Category: Progress Updates

Updates on the Current Project

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The BRAIN Initiative: Because We Don’t Already Have Enough Acronyms

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It’s always a good idea to know where, how, and for what purpose one’s tax dollars are being spent. The BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) is no exception. At its core, it is an attempt to understand how the brain works and is somewhat analogous to the Human Genome Project. The expectation is that this endeavor will lead to ways to treat, prevent, and cure brain disorders, brain injuries, and a host of other maladies.

In the first year of funding since the project was announced last April, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Institute of Health (NIH), and the National Science Foundation (NSF) are to invest approximately $50 million, $40 million, and $20 million, respectively, to facilitate these aims. From the private sector, the Allen Institute for Brain Science ($60 million annually), the Howard Hughes Medical Institute ($30 million annually), the Kavli Foundation ($4 million annually for ten years), and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies ($28 million) have also joined this effort.

BRAIN Initiative

It would seem that even frugality has its price these days, and nobody wants to come off looking cheap. Hopefully they get it right and don’t contradict one another; otherwise it might set neuroscience back quite a ways, at least in that most unforgiving of eyes, the public.

In some respects, I almost feel like a kid with a new toy to show off, though on a much smaller scale. There is, of course, quite a bit of work left to do… I would not want that toy to suddenly get a case of stage fright and malfunction.

Aside from patiently waiting for my query letters to be lifted from their slush piles – my gemstones cast in the mud – there is always the fun task of editing, always.  Some other updates to the site include an RSS feed to some notable psychology articles (i.e. potential deconstruction fodder), social media links, and a follow button.

For those interested, a more comprehensive description of the BRAIN Initiative can be found at the following pages:

National Institutes of Health

DARPA

National Science Foundation

White House Fact Sheet

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To Catch a Literary Agent

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With this last round of major editing coming to a conclusion, I now feel fully equipped to play the waiting game (a.k.a. hunting for a literary agent). Agent… it’s one of the few words that just seems to inspire an aura of confidence. Agents carry about them an ineffable mystique; they can instill fear among world leaders or assert their power as catalysts for destruction. Here are some examples:

Literary Agent
Secret Agent
Double Agent
Agent Orange

They are men, women, and things of action! Catching one of these elusive creatures, the literary agent, will necessarily require a tremendous amount of effort, craft, and stealth (i.e. my posting may go on hiatus until I wrestle one into signing a contract, figuratively speaking).

Also, have you ever noticed how any word instantly becomes hip, cool, and fierce sounding if it precedes or comes after the word agent? For instance:

Agent 50%

What exactly is being implied here? Would this agent only do half the job that you paid to have done in full? Maybe, but I’d be willing to bet that half of the job would be top notch with a moniker like that. Other examples include:

Butterfly Agent
Agent Cupcake

I rest my case.

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On Editors and Other Respected Professions

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After wrapping up another round of editing and unwrapping some awesome presents, I can only wonder how editors [ the ones that actually get paid ] keep their wits about them. Editing myself has felt like running a marathon while holding a flashlight in the dark, rerunning the route to make sure no short-cuts were taken so it could be retraced, and then finally going back again to pick up any trash that may have been left on the course.

It’s funny, thinking back to earlier times, when I just knew I wrote platinum… where everything that came off my pen tip was sacrosanct and impervious to review. Not editing then was more of a refusal to acknowledge my shortcomings than any real lack of effort. While I sometimes feel a twinge of nostalgia for the reckless passion it imparted into my writing, these days I don’t even write my own name without spell checking it twice.

Maybe editing someone else’s work is always easier because a call for help can be made if one gets lost. But the trailblazers, to whom do they turn? They’ve been lost since the beginning. Being found, to them, is merely to visit the same place again.

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The Light at the End of the Tunnel

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Work on editing chapter seven began yesterday.  For the first time since I starting writing it hasn’t required open-heart surgery to fix or demanded any major revisions.  Chapter seven is smack dab in the middle of the book and early on it was my favorite part, the one I looked most forward to writing.  It was the non-fiction book writer’s equivalent of a candy bar scene ( search for candy bar scene at  http://hollylisle.com ).

Yet, for a while, it seemed like every time I came back to this part in the book something went horribly wrong… like “the relatability of this to prominent theories is too perplexing,” or “This picture has to explain the concept better,” or “The plumbing needs fixing.”

Anyone, author or not, can attest to the stress of middles. Invariably, everyone will come to a moment in some endeavor when they realize that the light at the end of the tunnel they see is really an oncoming train.  So what do you do?

Flee in the other direction or try to jump on it?  Nope, you’ve come too far to consider retreat or it may not even be an option.  The possibility of having one’s remains plastered all over it doesn’t sound that appealing either.

Duck and cover? Sorry, that train will run over you like [ insert metaphor… a steamroller, the Amazon River, a train ].

March headlong towards it and see who wins?  That sounds like the only viable option. Best of luck to you!