Research and the Writer Brain
Jan. 28th, 2007 11:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
clarentineI have this problem, see. I don't think in words. Likely, many of you have this same problem; if you, too, are tasked with translating the symbols your brain beams at you like images on the wide screen behind your eyes, I feel for you. It's that translation thing that gets to me so often. I try to grasp new concepts, to understand what it is my brain and my writer friends are attempting to get through to me, but often I get lost in the various sets of symbols the words bring with them.
Then there's the struggle to convince all the pictograms flitting through my cranium to tell me which words they're supposed to be translated into. Oh, my.
In an effort to exercise what is hopefully a trainable muscle, I am going to begin listing, here, the subjects on which I'm trolling the web for details. It's exercise, in that it makes me put in words the concepts I'm trying to grasp through the fog that is my subconscious and, sometimes, my conscious mind.
If you see a topic you have some expertise in, feel free to speak up. I may come bug you about it...if I can assemble the proper words to form a question. *g*
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Yesterday's research (which I ended up conducting partially as I was translating yesterday's word quota for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
novel_in_90, against my personal policy) included searches on the Withlacoochee River in Florida, the Calusa Indians (yes, that would also be in Florida), blacksmithing, bronze--specifically, its melting temperature, black powder weapons, and flintlocks extant in the early 1700s, especially those a Spanish soldier-type might have access to.
I'm still flogging myself for not writing down the first in a pair of words that came to me while walking the dog one morning, words that I thought at the time summed up my choices for the tone of the climax of the current work in progress (that would be Bells). The first word is something along the lines of exalting or sublime, and the second is horrifying. I've since decided that the climax can be both....
Ah ha. *g* I love it when this happens. My brain just fed me a better word for that first concept: transcendent. Maybe that was the first word all along. ::pats brain:: Well done, kid. All that time trolling through the thesaurus pays off.
Anyway. I think the climax can be both transcendent and horrifying, and that's where I've got my sights. We'll see how well I manage to pull it off.
Then there's the struggle to convince all the pictograms flitting through my cranium to tell me which words they're supposed to be translated into. Oh, my.
In an effort to exercise what is hopefully a trainable muscle, I am going to begin listing, here, the subjects on which I'm trolling the web for details. It's exercise, in that it makes me put in words the concepts I'm trying to grasp through the fog that is my subconscious and, sometimes, my conscious mind.
If you see a topic you have some expertise in, feel free to speak up. I may come bug you about it...if I can assemble the proper words to form a question. *g*
+++++++++++
Yesterday's research (which I ended up conducting partially as I was translating yesterday's word quota for
novel_in_90, against my personal policy) included searches on the Withlacoochee River in Florida, the Calusa Indians (yes, that would also be in Florida), blacksmithing, bronze--specifically, its melting temperature, black powder weapons, and flintlocks extant in the early 1700s, especially those a Spanish soldier-type might have access to. I'm still flogging myself for not writing down the first in a pair of words that came to me while walking the dog one morning, words that I thought at the time summed up my choices for the tone of the climax of the current work in progress (that would be Bells). The first word is something along the lines of exalting or sublime, and the second is horrifying. I've since decided that the climax can be both....
Ah ha. *g* I love it when this happens. My brain just fed me a better word for that first concept: transcendent. Maybe that was the first word all along. ::pats brain:: Well done, kid. All that time trolling through the thesaurus pays off.
Anyway. I think the climax can be both transcendent and horrifying, and that's where I've got my sights. We'll see how well I manage to pull it off.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-28 07:12 pm (UTC)Though I must not play with thesauri enough, because "transcendant" is a great word but not one that comes up very often in my thoughts.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-28 07:32 pm (UTC)::nod:: There's a reason the brain-scientists have been talking for the past 20 (or more?) years about different sorts of intelligence. Our headgear differs from individual to individual.
I can see, in my head, the pages of a book I've read, sufficiently that I can find a paragraph based on what other material is on the page with it. But that is not the same thing as reasoning in words. It's only another aspect of visual intelligence. My verbal intelligence might score low, despite a pretty wide vocabulary, as a result of the problem mentioned above (and the other problem demonstrated above *g*). I have a hell of a time working with numbers, to the point where I've wondered about dyslexia, but I can work in three dimensions and visualize the layout of a design in both plan and human-eye view (and I have utterly forgotten the proper word for this latter thing).
Anyway, you can teach yourself to use the parts of intelligences that are not your strong suit. Most of us have them but, like coping with a weak eye, we compensate with the intelligences that are stronger.
Or not. *g* There's a certain intelligence in knowing when just to go with the hand dealt you.