aedifica]

Hooray! And I think I understand: I think it's like when I got hired to do computer support. (History: years ago I hung out with lots of computer science majors and I believed [on some level] that if I were cool enough I'd be a computer science major too. So when I eventually turned toward computer support as a career, there was a small part of me that took it as validation that yes, I was cool enough.) :-)

And given the hour, perhaps I should come back and read this comment tomorrow to make sure it says what I mean! I think it does...

[desperance.livejournal.com]

*is dazzled by the shiny*

And, yes. You catch that feeling exactly.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

That is just so cool.

[numinicious.livejournal.com]

I hope you know I brag about you to my colleagues all the time. "Yes, well I have a friend who published in Nature, and she didn't have to redo the statistics!"

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Hee. Fabulous.

[ckd]

OK, so here's how shiny the shiny is. I just spent a very frustrating chunk of time fighting with the rassle-frassle mess that is "support" for multiple SSL client certificates in Safari, just so that I could get to Nature Physics through the on-campus web proxy. (To give you an idea of the level of rassle-frassleness, I didn't spend the time to do this when I needed certificates to update my benefits elections last year; I just gave up and did it at work, since I don't have multiple client certificates on that machine.)

Doing so in order to read your story? Totally worth it. (Also, check your Gmail.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Why, thanks very much!

[lynnal.livejournal.com]

Congratulations! I'll bet a lot more physicists will read your story than would have read your article if you had slogged through on the science track. And enjoy it more too.

I felt that way about Mike Ford's science poetry. He got science, and was able to write lyrically about it. I don't know of anyone else who could do that.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I don't know how many physicists read the stories in Nature Physics. I know at least five will! because I told my old department to keep an eye out for me.

And as for Mike and science poetry -- yah. Definitely. He did the antithesis of that stupid awful learn'd astronomer poem. (Every astronomer I know is more likely to look up in perfect silence at the stars, not less, so take that, Walt Whitman!)