Working out your way to write: Some questions
Dan Goodman
1) Do you think in words?
2) How do you remember? Is your memory primarily visual, auditory,
kinesthetic, etc.? Or is it abstract -- you remember that someone is
of a certain numerical height rather than what she looks like? (Note:
If those two seem exactly equivalent to you, there are things you need
to know about other ways of thinking. Look up "learning styles.")
3) Do you have any synesthesias? Before you answer "No," go here;
check the definition of synesthesia, then check the types of
synesthesia.
4) How do you usually get things done? If you always write out a
detailed work plan for making the bed, then writing a novel in one
draft without an outline probably isn't for you. Conversely, if you
cook finicky dishes without recipes, starting with a detailed outline
isn't for you.
5) What interests you when you read fiction?
6) How do you believe societies work?
7) What did you learn in school which isn't true?
--
Dan Goodman
Journal http://www.livejournal.com/users/dsgood/
Clutterers Anonymous unofficial community
http://www.livejournal.com/community/clutterers_anon/
Decluttering http://decluttering.blogspot.com
Predictions and Politics http://dsgood.blogspot.com
All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.
John Arbuthnot (1667-1735), Scottish writer, physician.
Brian M. Scott
<dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote in
<news:42bf74ac$0$40891$8046...@newsreader.iphouse.net> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:
[...]
> 3) Do you have any synesthesias? Before you answer "No," go here;
> check the definition of synesthesia, then check the types of
> synesthesia.
Missing URL.
> 4) How do you usually get things done? If you always write out a
> detailed work plan for making the bed, then writing a novel in one
> draft without an outline probably isn't for you. Conversely, if you
> cook finicky dishes without recipes, starting with a detailed outline
> isn't for you.
At the last minute, under extreme time pressure!
[...]
Brian
Ric Locke
> 1) Do you think in words?
Sentences. Sometimes paragraphs.
>
> 2) How do you remember? Is your memory primarily visual, auditory,
> kinesthetic, etc.? Or is it abstract -- you remember that someone is
> of a certain numerical height rather than what she looks like? (Note:
> If those two seem exactly equivalent to you, there are things you need
> to know about other ways of thinking. Look up "learning styles.")
I'm not sure I can quantify it. What finally comes is words, but I'm
convinced that's not what's actually stored.
>
> 3) Do you have any synesthesias? Before you answer "No," go here;
> check the definition of synesthesia, then check the types of
> synesthesia.
No URL.
So far as I know, I don't have any synesthesias. I have several visual
defects that cause things like halos around lights and rainbows at edges,
but I don't think those qualify.
>
> 4) How do you usually get things done? If you always write out a
> detailed work plan for making the bed, then writing a novel in one
> draft without an outline probably isn't for you. Conversely, if you
> cook finicky dishes without recipes, starting with a detailed outline
> isn't for you.
A little of this, a little of that. Sometimes it all gets done, sometimes
it requires a (fairly extended) period of complete attention.
>
> 5) What interests you when you read fiction?
Interaction of the characters with their environment, including but not
limited to the other characters.
>
> 6) How do you believe societies work?
By evolving rules, often not expressed, by which the members can interact
with one another with minimum friction. Societies which don't evolve such
rule-sets don't survive as societies.
>
> 7) What did you learn in school which isn't true?
Most of it.
Regards,
Ric
Ric Locke
> 2) How do you remember? Is your memory primarily visual, auditory,
> kinesthetic, etc.? Or is it abstract -- you remember that someone is
> of a certain numerical height rather than what she looks like? (Note:
> If those two seem exactly equivalent to you, there are things you need
> to know about other ways of thinking. Look up "learning styles.")
Second reply to the same post because the first was, upon reflection,
simply wrong.
What comes back to me when I remember something is the mental processes
that were going on when I acquired the data. If I'm remembering something I
read, what comes back is the sensation of reading and processing the words.
If I'm remembering where I put something, what comes back is a clip of the
object /in situ/, along with a snippet of what I was thinking about at the
time -- and the snippet is more intense if it's relevant to why I'm looking
for the object; if it's, say, the no. 2 Phillips screwdriver, I'll also
remember what I was repairing at the time I put it down.
This comes from remembering /Crossing the Bar/. The memory of the poem
includes the circumstances under which I memorized it, which involved two
extremely pretty girls and a serious mistake. Once I realized that just
starting out "Twilight and evening star..." would bring up recollections of
a /zaftig/ blonde and a slightly-plump brunette and the furniture in a
particular living room that no longer exists, I started remembering other
memories.
The memories are sketchy, containing only the main points except when some
minor aspect shows up more strongly than it was originally. It's an
excerpt, not a recording, with a strong emotional content to what's
included and what isn't.
Interesting. Thanks for asking, Dan. It would never have occurred to me
otherwise.
Regards,
Ric
Zara Baxter
wrote:
>1) Do you think in words?
Yes. (I wante to expand this, and realised I couldn't without
additional questions)
>2) How do you remember? Is your memory primarily visual, auditory,
>kinesthetic, etc.? Or is it abstract -- you remember that someone is
>of a certain numerical height rather than what she looks like? (Note:
>If those two seem exactly equivalent to you, there are things you need
>to know about other ways of thinking. Look up "learning styles.")
I have very good retrieval of memory, whether it be for scent, or
vision, or emotion, or whatever. There's a lot of positional stuff in
there. So if I'm remembering someone, I'll remember her height
relative to mine, and I'll remember her surroundings as though they
were part of her. I'll remember emotional states and reactions and
body language. If asked to describe her as per a police lineup, I'm
hopeless -- I'll remember most clearly the things which are least
important for that sort of thing, but which distinguish people from
each other for me: the way they move, the transition of emotion on
their face, their intensity. I would have to retrieive everything to
be able to say what colour hair she had, unless I'd met her multiple
times.
>3) Do you have any synesthesias? Before you answer "No," go here;
>check the definition of synesthesia, then check the types of
>synesthesia.
No.
>4) How do you usually get things done? If you always write out a
>detailed work plan for making the bed, then writing a novel in one
>draft without an outline probably isn't for you. Conversely, if you
>cook finicky dishes without recipes, starting with a detailed outline
>isn't for you.
I'm not a listmaker, and I prefer to make dishes without recipes (I
retrieve the memory of flavours, and combine them in my head to figure
new combinations out), but I usually write from scene-by-scene
outline, with supplementary dialogue and notes, so I'm not sure your
last line is going to hold true in all instances.
>5) What interests you when you read fiction?
Dialogue.
How and why the characters change.
Loose prose that carries me through the story.
>6) How do you believe societies work?
By being comprised of individuals, families, troops and tribes. Each
with their own means of survival, perpetuation and growth. All of the
above interacting with the environment and resources, with limitations
and opportunities. I picture society as a freeflowing, everchanging
thing that nevertheless always meets the criteria for survival of
individuals, families, troops and tribes. Using troop to mean
somewhat-family-related-group and tribe to mean somewhat-goal-related-
group.
>7) What did you learn in school which isn't true?
Everything, I think.
Everything requires qualifiers and corollories.
How do you see these questions as helping work out my way to write?
Except question 4, where I work counterintuitively, I'd be interested
in seeing why each question is in the list.
Zara
--
Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine
Your ticket to fun, lighthearted science fiction
www.andromedaspaceways.com
Dan Goodman
> On Sun, 26 Jun 2005 22:38:16 -0500, Dan Goodman
> <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote in
> <news:42bf74ac$0$40891$8046...@newsreader.iphouse.net> in
> rec.arts.sf.composition:
>
> [...]
>
> > 3) Do you have any synesthesias? Before you answer "No," go here;
> > check the definition of synesthesia, then check the types of
> > synesthesia.
>
> Missing URL.
http://home.comcast.net/~sean.day/index.html
>
> > 4) How do you usually get things done? If you always write out a
> > detailed work plan for making the bed, then writing a novel in one
> > draft without an outline probably isn't for you. Conversely, if you
> > cook finicky dishes without recipes, starting with a detailed
> > outline isn't for you.
>
> At the last minute, under extreme time pressure!
>
> [...]
>
> Brian
--
Mary K. Kuhner
Dan Goodman <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:
>1) Do you think in words?
>2) How do you remember? Is your memory primarily visual, auditory,
>kinesthetic, etc.? Or is it abstract -- you remember that someone is
>of a certain numerical height rather than what she looks like? (Note:
>If those two seem exactly equivalent to you, there are things you need
>to know about other ways of thinking. Look up "learning styles.")
I think in, and remember in, words and feelings--emotions, not
usually sensations. I've been trying to keep a diary of my aikido
training: I can give you nearly verbatam conversations or explanations,
I can tell you what I was feeling and what I guessed other people were
feeling, but whether the hand was palm up or palm down...that's harder.
And when I do remember it, generally I discover that I've assigned
mental names to common repeated patterns and I'm remembering by name.
Today's entry says "Shomen on shomen; swizzle; tenkan; toss." I could
probably reconstruct the throw from that, but blimey, it's not a
description! And reading it, I remember something about what the
experience felt like, but I don't see the throw, nor do I kinesthetically
"visualize" it--both of those take a severe effort of concentration
and reconstruction.
It may be getting a bit easier with practice.
My boss is frequently disgusted with me because I remember the innovative
idea from a scientific talk, but not the speaker's name or institution,
and sometimes not the organism in question, and almost never the numbers.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Zeborah
> Loose prose that carries me through the story.
What do you mean by loose prose?
Zeborah
--
(No facts were harmed in the making of this post.)
http://www.geocities.com/zeborahnz/
David Friedman
mkku...@kingman.gs.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
> My boss is frequently disgusted with me because I remember the innovative
> idea from a scientific talk, but not the speaker's name or institution,
> and sometimes not the organism in question, and almost never the numbers.
>
My wife concluded long ago that I file people not by name or appearance
but by conversation.
--
Remove NOPSAM to email
www.daviddfriedman.com
David Friedman
"Dan Goodman" <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:
> 1) Do you think in words?
Only sometimes. Sometimes in ideas/concepts/logical structures.
> 2) How do you remember? Is your memory primarily visual, auditory,
> kinesthetic, etc.? Or is it abstract -- you remember that someone is
> of a certain numerical height rather than what she looks like? (Note:
> If those two seem exactly equivalent to you, there are things you need
> to know about other ways of thinking. Look up "learning styles.")
I think abstract. Not visual, not auditory. I can do kinesthetic
imagination, working out fight scenes, but I don't think I have a
kinesthetic memory.
> 3) Do you have any synesthesias? Before you answer "No," go here;
> check the definition of synesthesia, then check the types of
> synesthesia.
Go where?
> 4) How do you usually get things done? If you always write out a
> detailed work plan for making the bed, then writing a novel in one
> draft without an outline probably isn't for you. Conversely, if you
> cook finicky dishes without recipes, starting with a detailed outline
> isn't for you.
I never write out a detailed work plan. I make plans in my head,
occasionally a todo list on PDA, generally ignored. I plotted a novel in
my head, then told it as a story, outlining after each evening's
storytelling, then wrote the whole thing down from memory plus outline
in a month or two. My cooking is sometimes without a recipe, sometimes
with, but I routinely modify recipes.
> 5) What interests you when you read fiction?
The story. The characters. The ideas. The society. Probably in about
that order.
> 6) How do you believe societies work?
By decentralized coordination of various sorts.
> 7) What did you learn in school which isn't true?
I was taught a variety of things that weren't true, but as far as I know
I didn't end up believing any of them.
Zara Baxter
>Zara Baxter <za...@vile-temptress.org> wrote:
>
>> Loose prose that carries me through the story.
>
>What do you mean by loose prose?
Not too dense. :)
More seriously though, there's a certain level of information per
paragraph that inhibits my ability to enjoy story qua story, and makes
me start appreciating it as prose styling instead.
It's dependant on word choice, style,simplicity of phrasing and ratio
of description to other elements. It's also, far more prosaicly, about
how fast I can read it, and thus how much I experience the book as
immersion/experience rather than as book.
Iain M Banks wobbles back and forth across the line. Mary Gentle is
just on the loose prose side of it, but I have to shift gears slightly
to read her. Anne Bishop, Stephen King and Terry Pratchett are masters
of loose prose.
It's possible to be too loose, but I'm having trouble thinking of an
example.
Sea Wasp
> 1) Do you think in words?
Depends on how you mean that. I have fully-formed concepts, some of
which I cannot put into words, but when I'm writing I think in words
(which makes the concepts which are difficult to put into words a PITA
when I have to write about them.
>
> 2) How do you remember? Is your memory primarily visual, auditory,
> kinesthetic, etc.? Or is it abstract -- you remember that someone is
> of a certain numerical height rather than what she looks like? (Note:
> If those two seem exactly equivalent to you, there are things you need
> to know about other ways of thinking. Look up "learning styles.")
I remember things based on the elements that were significant. If
it's a kinesthetic event, I remember it as a physical sensation; if
it's a visual thing, I remember images; if it's a book, I remember
events, words, images it brought to mind, etc. All things are also
remembered as facts -- i.e., I saw X, I felt X, I did X.
>
> 3) Do you have any synesthesias? Before you answer "No," go here;
> check the definition of synesthesia, then check the types of
> synesthesia.
I have some ABILITY to do this at will -- i.e., assign a color to a
smell or so on -- but it's not something I do naturally.
>
> 4) How do you usually get things done?
Preferably with a lot of time directly assigned to that task and
nothing else. I hate interruptions and don't work nearly as well when
diverted.
>
> 5) What interests you when you read fiction?
Primarily the events and cool ideas. Characters are very much
secondary unless they drive the action BY their character.
>
> 6) How do you believe societies work?
>
I'm not even sure I know what you mean by the question.
> 7) What did you learn in school which isn't true?
>
Nothing, AFAIK. School taught me virtually nothing anyway, at least
until college.
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/seawasp/
Logan Kearsley
news:42bf74ac$0$40891$8046...@newsreader.iphouse.net...
>
> 1) Do you think in words?
Yes, but not exclusively. I also think in images, and if I'm thinking of a
concept for which I do not have the appropriate word, or cannot recall the
appropriate word, it is inserted into my stream of thought quite seamlessly
as a non-verbal unit. I don't think in words fast enough to do on-the-fly
conversations that are more than a few words back-and-forth, often because
of the "no word for concept" problem, so I spend a lot of spare processing
cycles on working out all foreseeable branches that a current or future
conversation could take so as to have replies ready when necessary.
> 2) How do you remember? Is your memory primarily visual, auditory,
> kinesthetic, etc.? Or is it abstract -- you remember that someone is
> of a certain numerical height rather than what she looks like? (Note:
> If those two seem exactly equivalent to you, there are things you need
> to know about other ways of thinking. Look up "learning styles.")
Primarily visual, secondarily abstract- Frex, I can remember scenes very
vividly, and reconstruct them in my head from any viewpoint, but I remember
people's words and the sounds of their voices completely independently, so
when remembering a conversation I can call up a transcript and run through
it in my head, but to make it sound in my minds ear like it did with the
original participants, I have to make a conscious effort to superimpose
their voice patterns over my memory of the words. Strangely, I can recognize
faces better than I can recall names, but I have extreme difficulty
constructing a mental image of a face.
> 3) Do you have any synesthesias? Before you answer "No," go here;
> check the definition of synesthesia, then check the types of
> synesthesia.
None that result in an actual additional sensation, although I associate
just about everything with colors.
> 4) How do you usually get things done? If you always write out a
> detailed work plan for making the bed, then writing a novel in one
> draft without an outline probably isn't for you. Conversely, if you
> cook finicky dishes without recipes, starting with a detailed outline
> isn't for you.
I make a plan in my head of what I want the end product to be like, and then
I start doing the things that will eventually add up to that goal. I may
take breaks (and usually do on large things) of my own accord, but
interruptions are incredibly annoying and mess up my ability to continue.
> 5) What interests you when you read fiction?
Nifty ideas and engaging stories.
> 6) How do you believe societies work?
Ehm... by noting the fact that some of them do empirically?
> 7) What did you learn in school which isn't true?
Nothing, that I know of. But they sure tried to teach me a lot of untrue
stuff. More than 50% of the stuff they teach is untrue, I'd estimate.
-l.
------------------------------------
My inbox is a sacred shrine, none shall enter that are not worthy.
Patricia C. Wrede
news:ddfr-4A8D01.0...@news.isp.giganews.com...
> In article <42bf74ac$0$40891$8046...@newsreader.iphouse.net>,
> "Dan Goodman" <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:
>
>> 1) Do you think in words?
>
> Only sometimes. Sometimes in ideas/concepts/logical structures.
Sometimes words, sometimes other things
>
>> 2) How do you remember? Is your memory primarily visual, auditory,
>> kinesthetic, etc.? Or is it abstract -- you remember that someone is
>> of a certain numerical height rather than what she looks like? (Note:
>> If those two seem exactly equivalent to you, there are things you need
>> to know about other ways of thinking. Look up "learning styles.")
>
> I think abstract. Not visual, not auditory. I can do kinesthetic
> imagination, working out fight scenes, but I don't think I have a
> kinesthetic memory.
Different ways for different things. I discovered this when I read a book a
while back on organizing your desk; the theory was, quite sensibly, that you
should put stuff in places where it's easy for *you* to find, and had a
number of little "tests" to determine whether you remembered where stuff was
by thinking about when you had it last, where you used it last, or what it
looked like. I discovered that I seem to split reference materials evenly
between time and visual (I either scan the desk looking for something that
"looks right" or else I remember when I had it last and get to it that way),
but for tools like scissors and staplers, it's kinesthetic -- I
automatically reach for a *place*, long before I look or think.
>> 3) Do you have any synesthesias? Before you answer "No," go here;
>> check the definition of synesthesia, then check the types of
>> synesthesia.
>
> Go where?
Not to the best of my knowledge.
>> 4) How do you usually get things done? If you always write out a
>> detailed work plan for making the bed, then writing a novel in one
>> draft without an outline probably isn't for you. Conversely, if you
>> cook finicky dishes without recipes, starting with a detailed outline
>> isn't for you.
>
> I never write out a detailed work plan. I make plans in my head,
> occasionally a todo list on PDA, generally ignored. I plotted a novel in
> my head, then told it as a story, outlining after each evening's
> storytelling, then wrote the whole thing down from memory plus outline
> in a month or two. My cooking is sometimes without a recipe, sometimes
> with, but I routinely modify recipes.
Different ways for different stuff. I cook both from recipies and by taste;
I do detailed plot outlines and ignore them; I have a strong analytical
side, but I've also been known to look at a royalty statement and think
"These numbers look funny" and *then* do the analysis that proves they are.
>> 5) What interests you when you read fiction?
>
> The story. The characters. The ideas. The society. Probably in about
> that order.
Mostly the story and characters; sometimes other stuff ranging from ideas
and worldbuilding to theme and style and structure. The ones I come back to
for re-reading tend to have both strong stories *and* strong characters; the
ones I come back to most often have both that and style.
>> 6) How do you believe societies work?
>
> By decentralized coordination of various sorts.
However the people in them agree upon. In other words, I think different
societies work different ways for different reasons.
>> 7) What did you learn in school which isn't true?
>
> I was taught a variety of things that weren't true, but as far as I know
> I didn't end up believing any of them.
True in what sense? Physics and biology have come a long way since my
school days; quite a bit of what I was taught then has turned out not to be
the case. There was also quite a lot of stuff that was over-simplified or
one-sided or strongly culturally biased. But so far as I know there weren't
any deliberate falsehoods.
I'm not at all sure any of this has much to do with one's writing process,
as a general thing. People aren't terribly consistent. It's not that hard
to find folks who are very intuitive in one are of their lives, like rearing
their children, but very analytical in other areas, like handling their
money. I'd expect creative process(es) to be similarly diverse, and to vary
independently from the ways people work in other areas of their lives.
Patricia C. Wrede
David Friedman
"Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
> >> 6) How do you believe societies work?
> >
> > By decentralized coordination of various sorts.
>
> However the people in them agree upon. In other words, I think different
> societies work different ways for different reasons.
At a slight tangent ... .
I've been teaching, for the past two years, a seminar on legal systems
very different from ours. One of the intriguing things that comes up is
the way unrelated societies independently invent similar institutions.
There are, for example, common features between classical Athens and
both the Cheyenne Indians and the modern Amish, and between Rominchal
gypsies and saga period Icelanders.
Certainly there are large differences, but I'm not sure "agree upon"
captures why those differences exist or how they come to be. Each of us
decides what to do taking the way other people act more or less for
granted (the technical term for this is "Nash Equilibrium"). When I am
in the U.S. I drive on the right side of the road, in the U.K. on the
left (except when I forget, which is one reason I prefer not to drive in
the U.K.). I am "agreeing" upon those rules only in the very weak sense
of recognizing that the opposite policy is likely to get me killed, and
preferring not to be.
> >> 7) What did you learn in school which isn't true?
> >
> > I was taught a variety of things that weren't true, but as far as I know
> > I didn't end up believing any of them.
>
> True in what sense? Physics and biology have come a long way since my
> school days; quite a bit of what I was taught then has turned out not to be
> the case.
Off hand, I can't think of anything normally taught in high school
physics of which that is true. Did you have examples in mind?
Brian M. Scott
<za...@vile-temptress.org> wrote in
<news:1i8vb1d0erdh0k3nd...@4ax.com> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:
> On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 18:33:10 +1200, zeb...@gmail.com (Zeborah) wrote:
>>Zara Baxter <za...@vile-temptress.org> wrote:
>>> Loose prose that carries me through the story.
>>What do you mean by loose prose?
> Not too dense. :)
> More seriously though, there's a certain level of information per
> paragraph that inhibits my ability to enjoy story qua story, and makes
> me start appreciating it as prose styling instead.
> It's dependant on word choice, style,simplicity of phrasing and ratio
> of description to other elements. It's also, far more prosaicly, about
> how fast I can read it, and thus how much I experience the book as
> immersion/experience rather than as book.
> Iain M Banks wobbles back and forth across the line. Mary Gentle is
> just on the loose prose side of it, but I have to shift gears slightly
> to read her. Anne Bishop, Stephen King and Terry Pratchett are masters
> of loose prose.
Cherryh would be on the dense side of the line, then?
(Certainly Graydon would!) What about McKillip? I don't
find her particularly slow going, but it's hard to avoid
noticing the style.
[...]
Brian
R. L.
wrote:
/snip/
>What comes back to me when I remember something is the mental processes
>that were going on when I acquired the data. If I'm remembering something I
>read, what comes back is the sensation of reading and processing the words.
>If I'm remembering where I put something, what comes back is a clip of the
>object /in situ/, along with a snippet of what I was thinking about at the
>time -- and the snippet is more intense if it's relevant to why I'm looking
>for the object; if it's, say, the no. 2 Phillips screwdriver, I'll also
>remember what I was repairing at the time I put it down.
Hm. I remember part of the process of deciding where to store the widget,
comparing the alternatives, and sometimes the circumstances when I was
deciding -- but can't remember which place I chose! Sometimes I can
remember which criterion I chose "Ok, a really safe place" or "Ok, a really
convenient place" -- but still can't remember the place. Duh.
R.L.
R. L.
>On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 18:33:10 +1200, zeb...@gmail.com (Zeborah) wrote:
>
>>Zara Baxter <za...@vile-temptress.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Loose prose that carries me through the story.
>>
>>What do you mean by loose prose?
This interests me very much too.
>Not too dense. :)
>
>More seriously though, there's a certain level of information per
>paragraph that inhibits my ability to enjoy story qua story, and makes
>me start appreciating it as prose styling instead.
I think I have something similar, but maybe with a third factor also.
>It's dependant on word choice, style,simplicity of phrasing and ratio
>of description to other elements. It's also, far more prosaicly, about
>how fast I can read it, and thus how much I experience the book as
>immersion/experience rather than as book.
Yes!
>Iain M Banks wobbles back and forth across the line. Mary Gentle is
>just on the loose prose side of it, but I have to shift gears slightly
>to read her. Anne Bishop, Stephen King and Terry Pratchett are masters
>of loose prose.
Hm. I don't read Banks or Bishop or much King. I find Pratchett and King
almost opposites, gear-wise.
I have to shift to lower/slower to read Pratchett without missing cool
touches. I had to shift low/slow for RINGWORLD'S CHILDREN to understand
much of anything at all, and have that same impression of some earlier
Niven; he's like a clever conversationalist who deliberately makes each
sentence a puzzle, leaves gaps for me to jump (like Mrs. Morland in
Thirkell's Barsetshire :-), or later Kipling (who compared cutting bits out
of his paragraphs to poking a fire).
>It's possible to be too loose, but I'm having trouble thinking of an
>example.
For me Emma Lathan, Piers Anthony, and Pullman are a little too smooth and
easy, I get carried away by the events and don't notice the prose at all.
I have to skip around in Pullman so he doesn't build up too much
momentum.:-) No such problem with Jane Austen.
Hm, all this suggests an advantage of the old first person framed stories,
where the narrator is part of the story and so are his choices of how to
tell it. Kipling, Collette, Twain. More recently THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET,
ANTHEM, FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON, FORREST GUMP....
R.L.
Patricia C. Wrede
It's been long enough that specific examples evade me; I had some vague
notions about applications of chaos maths, and I'm reasonably sure that the
theories about quarks have changed. Also, I believe there have recently
been some fascinating things done with subatomic particles and time, which I
*do* remember being told were flat-out impossible.
Patricia C. Wrede
Mary K. Kuhner
Patricia C. Wrede <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
[things taught in high school that are no longer considered true]
>It's been long enough that specific examples evade me; I had some vague
>notions about applications of chaos maths, and I'm reasonably sure that the
>theories about quarks have changed. Also, I believe there have recently
>been some fascinating things done with subatomic particles and time, which I
>*do* remember being told were flat-out impossible.
The striking one in biology, I think, is that the thing I was taught
under the name "The Central Dogma of Molecular Biology" turns out not
to be a universal rule. I tend to think the folks that gave it this
grandiose name knew it wouldn't turn out to be universal, and were
laughing at themselves in advance....
("Information flows from DNA through RNA to protein, and never backwards."
Disproved by discovery of reverse transcriptase, which transcribes RNA
into DNA.)
The whole Five Kingdoms of Life taught around that time are deeply
obsolete, though one could argue that they were never anything but
an arbitrary grouping tool and so can't be "true" or "false". The
belief that fungi grouped with plants more closely than with animals,
or that bacteria grouped with each other more closely than with
eukaryotes, on the other hand, really were false.
The modern view of dinosaurs is wildly different than the 60's view.
I have no idea what this contributes to my SF writing, though.
The real question is "What do you know that isn't so?" and pretty much
by definition that's not a question you can introspect.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Dorothy J Heydt
Mary K. Kuhner <mkku...@kingman.gs.washington.edu> wrote:
>
>The whole Five Kingdoms of Life taught around that time are deeply
Oh dear. <clutches head> Back when I was in high school there
were *two*. What's current? Got an URL suitable for dummies?
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
Mary K. Kuhner
Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote:
>In article <d9purs$h97$1...@gnus01.u.washington.edu>,
>Mary K. Kuhner <mkku...@kingman.gs.washington.edu> wrote:
>>The whole Five Kingdoms of Life taught around that time are deeply
>>obsolete...
>Oh dear. <clutches head> Back when I was in high school there
>were *two*. What's current? Got an URL suitable for dummies?
I wish I could show you my t-shirt.
Current thinking is that there are three basic kinds of life,
two of which (Archaebacteria and Eubacteria) are "bacteria" in
everyday English and the third (Eukaryota) is everything else--plants,
animals, fungi, algae, diatoms, slime molds, protozoa of various sorts.
When you draw a tree with branch lengths proportional to the amount
of difference in basic cellular functions, this threefold structure
is very clear, and the differences between plants, animals and fungi
are practically invisible by comparison. The author of my t-shirt
calls them the "crown clades" and just draws them as little tufts of
twigs up around the top. (To him, all the interesting stuff is down
lower; he's a protozoologist.)
The difference between the two kinds of "bacteria" is enormous.
One kind includes most of the commonly encountered bugs; the
other seems to specialize in strange environments including ones
with no oxygen, boiling temperature, high salt, high sulfur,
etc. They are remarkably common, though, because it doesn't take
a very *big* environment to support a bacterium. But they are
not classified by environment; the difference is in things like
the composition of the cell wall and the enzymes used to replicate
DNA.
We are probably more closely related to the Archaebacteria (also
called Archaea) than we are to the Eubacteria, but this is a bit
controversial. Normally you find the root of a tree by considering
at least one critter who's outside the tree; but nothing on
Earth, literally, is outside this one. It's also confused by the
observation that our mitochondria, and plants' chloroplasts, are
enslaved eubacteria (or alternatively, we have been so badly
infected that we are now dependent on our disease!) and there has
been some transfer of genes from the bacterial genome into ours.
So we're chimerae, and the tree of life is more a tangled vine than a
real tree.
I like the theory that an archaebacterium swallowed a eubacterium
and failed to digest it, or was infected by a eubacterium and managed
to tame it, or alternatively the two had sex and it didn't go very
well; and that was our ancestor.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
David Friedman
mkku...@kingman.gs.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
> I have no idea what this contributes to my SF writing, though.
> The real question is "What do you know that isn't so?" and pretty much
> by definition that's not a question you can introspect.
I thought the question was more nearly "what did you know coming out of
High School that you now believe was not so?"
Sea Wasp
It's also confused by the
> observation that our mitochondria, and plants' chloroplasts, are
> enslaved eubacteria (or alternatively, we have been so badly
> infected that we are now dependent on our disease!)
ObSF: Parasite Eve.
Sergeant Tibbs
> Mary K. Kuhner wrote:
> It's also confused by the
>
>> observation that our mitochondria, and plants' chloroplasts, are
>> enslaved eubacteria (or alternatively, we have been so badly infected
>> that we are now dependent on our disease!)
>
>
> ObSF: Parasite Eve.
>
>
Ooh, freaky. I love that game and now I really want to play it again.
Sergeant Tibbs
Sea Wasp
I want to try the sequel. I bought one, but it turned out to be
scratched and I've never found another...
Mark Atwood
>
> I like the theory that an archaebacterium swallowed a eubacterium
> and failed to digest it, or was infected by a eubacterium and managed
> to tame it, or alternatively the two had sex and it didn't go very
> well; and that was our ancestor.
We *are* the fertile offspring of alien sex...
--
Mark Atwood When you do things right, people won't be sure
m...@mark.atwood.name you've done anything at all.
http://mark.atwood.name/ http://www.livejournal.com/users/fallenpegasus
Dan Goodman
> On Sun, 26 Jun 2005 22:38:16 -0500, "Dan Goodman" <dsg...@iphouse.com>
> wrote:
>
> > 1) Do you think in words?
>
> Yes. (I wante to expand this, and realised I couldn't without
> additional questions)
What questions do you need?
> How do you see these questions as helping work out my way to write?
> Except question 4, where I work counterintuitively, I'd be interested
> in seeing why each question is in the list.
They're on the list because I consider them likely to be useful.
Dan Goodman
> On Sun, 26 Jun 2005 22:38:16 -0500, Dan Goodman wrote:
>
> > 2) How do you remember? Is your memory primarily visual, auditory,
> > kinesthetic, etc.? Or is it abstract -- you remember that someone
> > is of a certain numerical height rather than what she looks like?
> > (Note: If those two seem exactly equivalent to you, there are
> > things you need to know about other ways of thinking. Look up
> > "learning styles.")
>
> Second reply to the same post because the first was, upon reflection,
> simply wrong.
>
> What comes back to me when I remember something is the mental
> processes that were going on when I acquired the data. If I'm
> remembering something I read, what comes back is the sensation of
> reading and processing the words. If I'm remembering where I put
> something, what comes back is a clip of the object /in situ/, along
> with a snippet of what I was thinking about at the time -- and the
> snippet is more intense if it's relevant to why I'm looking for the
> object; if it's, say, the no. 2 Phillips screwdriver, I'll also
> remember what I was repairing at the time I put it down.
>
> This comes from remembering /Crossing the Bar/. The memory of the poem
> includes the circumstances under which I memorized it, which involved
> two extremely pretty girls and a serious mistake. Once I realized
> that just starting out "Twilight and evening star..." would bring up
> recollections of a zaftig blonde and a slightly-plump brunette and
> the furniture in a particular living room that no longer exists, I
> started remembering other memories.
>
> The memories are sketchy, containing only the main points except when
> some minor aspect shows up more strongly than it was originally. It's
> an excerpt, not a recording, with a strong emotional content to what's
> included and what isn't.
>
> Interesting. Thanks for asking, Dan. It would never have occurred to
> me otherwise.
Welcome!
Dan Goodman
> "Dan Goodman" <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:
>
> > 1) Do you think in words?
>
> Only sometimes. Sometimes in ideas/concepts/logical structures.
>
> > 2) How do you remember? Is your memory primarily visual, auditory,
> > kinesthetic, etc.? Or is it abstract -- you remember that someone
> > is of a certain numerical height rather than what she looks like?
> > (Note: If those two seem exactly equivalent to you, there are
> > things you need to know about other ways of thinking. Look up
> > "learning styles.")
>
> I think abstract. Not visual, not auditory. I can do kinesthetic
> imagination, working out fight scenes, but I don't think I have a
> kinesthetic memory.
>
> > 3) Do you have any synesthesias? Before you answer "No," go here;
> > check the definition of synesthesia, then check the types of
> > synesthesia.
>
> Go where?
http://home.comcast.net/~sean.day/index.html
Dan Goodman
> I'm not at all sure any of this has much to do with one's writing
> process, as a general thing. People aren't terribly consistent.
> It's not that hard to find folks who are very intuitive in one are of
> their lives, like rearing their children, but very analytical in
> other areas, like handling their money. I'd expect creative
> process(es) to be similarly diverse, and to vary independently from
> the ways people work in other areas of their lives.
One question here is, do _they_ know they're not terribly consistent?
Dan Goodman
> "David Friedman" <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote in message
> >"Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> > > True in what sense? Physics and biology have come a long way
> > > since my school days; quite a bit of what I was taught then has
> > > turned out not to be the case.
> >
> > Off hand, I can't think of anything normally taught in high school
> > physics of which that is true. Did you have examples in mind?
>
> It's been long enough that specific examples evade me; I had some
> vague notions about applications of chaos maths, and I'm reasonably
> sure that the theories about quarks have changed. Also, I believe
> there have recently been some fascinating things done with subatomic
> particles and time, which I do remember being told were flat-out
> impossible.
In cosmology, brane theory is fairly new.
Sergeant Tibbs
> Sergeant Tibbs wrote:
>
>> Sea Wasp wrote:
>>
>>> Mary K. Kuhner wrote:
>>> It's also confused by the
>>>
>>>> observation that our mitochondria, and plants' chloroplasts, are
>>>> enslaved eubacteria (or alternatively, we have been so badly
>>>> infected that we are now dependent on our disease!)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ObSF: Parasite Eve.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Ooh, freaky. I love that game and now I really want to play it again.
>
>
> I want to try the sequel. I bought one, but it turned out to be
> scratched and I've never found another...
>
>
>
>
Do not. Unless you have a liking for games that completely destroy the
story, do not try PEII. The second one felt like an aborted sequel by
one of those fifth-rate writers who completely ignore the ending of the
first in order to make a second. (Sort of like Dragonheart 2, where,
oops--there's another last dragon, never mind the completed constellation.)
Sergeant Tibbs
David Friedman
"Dan Goodman" <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:
> David Friedman wrote:
>
> > "Dan Goodman" <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:
> >
> > > 1) Do you think in words?
> >
> > Only sometimes. Sometimes in ideas/concepts/logical structures.
> >
> > > 2) How do you remember? Is your memory primarily visual, auditory,
> > > kinesthetic, etc.? Or is it abstract -- you remember that someone
> > > is of a certain numerical height rather than what she looks like?
> > > (Note: If those two seem exactly equivalent to you, there are
> > > things you need to know about other ways of thinking. Look up
> > > "learning styles.")
> >
> > I think abstract. Not visual, not auditory. I can do kinesthetic
> > imagination, working out fight scenes, but I don't think I have a
> > kinesthetic memory.
> >
> > > 3) Do you have any synesthesias? Before you answer "No," go here;
> > > check the definition of synesthesia, then check the types of
> > > synesthesia.
> >
> > Go where?
>
> http://home.comcast.net/~sean.day/index.html
So far as I can tell, the answer is "no."
Julian Flood
"Mary K. Kuhner" < wrote
> to tame it, or alternatively the two had sex and it didn't go very
> well; and that was our ancestor.
<gloomily> Nothing changes...
JF
Bill Swears
> 1) Do you think in words?
Helen Keller asserted that her first real thought came to her with
learning her first word. A lot of psych types believe intelligence is
seated in the ability to codify impressions, so from that perspective,
you can't think except through language.
on the note, I knew a trilingual german lady a number of years ago who
said she tended to react to things from different emotional sets
depending on whether she was speaking German, French, or English.
Actually, she also spoke latin, but never claimed that as a language.
>
> 2) How do you remember? Is your memory primarily visual, auditory,
> kinesthetic, etc.? Or is it abstract -- you remember that someone is
> of a certain numerical height rather than what she looks like? (Note:
> If those two seem exactly equivalent to you, there are things you need
> to know about other ways of thinking. Look up "learning styles.")
Day to day, I'm very visual. But scents send me off into all kinds of
nostalgic reactions. Oddly, my sense of touch virtually never brings
back emotional memories. Maybe as a pilot I spent so long using touch
to do things where emotions don't pay off, I've somehow blocked that
channel.
>
> 3) Do you have any synesthesias? Before you answer "No," go here;
> check the definition of synesthesia, then check the types of
> synesthesia.
Not so I've noticed.
>
> 4) How do you usually get things done? If you always write out a
> detailed work plan for making the bed, then writing a novel in one
> draft without an outline probably isn't for you. Conversely, if you
> cook finicky dishes without recipes, starting with a detailed outline
> isn't for you.
I write a chapter outline in advance, then try hard to keep my
characters on track. They take on lives of their own very quickly.
Usually though, I find they just get to the same end through different
means than I initially expected. (I expected her to climb the mountain
because it was there. She started up it because her heinous x told her
she'd never make it, changed her mind when she realized she was risking
her life to prove a point to a guy she'd never talk to again, and
finally went the rest of the way up the mountain so she wouldn't look a
loser. Most of us would rather die than be seen as foolish.)
>
> 5) What interests you when you read fiction?
How people can take an essentially benign condition and turn it into a
shooting war. A pig wanders off one unmarked piece of territory onto
another and dies. pretty soon it's the beginnings of a border war. Is
the holy trinity three, or one? Did mankind descend from apes?
Another is what I consider my archetypal hero. He gets into the fight
because he cannot turn away, but he has absolutely no reason to suspect
he'll either succeed or survive. One man against insurmountable odds,
but he goes on, even believing he must fail? That takes careful
storytelling, because anybody with sense has to have no choices left
before they'll take on the hopeless and terminal cause alone.
>
> 6) How do you believe societies work?
>
I've seen no evidence at all that they do in the long term. I think
social structures collapse and are rebuilt, and populations suffer and
bloom based on where humanity is in that cycle.
> 7) What did you learn in school which isn't true?
>
1. the traditional food pyramid, 2. that forced busing and affirmative
action would fix racial inequality in a finite period of time. 3. that
watergate had stripped the blinders from the American people and we'd
never again let our government play power games while we sat complacent,
believing the government must know best. 4. that the earth formed over
billions of years, when obviously it's only 6000 and change old. (Who is
this guy, and is he joking?)
sharkey
>
> 1) Do you think in words?
Mostly, although some problems are more tractable in geometry, so
I bludgeon words into submission and turn things around in my head
instead.
> 2) How do you remember? Is your memory primarily visual, auditory,
> kinesthetic, etc.?
My memory is very dubious ... but numbers stick well, for some
reason, so I remember credit card numbers even if I don't try to,
and I can often recall, if looking for a quote in a book, roughly
where on the page I saw it (but not what page it was on, which would
be more useful ...)
> 3) Do you have any synesthesias? Before you answer "No," go here;
> check the definition of synesthesia, then check the types of
> synesthesia.
Whenever I try to talk about flavour I end up talking about
colour.
> 4) How do you usually get things done?
Haphazardly and while procrastinating about something else.
> 5) What interests you when you read fiction?
Everything! The setting, the characters, nifty ideas, trickily
used words. The suspense, not just of if something will happen,
but why it will happen, how it will happen and how it will be
described. Which is probably why spoilers have never bothered
me.
> 6) How do you believe societies work?
Haphazardly.
> 7) What did you learn in school which isn't true?
Most of it. On the other hand, most of it wasn't false
either: you can only ever learn approximations of most things
anyway, so I don't hold it against them.
-----sharks
sharkey
> In article <IIrnv...@kithrup.com>,
> Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote:
> >In article <d9purs$h97$1...@gnus01.u.washington.edu>,
> >Mary K. Kuhner <mkku...@kingman.gs.washington.edu> wrote:
>
> >>The whole Five Kingdoms of Life taught around that time are deeply
> >>obsolete...
>
> >Oh dear. <clutches head> Back when I was in high school there
> >were *two*. What's current? Got an URL suitable for dummies?
>
> I wish I could show you my t-shirt.
Something like this? :
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/alllife/threedomains.html
And viruses are off the chart entirely, right?
-----sharks
Patricia C. Wrede
news:42c0b1bf$0$40899$8046...@newsreader.iphouse.net...
> Patricia C. Wrede wrote:
>
>> I'm not at all sure any of this has much to do with one's writing
>> process, as a general thing. People aren't terribly consistent.
>> It's not that hard to find folks who are very intuitive in one are of
>> their lives, like rearing their children, but very analytical in
>> other areas, like handling their money. I'd expect creative
>> process(es) to be similarly diverse, and to vary independently from
>> the ways people work in other areas of their lives.
>
> One question here is, do _they_ know they're not terribly consistent?
Some do, some don't. I don't see that it matters a whole lot. If creative
process varies independently of the ways people work in other areas of their
lives, then you aren't going to be able to come up with a bunch of questions
about how people work in other areas of their lives that enables you to
predict with any accuracy how their creative processes are going to work.
People who have had to struggle to figure out how their creative process
works usually, IME, are aware that it works rather differently from how they
do other things. But only "usually," not always. People who aren't
terribly introspective or self-examining tend not to bother bringing their
consistency or inconsistency up to conscious level. They do what works, and
there's and end on't.
Back when I had a day job, the company decided to do one of those "working
style" surveys to improve productivity. The group they hired explained
everything very carefully to us. Among the things they emphasized was that
the way people worked on their job was frequently quite different from the
way they did the same sorts of things at home, and that nobody was to get
upset because their "working style" didn't fit their self-image or was
different from what all their friends told them. Some people still did get
upset, of course. But what interested me was the number of folks who had
*serioiusly* different work styles depending on where they were and what
they were doing. People in the finance department (mine) came up
overwhelmingly analytical at-work, but several had the exact opposite style
in their home/personal lives; some of the "creative" folks in marketing were
highly analytical at home...and quite a lot of them hadn't realized it at
all until they got the survey results. But they all switched back and forth
just fine, depending on what was needed/appropriate at the time.
Patricia C. Wrede
Mary K. Kuhner
sharkey <sha...@zoic.org> wrote:
>And viruses are off the chart entirely, right?
The different viruses are almost surely not related to each
other. Probably they are related to their hosts; they are
cellular genes which have gone rogue and learned to move from
host to host. (But this is hard to prove conclusively,
because it's also possible that virus-like host genes are
viral in origin.)
In any case, there's no way to put them on a tree depicting
basic cellular machinery, because they haven't got any.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Dan Goodman
> Dan Goodman wrote:
> > 1) Do you think in words?
>
> Helen Keller asserted that her first real thought came to her with
> learning her first word. A lot of psych types believe intelligence
> is seated in the ability to codify impressions, so from that
> perspective, you can't think except through language.
Well, either those experts are wrong -- or they'll need to explain why
Albert Einstein (among others) _thought_ they didn't think in words.
And they'll need to explain how animals are able to do what looks very
much like thinking, without language.
> on the note, I knew a trilingual german lady a number of years ago
> who said she tended to react to things from different emotional sets
> depending on whether she was speaking German, French, or English.
> Actually, she also spoke latin, but never claimed that as a language.
Yes, but do _you_ think in language?
> >
> > 4) How do you usually get things done? If you always write out a
> > detailed work plan for making the bed, then writing a novel in one
> > draft without an outline probably isn't for you. Conversely, if you
> > cook finicky dishes without recipes, starting with a detailed
> > outline isn't for you.
>
> I write a chapter outline in advance, then try hard to keep my
> characters on track. They take on lives of their own very quickly.
> Usually though, I find they just get to the same end through
> different means than I initially expected. (I expected her to climb
> the mountain because it was there. She started up it because her
> heinous x told her she'd never make it, changed her mind when she
> realized she was risking her life to prove a point to a guy she'd
> never talk to again, and finally went the rest of the way up the
> mountain so she wouldn't look a loser. Most of us would rather die
> than be seen as foolish.)
And how do you do things other than writing?
R. L.
wrote:
>
>1) Do you think in words?
Not very seriously. Words are tools of communication, not of thought.
>2) How do you remember? Is your memory primarily visual, auditory,
>kinesthetic, etc.?
Kinesthetic, some visual. Derived keno, some NLP books called it.
> Or is it abstract -- you remember that someone is
>of a certain numerical height rather than what she looks like?
I'd imagine standing next to her and feel whether my neck bent up or down
to meet her eyes.
Is abstract really a fourth category, or does it reduce to some faint or,
er, abstract images (like Euclid's lines and planes) or to words?
>3) Do you have any synesthesias? Before you answer "No," go here;
>check the definition of synesthesia, then check the types of
>synesthesia.
When I try to read about synesthesia, I usually get a headache. The words
are oddly all black. Cross-connections of senses matter dreadfully to me,
but I don't know whether mine rise to the level of yours. ("It's a deep
purple sort of smell." -- "What nonsense." -- But Caspian said, "I know
what you mean." [condensed from memory from DAWN TREADER, iirc.])
>4) How do you usually get things done?
I like your putting it that way. 'Writing' a poem or very short story can
be something I do all at once, like writing a letter, simply as writing.
But getting a novella done seems to involve a lot more and different
actions.
I'm not sure that bedmaking or cooking a meal are good comparisons: they're
too short. How I get a several-month project done.... Hm, I don't think of
any comparable ones. Shopping for a major purchase, applying for something
-- those are narrowing things down to a short simple conclusion. Gardening
-- is led by the season.
>5) What interests you when you read fiction?
Oh, dear, something sort of in the direction of synesthesia? Atmosphere?
Mostly something compounded from air, terrain, weather, smells, colors of
the above, food, rhythm of life in that place ... and perhaps an emotion
that is the keynote of it, or could be.... And pattern, rhythm of tropes,
balance of sections.... -- Hm, holding that sort of thing in feeling/mind
all times while writing is quite a strain.
And plot. And clever people. And language, prose: either clever and flashy
like BABEL 17 or Charles Williams, or cleanly embodying fresh air like
Arthur Ransome. (And who else writes his sort of style? Lewis in PILGRIM'S
REGRESS maybe.)
>6) How do you believe societies work?
Malinowski, was it? Ways of coping with survival problems? Some of which
get out of hand, grow into problems of their own?
>7) What did you learn in school which isn't true?
Blue plus yellow makes green? Red blue and yellow are primaries? Not saying
that's not true, just that I've later heard it disputed.
Hard to focus on that question really. I mostly learned things elsewhere
and was pretty sceptical of school material. I do tend to expect writing to
be as easy and clearcut as school work, and B+ is not acceptable. A rough
draft -- is new territory for me.
R.L.
Bill Swears
> Bill Swears wrote:
>
>
>>Dan Goodman wrote:
>>
>>>1) Do you think in words?
>>
>>Helen Keller asserted that her first real thought came to her with
>>learning her first word. A lot of psych types believe intelligence
>>is seated in the ability to codify impressions, so from that
>>perspective, you can't think except through language.
>
>
> Well, either those experts are wrong -- or they'll need to explain why
> Albert Einstein (among others) _thought_ they didn't think in words.
>
> And they'll need to explain how animals are able to do what looks very
> much like thinking, without language.
Wrong or right, they have a leg to stand on. I visualize a lot, but
language becomes the link that holds the imagery together, and becomes
both the anchor to hold things together and the millstone around my neck
that stops me from seeing alternate perspectives.
But if I had develop concepts in words, my thoughts would be as slow as
my reading speed. Many would argue they are, but they have no idea how
slow a reader I am.
>
>
>>on the note, I knew a trilingual german lady a number of years ago
>>who said she tended to react to things from different emotional sets
>>depending on whether she was speaking German, French, or English.
>>Actually, she also spoke latin, but never claimed that as a language.
>
>
> Yes, but do _you_ think in language?
>
I think I start with a combination of concept and imagery, but when I
truly dwell on any given issue, it comes out like script. So, I start
with the image, and encode it in words.
>
>>>4) How do you usually get things done? If you always write out a
>>>detailed work plan for making the bed, then writing a novel in one
>>>draft without an outline probably isn't for you. Conversely, if you
>>>cook finicky dishes without recipes, starting with a detailed
>>>outline isn't for you.
>>
>>I write a chapter outline in advance, then try hard to keep my
>>characters on track. They take on lives of their own very quickly.
>>Usually though, I find they just get to the same end through
>>different means than I initially expected. (I expected her to climb
>>the mountain because it was there. She started up it because her
>>heinous x told her she'd never make it, changed her mind when she
>>realized she was risking her life to prove a point to a guy she'd
>>never talk to again, and finally went the rest of the way up the
>>mountain so she wouldn't look a loser. Most of us would rather die
>>than be seen as foolish.)
>
>
> And how do you do things other than writing?
Cooking is a good example. I have a half dozen recipes that started
from an idea. But they're recipes now, because I eventually wrote them
down so I could repeat them.
I was very good at administration in the USCG, but I hated it. I kept
an organizer and wrote down tasks with a little square in front of them,
then checked the square when I finally accomplished the task. I don't
use task lists unless I'm in a very demanding environment. Since
retirement, I have my wife put my scheduled events in her organizer so
she'll know where I'm going to be, and that's the only organizer that
sees the light of day here.
However, I still consistently write lists before I leave my house so
I'll get everything I need finished. Since we live several miles from
the nearest real town, and half hour to forty minutes from anyplace in
Anchorage I'm likely to go,I usually don't go out without several goals.
Bill
R. L.
<pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
/snip/
>Back when I had a day job, the company decided to do one of those "working
>style" surveys to improve productivity. The group they hired explained
>everything very carefully to us. Among the things they emphasized was that
>the way people worked on their job was frequently quite different from the
>way they did the same sorts of things at home, and that nobody was to get
>upset because their "working style" didn't fit their self-image or was
>different from what all their friends told them. Some people still did get
>upset, of course. But what interested me was the number of folks who had
>*serioiusly* different work styles depending on where they were and what
>they were doing. People in the finance department (mine) came up
>overwhelmingly analytical at-work, but several had the exact opposite style
>in their home/personal lives;
Even in their personal finance stuff?
>some of the "creative" folks in marketing were
>highly analytical at home...and quite a lot of them hadn't realized it at
>all until they got the survey results. But they all switched back and forth
>just fine, depending on what was needed/appropriate at the time.
Were none of them analytical about their creative work?
R.L.
Bill Swears
> Were none of them analytical about their creative work?
>
>
> R.L.
>
I as a pilot and office in the USCG for some years. I found that I had
a very hard time switch from analytical to creative during the evening.
I could either study my flight manual, or write my stories, but not
both. However, the change of world between work and home was enough to
allow me to change viewpoints. The mind works in interesting ways.
Bill
Bill Swears
> R. L. wrote:
>
>> Were none of them analytical about their creative work?
>>
>>
>> R.L.
>>
>
> I was a pilot and officer in the USCG for some years. I found that I had
> a very hard time switch from analytical to creative during the evening.
> I could either study my flight manual, or write my stories, but not
> both. However, the change of world between work and home was enough to
> allow me to change viewpoints. The mind works in interesting ways.
>
> Bill
I corrected the first line of my response, which should have said what
it does above.
Bill, again.
Patricia C. Wrede
news:ct83c11b1e3gom982...@4ax.com...
> On Tue, 28 Jun 2005 10:11:28 -0500, "Patricia C. Wrede"
> <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
> /snip/
>
>>Back when I had a day job, the company decided to do one of those "working
>>style" surveys to improve productivity. The group they hired explained
>>everything very carefully to us. Among the things they emphasized was
>>that
>>the way people worked on their job was frequently quite different from the
>>way they did the same sorts of things at home, and that nobody was to get
>>upset because their "working style" didn't fit their self-image or was
>>different from what all their friends told them. Some people still did
>>get
>>upset, of course. But what interested me was the number of folks who had
>>*serioiusly* different work styles depending on where they were and what
>>they were doing. People in the finance department (mine) came up
>>overwhelmingly analytical at-work, but several had the exact opposite
>>style
>>in their home/personal lives;
>
> Even in their personal finance stuff?
Yup. You wouldn't *believe* the people who are perfectly capable of keeping
accurate records for several multi-million-or-more subsidiaries, analyzing
the results, and producing reasonably reliable forecasts at work, but who
can't be bothered to balance their personal checkbooks at home and who just
sort of randomly send off a check every now and then to the gas and electric
companies because they can't remember how much they owe and can't find the
bills...or worse yet, who *intend* to randomly send off a check, but who
don't get around to it until the gas/electric has *been* shut off. And
let's not even get into taxes or budgeting.
>>some of the "creative" folks in marketing were
>>highly analytical at home...and quite a lot of them hadn't realized it at
>>all until they got the survey results. But they all switched back and
>>forth
>>just fine, depending on what was needed/appropriate at the time.
>
> Were none of them analytical about their creative work?
I think there was one. The different styles aren't absolutely correlated
with different work departments; they're just *highly* correlated. And
there's no particular correlation at all between home-style and work-style
that I remember anybody mentioning. In other words, you found the financial
departments coming up "analytical" for most, but not all, of their members;
you found the marketing/publicity departments coming up "creative" for most,
but not all, of their members; you found the "home styles" of people in
finance to have the same sort of distribution among the different types as
for the people in marketing/publicity, regardless of which department they
worked in or which style they used at the office.
This was, do remember, a good 20 years ago, and I'm quite sure there's been
a lot of development and additional data available since then, and quite
possibly more sophisticated measuring tools than what they used then. Or
perhaps the whole theory has been discredited completely. But this is what
I remember. And I can testify first-hand to the
financial-people-who-are-greatly-analytical-and-organized-at-work,-but-totally-impulsive-and-disorganized-at-home
types. I knew quite a few then, and I know more of them now. I find them
more than a bit croggling, because I'm most definitely not one of them...
Patricia C. Wrede
Remus Shepherd
> 1) Do you think in words?
Only when thinking in dialogue. Otherwise, no.
> 2) How do you remember? Is your memory primarily visual, auditory,
> kinesthetic, etc.?
Primarily visual. Which is unfortunate, as my vision is so flawed.
To supplement my memory I use mnemonic devices ('Andy is the one with Acne')
but that's a conscious thing. My subconscience works visually.
> 3) Do you have any synesthesias? Before you answer "No," go here;
> check the definition of synesthesia, then check the types of
> synesthesia.
Yes, I can feel textures at a distance. When I see objects with a
distinct texture I often feel the texture on my fingertips or face. This
isn't witchcraft, it's entirely imaginary, as I've proved by experimenting
with things that had misleading textures. Just an overactive visual
imagination.
> 4) How do you usually get things done?
Make lists, break projects into smaller parts, set up timetables, etc.
> 5) What interests you when you read fiction?
*New ideas*. And it's depressing how few works of fiction contain them.
> 6) How do you believe societies work?
By dynamic equilibrium and by cycle. Most of the time the conflicting
forces in a society are in equilibrium. When the equilibrium fails it almost
always fails in the direction of the Machiavellian political cycle.
> 7) What did you learn in school which isn't true?
'The primary theme of rock and roll music is rebellion'. Rubbish. :)
... ...
Remus Shepherd <re...@panix.com>
Pat Bowne
>financial-people-who-are-greatly-analytical-and-organized-at-work,-but-totally-impulsive-and-disorganized-at-home
>types.
I'm not a financial person at work, but I certainly keep better track of the
school's money than I do of my own. I gave up balancing my own checkbook
years ago, when I found that the bank said I had 10x as much money as I
thought I had; their way of doing things was working so much better than
mine...
Pat
R. L.
>Dan Goodman wrote:
>> Bill Swears wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Dan Goodman wrote:
>>>
>>>>1) Do you think in words?
>>>
>>>Helen Keller asserted that her first real thought came to her with
>>>learning her first word.
She might be a good data point. :-) But first I'd want her definition of
'thought'.
>>>A lot of psych types believe intelligence
>>>is seated in the ability to codify impressions, so from that
>>>perspective, you can't think except through language.
Hmh. Define 'codify' and 'impressions'?
>> Well, either those experts are wrong -- or they'll need to explain why
>> Albert Einstein (among others) _thought_ they didn't think in words.
>>
>> And they'll need to explain how animals are able to do what looks very
>> much like thinking, without language.
/snip/
> I visualize a lot, but
>language becomes the link that holds the imagery together, and becomes
>both the anchor to hold things together and the millstone around my neck
>that stops me from seeing alternate perspectives.
Yes. That's why I'm leery of letting words do the thinking. Of course a
badly-chosen image can be a millstone too, but not as bad for me; easier to
scrap, for one thing..
>But if I had develop concepts in words, my thoughts would be as slow as
>my reading speed.
Ok ... so 'developing concepts' is one thing, and thinking is another? (Not
to equate 'concepts' with 'thoughts'.)
/snip/
>> Yes, but do _you_ think in language?
>>
>I think I start with a combination of concept and imagery, but when I
>truly dwell on any given issue, it comes out like script. So, I start
>with the image, and encode it in words.
For me that's a key distinction. I have to use words to describe and label
the image (and to record it all), but it's the images themselves I
manipulate for the actual 'thinking'.
/snip/
>>>I write a chapter outline in advance, then try hard to keep my
>>>characters on track. They take on lives of their own very quickly.
>>>Usually though, I find they just get to the same end through
>>>different means than I initially expected. (I expected her to climb
>>>the mountain because it was there. She started up it because her
>>>heinous x told her she'd never make it, changed her mind when she
>>>realized she was risking her life to prove a point to a guy she'd
>>>never talk to again, and finally went the rest of the way up the
>>>mountain so she wouldn't look a loser. Most of us would rather die
>>>than be seen as foolish.)
This sounds somewhat like something I do sometimes. :-) I make an outline
or scene summary notes, rather like drawing a FRP room on a map. I know the
characters are coming in the south door and I want them to exit by the
north door after finding the Magic 10-Sided Jewel. In this stage I'm
looking down on the map, putting things in various places, to make that
result likely, and thinking mostly about how it relates to things in other
scenes/rooms.
Then for the actual writing, I switch to Player Character mode, and imagine
myself standing in the south door surveying the room, with no knowledge of
what's behind things, unable to see the north door, etc -- I/he's thinking
only about hiding from pursuing orcs. While I was laying out the room, I'd
forgotten that he'd have orcs on his mind. So what he does is quite
different than my vague idea of what he might do. He doesn't get curious
about the jeweled idol, he hides behind it. -- But somehow my muses guide
the action, so the orcs come in and set off the explosion trap and he
stumbles out the north door, not stopping to remove the pesky pebble that
fell in his boot....
I do get a bit of process whiplash this way.
R.L.
Catja Pafort
<snip fascinating stuff about the Tangled Vine of Life>
> The author of my t-shirt
Now _that_ is what I call 'class'.
Catja
sharkey
> >
> > And viruses are off the chart entirely, right?
>
> The different viruses are almost surely not related to each
> other.
So virusness, as it were, likely developed a bajillion times
independantly? Wow.
> Probably they are related to their hosts; they are
> cellular genes which have gone rogue and learned to move from
> host to host. (But this is hard to prove conclusively,
> because it's also possible that virus-like host genes are
> viral in origin.)
Just out of interest, are there any decent pop-sci[*] books on
this kind of thing? It's not a field I know a lot about,
but it's fascinating stuff ...
-----sharks
[*] eg: at that "New Scientist article" level ...
sharkey
>
> Yup. You wouldn't *believe* the people who are perfectly capable of keeping
> accurate records for several multi-million-or-more subsidiaries, analyzing
> the results, and producing reasonably reliable forecasts at work, but who
> can't be bothered to balance their personal checkbooks at home
A friend of mine is a Logistics Manager by profession: his job is to
get resources to the right place at the right time, and get them back
as soon as possible, etc. He does.
Socially, he never turns up anywhere on time, and when he finally gets
there he's got no petrol left, or forgot to pick up any beer, and was
planning on buying some tent pegs somewhere along the way but forgot,
oh and by the way did anyone bring a tyre repair kit because he thinks
he might have picked up a nail three days ago but hasn't checked ...
-----sharks
Zara Baxter
<b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
>On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 17:02:25 +1000, Zara Baxter
><za...@vile-temptress.org> wrote in
><news:1i8vb1d0erdh0k3nd...@4ax.com> in
>rec.arts.sf.composition:
<loose prose>
>> More seriously though, there's a certain level of information per
>> paragraph that inhibits my ability to enjoy story qua story, and makes
>> me start appreciating it as prose styling instead.
>
>> It's dependant on word choice, style,simplicity of phrasing and ratio
>> of description to other elements. It's also, far more prosaicly, about
>> how fast I can read it, and thus how much I experience the book as
>> immersion/experience rather than as book.
>
>> Iain M Banks wobbles back and forth across the line. Mary Gentle is
>> just on the loose prose side of it, but I have to shift gears slightly
>> to read her. Anne Bishop, Stephen King and Terry Pratchett are masters
>> of loose prose.
>
>Cherryh would be on the dense side of the line, then?
>(Certainly Graydon would!) What about McKillip? I don't
>find her particularly slow going, but it's hard to avoid
>noticing the style.
Cherryh is on the dense side -- for her and McKillip, like Mary
Gentle, I can gear-shift my brain into reading to make it seem less
dense. It's .. like adapting to the style, I think. If I prime my
readerbrain, it handles them okay, but if I'm unprepared, I just can't
get into the book. Took me three attempts to finish the first book I
tried for all three.
Zara
Zara Baxter
wrote:
>Zara Baxter wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 26 Jun 2005 22:38:16 -0500, "Dan Goodman" <dsg...@iphouse.com>
>> wrote:
>> > 1) Do you think in words?
>> Yes. (I wante to expand this, and realised I couldn't without
>> additional questions)
>What questions do you need?
I'm not sure. If I knew that, I could have expanded it, I think.
What are you looking for here? What would a "yes" answer tell you? a
"no" answer?
>> How do you see these questions as helping work out my way to write?
>> Except question 4, where I work counterintuitively, I'd be interested
>> in seeing why each question is in the list.
>They're on the list because I consider them likely to be useful.
In what way? I know this sounds like I'm asking the same thing again,
but ... why these questions?
Zara
R. L.
wrote:
>On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 21:04:47 -0500, "Dan Goodman" <dsg...@iphouse.com>
>wrote:
>
>>Zara Baxter wrote:
>>
>>> On Sun, 26 Jun 2005 22:38:16 -0500, "Dan Goodman" <dsg...@iphouse.com>
>>> wrote:
/snip/
>>> How do you see these questions as helping work out my way to write?
>>> Except question 4, where I work counterintuitively, I'd be interested
>>> in seeing why each question is in the list.
>>They're on the list because I consider them likely to be useful.
>
>In what way? I know this sounds like I'm asking the same thing again,
>but ... why these questions?
I'm wondering that too.
R.L.
R. L.
wrote:
>Bill Swears wrote:
>
>> Dan Goodman wrote:
>> > 1) Do you think in words?
>>
>> Helen Keller asserted that her first real thought came to her with
>> learning her first word. A lot of psych types believe intelligence
>> is seated in the ability to codify impressions, so from that
>> perspective, you can't think except through language.
>
>Well, either those experts are wrong -- or they'll need to explain why
>Albert Einstein (among others) _thought_ they didn't think in words.
The others would include Wm James, iirc. Something in PRINCIPLES OF
PSYCHOLOGY about thinking with his neck and throat muscles.
Just came across this:
[[ http://www.aucklandcitylibraries.com/general.aspx?ct=653&id=4038
“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you
want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.“ Albert
Einstein.
“When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion
that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract,
positive thinking.” Albert Einstein. ]]
It's the heading for a rather well written article on a library's home
page, so perhaps the quotes are correct. :-)
R.L.
Gerry Quinn
says...
> Dan Goodman wrote:
> > Bill Swears wrote:
> >>Helen Keller asserted that her first real thought came to her with
> >>learning her first word. A lot of psych types believe intelligence
> >>is seated in the ability to codify impressions, so from that
> >>perspective, you can't think except through language.
> > Well, either those experts are wrong -- or they'll need to explain why
> > Albert Einstein (among others) _thought_ they didn't think in words.
> Wrong or right, they have a leg to stand on. I visualize a lot, but
> language becomes the link that holds the imagery together, and becomes
> both the anchor to hold things together and the millstone around my neck
> that stops me from seeing alternate perspectives.
I think we have two modes - a 2D 'gestalt' mode that links
evolutionarily to the visual system, and a 1D (plus time dimension)
'analytic' mode that links evolutionarily to the auditory system. The
most effective thinkers will be strong in both and able to bring them
to bear on the same problems.
The first system processes images and is probably the main source of
intuitive pattern creation. The second system processes music, speech
(including written text), and governs logic and analysis.
Of course, beings who lack eyes will still have parts of their brain
(or whatever) devoted to mapmaking etc., and those who lack ears will
still have parts devoted to time-dependent signals. Possibly they
would be limited in their capacities compared to humans. If my theory
is correct, beings without eyes should be very logical but unintuitive,
while those without ears should be the opposite.
Humans with defective sight or hearing don't count, as the human brain
is still designed to support both. Maybe there could be some work done
analysing the capabilities of people whose brains are damaged in these
areas, though.
- Gerry Quinn
David Friedman
Gerry Quinn <ger...@DELETETHISindigo.ie> wrote:
> I think we have two modes - a 2D 'gestalt' mode that links
> evolutionarily to the visual system, and a 1D (plus time dimension)
> 'analytic' mode that links evolutionarily to the auditory system. The
> most effective thinkers will be strong in both and able to bring them
> to bear on the same problems.
>
I'm not sure if this is the same thing, but it might be.
I have a friend and ex-colleague who believes our political views are
about the same. I put it that way because, although I find him very
interesting, I also find that we think in very different ways, which
sometimes makes it hard for me to understand him. I think in terms of a
line of argument, he in terms of a web.
So he will be making some line of argument towards conclusion X. At some
stage I point out that the next step doesn't follow, for some reason he
has omitted. He agrees that it doesn't follow from that line but claims
it is true because of a different line of argument, which was off stage
a moment earlier but presumably still in his head.
This is an oversimplified description of the difference--I wouldn't want
to suggest that I am unable to keep more than one idea in my head at a
time. But it feels very much like a difference in kind, with my approach
one dimensional and his two.
Mary K. Kuhner
>> other.
>So virusness, as it were, likely developed a bajillion times
>independantly? Wow.
Not a bajillion. Within one family of viruses they are related;
but the different familes probably aren't. They don't have
a darned thing in common; there are apparently quite a few ways
to say to a cell "While you're at it, bub, could you run off a
few copies of me and package them up?"
I don't know how many families there are; a dozen or so anyway.
Immensely diverse: there are RNA and DNA viruses, ones with only
three genes and ones with dozens of genes, nasties like influenza
which revise their own genome at a ferocious rate....
>Just out of interest, are there any decent pop-sci[*] books on
>this kind of thing? It's not a field I know a lot about,
>but it's fascinating stuff ...
I don't know one off the top of my head. My husband enjoyed
(is that the right word?) _The Hot Zone_ but didn't think too much
of the science. The sequel disappointed him gravely.
I've learned most of my virology from my students at the
yearly International Virus Evolution Workshops. I teach them some
computer methods, and they tell me about their work, which is
*scary*.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Catja Pafort
> Cherryh is on the dense side -- for her and McKillip, like Mary
> Gentle, I can gear-shift my brain into reading to make it seem less
> dense. It's .. like adapting to the style, I think. If I prime my
> readerbrain, it handles them okay, but if I'm unprepared, I just can't
> get into the book. Took me three attempts to finish the first book I
> tried for all three.
I find Cherryh transparent and Mary Gentle hard work. I haven't read
enough McKillip to comment.
Catja
Julian Flood
"R. L." wrote
> >>>Helen Keller asserted that her first real thought came to her
with
> >>>learning her first word.
>
> She might be a good data point. :-) But first I'd want her
definition of
> 'thought'.
I have a short story about this, essentially about someone's words to
self as death intervenes. The body is just the hardware on which the
words run. Serle's Chinese room relates to the problem. It would make
a vicious little playlet, using a face and three coloured lights. I
could call it 'Not Me'.
There is a film of a bonobo... hang on...
/ rat... mazes... psychologists... chimp training... they'd taught
him ideograms, he could say things using loads of pictures on a board,
point at sign gimme and sign banana, gimme banana, they tried the same
experiment with the sweets only using symbols instead of real sweets,
which tray do you want to give to the other chimps and he got it right
every time, pointed to the pictures that said give away the tray
that's nearly empty and gimme the big one... while they were using the
signs he got it right every time, then they went back to the first
system, back to pointing at the real things, and he got it wrong
again, all he could do was point at the biggest number of sweets to
say gimme, not point at the nearly empty tray to say give it away,
odd, why was that, he could do it when his brain was running abstract
symbols, but not when it was dealing with things directly, he could
think when he was using the pictures he used for words, think with
word pictures, think using words, but he couldn't think without
words...
red light, brake.../
Move over, Beckett.
JF
I am fond of the story: in a career-limiting move it was designed to
baffle, exasperate and generally get up the nose of someone who was
sending me lofty and condescending rejections. It suceeded admirably
and provoked a satisfactory amount of steam from ears. It's actually
called 'Words', but it lacks baseball.
Mary K. Kuhner
Julian Flood <j...@floodsnonoclimbersnospam.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
[bonobo]
>odd, why was that, he could do it when his brain was running abstract
>symbols, but not when it was dealing with things directly, he could
>think when he was using the pictures he used for words, think with
>word pictures, think using words, but he couldn't think without
>words...
You might be interested in _Folk Physics for Apes_--it's a lot of
rather dry experimental results but poking out from under them is
some kind of picture of how they think about the physical world,
and it's not the way we do.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Joann Zimmerman
green...@cix.co.uk.invalid says...
> I find Cherryh transparent and Mary Gentle hard work. I haven't read
> enough McKillip to comment.
Whereas I find McKillip transparent, Cherryh sufficiently hard work that
I've taken a pass ever since around _Cyteen_, and Gentle to require
thought but not effort.
--
"I never understood people who don't have bookshelves."
--George Plimpton
Joann Zimmerman jz...@bellereti.com
Bill Swears
I don't think CJ would much like being called either dense or
transparent.
Dorothy J Heydt
Joann Zimmerman <jz...@bellereti.com> wrote:
>In article <1gyzmq5.j5mi561t7g0rgN%green...@cix.co.uk.invalid>,
>green...@cix.co.uk.invalid says...
>
>> I find Cherryh transparent and Mary Gentle hard work. I haven't read
>> enough McKillip to comment.
>
>Whereas I find McKillip transparent, Cherryh sufficiently hard work that
>I've taken a pass ever since around _Cyteen_, and Gentle to require
>thought but not effort.
If you ever want to attempt _Cyteen_ again let me know and I'll
describe my useful workaround for those who dislike infodumps.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
David Friedman
Bill Swears <wsw...@gci.net> wrote:
I'm not sure what "transparent" means in this context, but I have no
difficulty reading Cherryh's writing and occasionally find her prose
strikingly good.
R. L.
mkku...@kingman.gs.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
/snip/
>You might be interested in _Folk Physics for Apes_--it's a lot of
>rather dry experimental results but poking out from under them is
>some kind of picture of how they think about the physical world,
>and it's not the way we do.
Could you tell more?
I remember somewhere an account of some small primate in a room with
nothing to climb on, given a pole in hopes he would use it to knock down a
banana from a stalk hung at the ceiling. Instead he balanced the pole on
end and climbed it before it fell down.
Beings who swing in herds through treetops, having to predict where the
next branch is going to swing back to from whatever the leading monkeys did
with it. ... might make good corporate programmers.
R.L.
Kevin J. Cheek
dsg...@iphouse.com says...
> 1) Do you think in words?
It depends. Sometimes I think in words, sometimes I think by visualizing
an object.
> 2) How do you remember? Is your memory primarily visual, auditory,
> kinesthetic, etc.? Or is it abstract -- you remember that someone is
> of a certain numerical height rather than what she looks like? (Note:
> If those two seem exactly equivalent to you, there are things you need
> to know about other ways of thinking. Look up "learning styles.")
I remember in a mix. Sometimes it's smell. Sometimes it's a tactile
sensation. Sometimes it's a taste, mostly visual, sometimes by words, and
sometimes by numbers. Sometimes it's by an odd chain of references.
There's one event I can date only by remember a famous event that took
place on the same day I went to the dentist. Go figure.
> 3) Do you have any synesthesias? Before you answer "No," go here;
> check the definition of synesthesia, then check the types of
> synesthesia.
Not that I know of.
> 4) How do you usually get things done? If you always write out a
> detailed work plan for making the bed, then writing a novel in one
> draft without an outline probably isn't for you. Conversely, if you
> cook finicky dishes without recipes, starting with a detailed outline
> isn't for you.
Both. The more unfamiliar I am with a project, the more apt I am to make
a detailed list.
> 5) What interests you when you read fiction?
Character interactions. Memorial events. Interesting tidbits thrown in if
it's part of the story. For SF that's science facts. For current or
historical, it's some bit of folkways or historical trivia. For fantasy
it's much the same as historical except it's folkways.
> 6) How do you believe societies work?
As the most efficient means of the society to function. That means it
depends as much on the people as it does technology or lack of it.
> 7) What did you learn in school which isn't true?
Oh, goodness:
1. Thomas Pain was an atheist. Didn't learn he was a deist until I read
"Beyond this Life."
2. WWI Allied pilots didn't use parachutes out of bravado. Except
Rickenbacker wrote that they were denied parachutes from fear they'd
waste airplanes.
3. Jefferson Davis was caught in women's clothing. He wasn't.
4. The two officers usually credited with designing the fork for U.S.
tanks to tear through hedgerows weren't the men who created it. Had an
uncle who drove a tank in WWII who said he knew the enlisted men who came
up with it. When I mentioned what I'd learned in school, he laughed and
said something like "when did you ever hear of an enlisted man getting
credit for anything?" And now I can't remember *any* of the names.
5. Most people in Columbus' day thought the world was flat. They didn't.
They weren't afraid of sailing off the edge of the earth, they were
afraid that Columbus' estimated of the size of the earth was too small.
They were right.
And so on and so forth.
--
-Kevin J. Cheek
Remove corn to send e-mail.
David Goldfarb
For myself, and I guess for Joann also, it isn't a matter of infodumps,
it's a matter of how the prose works on the sentence and paragraph level.
--
David Goldfarb | "Life is a simile."
gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu |
gold...@csua.berkeley.edu | -- Terry Carr
Gerry Quinn
dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com says...
> In article <MPG.1d2dcc3d1...@news.indigo.ie>,
> Gerry Quinn <ger...@DELETETHISindigo.ie> wrote:
>
> > I think we have two modes - a 2D 'gestalt' mode that links
> > evolutionarily to the visual system, and a 1D (plus time dimension)
> > 'analytic' mode that links evolutionarily to the auditory system. The
> > most effective thinkers will be strong in both and able to bring them
> > to bear on the same problems.
> >
> I'm not sure if this is the same thing, but it might be.
>
> I have a friend and ex-colleague who believes our political views are
> about the same. I put it that way because, although I find him very
> interesting, I also find that we think in very different ways, which
> sometimes makes it hard for me to understand him. I think in terms of a
> line of argument, he in terms of a web.
Interesting. However, I think that the notion of a 2D 'web' can
distract people. A flow chart is a directed graph - it is expressed in
2D but is really a series of lines with point-to-point jumps. Geometry
per se is irrelevant. I think of it as part of the analytic system.
> So he will be making some line of argument towards conclusion X. At some
> stage I point out that the next step doesn't follow, for some reason he
> has omitted. He agrees that it doesn't follow from that line but claims
> it is true because of a different line of argument, which was off stage
> a moment earlier but presumably still in his head.
I suppose the real question is whether his points are cogent or
otherwise! (I.e. does the second line in fact demonstrate the result,
given the assumptions underlying all lines.)
- Gerry Quinn
Joann Zimmerman
says...
> In article <IIxB8...@kithrup.com>,
> Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote:
> >In article <MPG.1d2e39b74...@news.individual.net>,
> >Joann Zimmerman <jz...@bellereti.com> wrote:
> >>I find McKillip transparent, Cherryh sufficiently hard work that
> >>I've taken a pass ever since around _Cyteen_, and Gentle to require
> >>thought but not effort.
> >
> >If you ever want to attempt _Cyteen_ again let me know and I'll
> >describe my useful workaround for those who dislike infodumps.
>
> For myself, and I guess for Joann also, it isn't a matter of infodumps,
> it's a matter of how the prose works on the sentence and paragraph level.
Yes. Not to mention that her aliens are so alien that they bang my head.
I'd love to give Cherryh another whirl, but I'm so far behind on my TBR
bookcase, not to mention my own thing, that it would be enormously
counterproductive unless one were certain that I'd learn one hell of a
lot about writing.
Dorothy J Heydt
David Goldfarb <gold...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:
>In article <IIxB8...@kithrup.com>,
>Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote:
>>In article <MPG.1d2e39b74...@news.individual.net>,
>>Joann Zimmerman <jz...@bellereti.com> wrote:
>>>I find McKillip transparent, Cherryh sufficiently hard work that
>>>I've taken a pass ever since around _Cyteen_, and Gentle to require
>>>thought but not effort.
>>
>>If you ever want to attempt _Cyteen_ again let me know and I'll
>>describe my useful workaround for those who dislike infodumps.
>
>For myself, and I guess for Joann also, it isn't a matter of infodumps,
>it's a matter of how the prose works on the sentence and paragraph level.
OK, it's a YMMV then. I find _Cyteen eminently readable, once I
get past the first couple chapters, with [spoiler] dead, [spoiler]
born, and the never-ending miseries of [spoiler] and [spoiler]
toned down to unpleasasnt background noise for a while.
Joann Zimmerman
It wasn't _Cyteen_ itself that turned me off, but more of a cumulative
thing. Whatever the next one was, and the fact that I can't remember
what must be highly significant, I just stopped dead. I also vaguely
recall that the Eight Deadly Words were spoken as part of the process.
R. L.
wrote:
>In article <ddfr-CE4853.1...@news.isp.giganews.com>,
>dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com says...
>> In article <MPG.1d2dcc3d1...@news.indigo.ie>,
>> Gerry Quinn <ger...@DELETETHISindigo.ie> wrote:
>>
>> > I think we have two modes - a 2D 'gestalt' mode that links
>> > evolutionarily to the visual system, and a 1D (plus time dimension)
>> > 'analytic' mode that links evolutionarily to the auditory system. The
>> > most effective thinkers will be strong in both and able to bring them
>> > to bear on the same problems.
>> >
>> I'm not sure if this is the same thing, but it might be.
>>
>> I have a friend and ex-colleague who believes our political views are
>> about the same. I put it that way because, although I find him very
>> interesting, I also find that we think in very different ways, which
>> sometimes makes it hard for me to understand him. I think in terms of a
>> line of argument, he in terms of a web.
>
>Interesting. However, I think that the notion of a 2D 'web' can
>distract people. A flow chart is a directed graph - it is expressed in
>2D but is really a series of lines with point-to-point jumps. Geometry
>per se is irrelevant.
Mm. In a flow chart, you can have a branch and then show various branches
converging further down. It just takes one glance to see how soon they will
converge, whether all the branches will converge, etc. Also you can at any
stage choose whether to read on down one branch at a time, or look sideways
to see what the other branches are doing at that stage.
All this seems quite different to me than a linear presentation.
R.L.
David Friedman
Joann Zimmerman <jz...@bellereti.com> wrote:
(quoting Dorothy)
> > OK, it's a YMMV then. I find _Cyteen eminently readable, once I
> > get past the first couple chapters, with [spoiler] dead, [spoiler]
> > born, and the never-ending miseries of [spoiler] and [spoiler]
> > toned down to unpleasasnt background noise for a while.
>
> It wasn't _Cyteen_ itself that turned me off, but more of a cumulative
> thing. Whatever the next one was, and the fact that I can't remember
> what must be highly significant, I just stopped dead. I also vaguely
> recall that the Eight Deadly Words were spoken as part of the process.
The closest I can remember to that happening with Cherryh was _Downbelow
Station_. It wasn't the prose that was the problem but the
(realistically) complicated political situation. But I persisted, then
read it again, and liked it.
My favorite is still _The Paladin_, which is, I think, rather unlike her
other books.
Brian M. Scott
<jz...@bellereti.com> wrote in
<news:MPG.1d2f0a475...@news.individual.net> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:
> In article <da38f5$2h4u$1...@agate.berkeley.edu>, gold...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU
> says...
>> In article <IIxB8...@kithrup.com>,
>> Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote:
>>>In article <MPG.1d2e39b74...@news.individual.net>,
>>>Joann Zimmerman <jz...@bellereti.com> wrote:
>>>>I find McKillip transparent,
The prose itself is, but (1) what it says isn't always, and
(2) it still calls attention to itself. In respect of (2)
it's a bit like a Tom Canty painting: the picture is
absolutely clear and straightforward, but the architectural
style also wants attention.
>>>>Cherryh sufficiently hard work that
>>>>I've taken a pass ever since around _Cyteen_, and Gentle to require
>>>>thought but not effort.
>>>If you ever want to attempt _Cyteen_ again let me know and I'll
>>>describe my useful workaround for those who dislike infodumps.
>> For myself, and I guess for Joann also, it isn't a matter of infodumps,
>> it's a matter of how the prose works on the sentence and paragraph level.
That's certainly why I consider it dense. I even have
somewhat objective confirmation. For the approximately 2/3
to 3/4 of the year that I can't bike outside, I ride a
wind-trainer in the basement for an hour five times a week.
I've found that I can manage to keep up a pretty good work
rate and still read fiction, but there is some interference.
In fact, there's enough so that differences in difficulty
show up rather clearly as differences in number of pages
read in an hour (assuming similar formats, of course). By
this measure Cherryh is denser than most.
By the way, this measurement also shows that there's a
learning effect: the average number of pages per hour by the
end of a book is usually greater than the number read the
first night, and I'm pretty sure that the discrepancy is
generally greater for the books that are slower going.
I should probably note that I consider this denseness a good
thing: I quite like Cherryh (though I don't think that I
ever finished _Cyteen_ -- it just didn't interest me).
> Yes. Not to mention that her aliens are so alien that they bang my head.
This is definitely a plus. (Well, mutatis mutandis: I don't
have it in for *your* head!)
[...]
Brian
Brian M. Scott
<news:MPG.1d2f4d4d7...@news.indigo.ie> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:
> In article <ddfr-CE4853.1...@news.isp.giganews.com>,
> dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com says...
>> In article <MPG.1d2dcc3d1...@news.indigo.ie>,
>> Gerry Quinn <ger...@DELETETHISindigo.ie> wrote:
>>> I think we have two modes - a 2D 'gestalt' mode that links
>>> evolutionarily to the visual system, and a 1D (plus time dimension)
>>> 'analytic' mode that links evolutionarily to the auditory system. The
>>> most effective thinkers will be strong in both and able to bring them
>>> to bear on the same problems.
>> I'm not sure if this is the same thing, but it might be.
>> I have a friend and ex-colleague who believes our political views are
>> about the same. I put it that way because, although I find him very
>> interesting, I also find that we think in very different ways, which
>> sometimes makes it hard for me to understand him. I think in terms of a
>> line of argument, he in terms of a web.
> Interesting. However, I think that the notion of a 2D 'web' can
> distract people. A flow chart is a directed graph - it is expressed in
> 2D
To be pedantic about it, not all (directed) graphs are
planar, so the web may actually have to be 3D to avoid
self-intersection.
> but is really a series of lines with point-to-point jumps. Geometry
> per se is irrelevant. I think of it as part of the analytic system.
Geometry is not irrelevant: a linear argument *is*
structurally different from a non-linear one, though both
can be conceptualized as directed graphs.
[...]
Brian
Mary K. Kuhner
R. L. <see...@no-spams.coms> wrote:
>On Thu, 30 Jun 2005 23:12:27 +0000 (UTC),
>mkku...@kingman.gs.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
>>You might be interested in _Folk Physics for Apes_--it's a lot of
>>rather dry experimental results but poking out from under them is
>>some kind of picture of how they think about the physical world,
>>and it's not the way we do.
>Could you tell more?
The one I remember best is a test of using a tool to knock an
apple from a shelf so that it would roll down into reach. A
plexiglass shield kept them from using their hands, but they
were presented with rods of various kinds to try.
They compared eight-year-old chimps to young humans. Both could
easily learn to do this with a straight rod. However, by human
standards the chimps had issues with misshapen rods where one
end would work but the other wouldn't. On careful examination,
it seemed as though human children quickly learned to think about
the poking end of the tool and whether it would go through the
hole, but chimpanzee children thought a lot more about the
handle end and whether it felt good and worked well in the hand.
Since the tests were set up human-style, this often prevented
them from getting the apple.
It seems as though the mental manuver my aikido school describes as
"extend ki from the end of the weapon; don't think about your
hands" is even more difficult for chimps (it's not easy for
us!)
There were also some, to me, deeply counterintuitive results
suggesting that they put more weight on "visually contiguous"
and less on "logically connected" than we do. They were
easily fooled by stuff that looked connected but was not. I
can't imagine why this would be given that they are more
arboreal than we are; mistaking a visually contiguous branch
for a logically connected one sounds bad.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Bill Swears
> Yes. Not to mention that her aliens are so alien that they bang my head.
>
> I'd love to give Cherryh another whirl, but I'm so far behind on my TBR
> bookcase, not to mention my own thing, that it would be enormously
> counterproductive unless one were certain that I'd learn one hell of a
> lot about writing.
>
novel length she's done in the Union/Alliance line. Cyteen almost
stopped me, but it's vastly different from her other works in that
universe.
What I love about her writing _in most SF books_ is the way she starts
you out at a brisk pace, then acclerates pace and tension right to the
denoument. It seems simple, but really involves bringing you into a
unique place and keeping your disbelief suspended and your uncertainty
factor high right up to the end.
For that style, in that universe, I'd go with "Hellburner" or "Downbelow
Station" or "The Pride of Chanur". They are more fun, and they snap you
up and carry you along beautifully.
If you want to read her more cerebral science fiction, which to me is
every bit as fascinating, start with "Foreigner". My wife is only an
occasional S.F. reader, yet she's read and reread that sequence so many
times I finally went out and bought it in hard cover. She had worn out
our paperback copies.
I have to acknowledge, I enjoyed "Cyteen". But you can't read it in a
hurry, and it's set in a very uncomfortable place. I think of it as a
fan's book.
Bill
Bill Swears
> It wasn't _Cyteen_ itself that turned me off, but more of a cumulative
> thing. Whatever the next one was, and the fact that I can't remember
> what must be highly significant, I just stopped dead. I also vaguely
> recall that the Eight Deadly Words were spoken as part of the process.
>
Bill
Joann Zimmerman
"I Don't Care What Happens To These Characters". (tm Dorothy Heydt)
Dorothy J Heydt
"I don't *care* *WHAT* happens to these people!"
Cf. Marion Zimmer Bradley's definition of an earthquake story as
one so dull you wish all the characters would be killed in an
earthquake.
Kai Henningsen
> 1) Do you think in words?
Yes and no.
First there are symbols, I think - or you might call them concepts. This
part is fairly fast.
However, if I want to apply some higher structure on this - logic, for
example - then that needs words. Or, not exactly; it can be done with just
the concepts (symbols) the words stand for, but using the actual words is
easier - though significantly slower.
In this context, "word" means I associate a sound and a muscle movement,
but do not actually hear or move.
However, I expect the "reading aloud" and "talking to yourself" are more
primitive variants of the same.
> 2) How do you remember? Is your memory primarily visual, auditory,
> kinesthetic, etc.? Or is it abstract -- you remember that someone is
> of a certain numerical height rather than what she looks like? (Note:
> If those two seem exactly equivalent to you, there are things you need
> to know about other ways of thinking. Look up "learning styles.")
Huh.
I think there is no one answer, but what I do best is probably ... let's
call it "dynamic visual" - that is, visual changing over a (short) time.
Then dynamic audio (well, audio is pretty much always dynamic).
And of course, memory always works better if there's more emotion
involved.
(It's not clear to me what two should not look equivalent; seems to me
there are more than two there.)
As for height, I usually do *not* remember a person's height unless it's
dramatically different from mine, or I know her very well. And even then,
quantifying that (even just moving my hand "this tall") is still hard. I'm
bad at describing people.
> 3) Do you have any synesthesias? Before you answer "No," go here;
> check the definition of synesthesia, then check the types of
> synesthesia.
No.
> 4) How do you usually get things done? If you always write out a
> detailed work plan for making the bed, then writing a novel in one
> draft without an outline probably isn't for you. Conversely, if you
> cook finicky dishes without recipes, starting with a detailed outline
> isn't for you.
Well, often enough I don't. I do make plans in my head, but I also remake
them all the time, and it can take long to forever to actually start
realizing such a plan. And then I'm a strong believer in adapting the plan
to what I learn when I work on it.
> 5) What interests you when you read fiction?
Whatever interesting thing I can find in there. I don't usually have a
goal in mind, apart from being entertained.
> 6) How do you believe societies work?
Badly :-(
Mainly, there needs to be an agreement on how decisions are distilled from
all the personal value judgements. There are a very large number of ways
to do it, and it seems most have been used at one time or another. To give
just two examples for illustration - A. Pick one person, His or her value
judgements are accepted for all of that society. Or B. Try to make
decisions most compatible with everyone's personal judgements according to
a metric such as everyone voting on everything.
> 7) What did you learn in school which isn't true?
I'm sure there was something, but nothing that particularly impressed me.
Kai
--
http://www.westfalen.de/private/khms/
"... by God I *KNOW* what this network is for, and you can't have it."
- Russ Allbery (r...@stanford.edu)
R. L.
(Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
>In article <vk89c1t7812c4ib8t...@4ax.com>,
>R. L. <see...@no-spams.coms> wrote:
>>On Thu, 30 Jun 2005 23:12:27 +0000 (UTC),
>>mkku...@kingman.gs.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
>
>>>You might be interested in _Folk Physics for Apes_--it's a lot of
>>>rather dry experimental results but poking out from under them is
>>>some kind of picture of how they think about the physical world,
>>>and it's not the way we do.
>
>>Could you tell more?
>
>The one I remember best is a test of using a tool to knock an
>apple from a shelf so that it would roll down into reach. A
>plexiglass shield kept them from using their hands, but they
>were presented with rods of various kinds to try.
>
>They compared eight-year-old chimps to young humans. Both could
>easily learn to do this with a straight rod. However, by human
>standards the chimps had issues with misshapen rods where one
>end would work but the other wouldn't. On careful examination,
>it seemed as though human children quickly learned to think about
>the poking end of the tool and whether it would go through the
>hole, but chimpanzee children thought a lot more about the
>handle end and whether it felt good and worked well in the hand.
That makes sense, as in an arboreal environment there would be plenty of
sticks to choose from, may as well get one that feels good and use it for
multiple purposes; I doubt there are many equivalents of a plexiglass
shield. The human children may have been used to an indoor environment with
a limited number of toys/tools available, and to transparent obstacles.
>Since the tests were set up human-style, this often prevented
>them from getting the apple.
>
>It seems as though the mental manuver my aikido school describes as
>"extend ki from the end of the weapon; don't think about your
>hands" is even more difficult for chimps (it's not easy for
>us!)
But you are using weapons designed to feel good. If you get a choice of
weapons to see which feels best to you, doesn't the serious ki practice
begin after you're already accustomed to the weapon?
>There were also some, to me, deeply counterintuitive results
>suggesting that they put more weight on "visually contiguous"
>and less on "logically connected" than we do. They were
>easily fooled by stuff that looked connected but was not. I
>can't imagine why this would be given that they are more
>arboreal than we are; mistaking a visually contiguous branch
>for a logically connected one sounds bad.
Definitely. Maybe they were being shown things other than branches, things
foreign to them?
R.L.
Mary K. Kuhner
R. L. <see...@no-spams.coms> wrote:
>On Fri, 1 Jul 2005 18:43:04 +0000 (UTC), mkku...@kingman.gs.washington.edu
>(Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
>>it seemed as though human children quickly learned to think about
>>the poking end of the tool and whether it would go through the
>>hole, but chimpanzee children thought a lot more about the
>>handle end and whether it felt good and worked well in the hand.
>That makes sense, as in an arboreal environment there would be plenty of
>sticks to choose from, may as well get one that feels good and use it for
>multiple purposes; I doubt there are many equivalents of a plexiglass
>shield. The human children may have been used to an indoor environment with
>a limited number of toys/tools available, and to transparent obstacles.
Could be, though these chimps were raised in captivity (by their
mothers) and had certainly seen some plexiglass before.
The Tai jungle chimps, studied in the wild, hoarded nutcracking
stones and would keep them a long time, but there the hand part
and the cracking part are adjacent so it's hard to say what they
were selecting on.
>>It seems as though the mental manuver my aikido school describes as
>>"extend ki from the end of the weapon; don't think about your
>>hands" is even more difficult for chimps (it's not easy for
>>us!)
>But you are using weapons designed to feel good. If you get a choice of
>weapons to see which feels best to you, doesn't the serious ki practice
>begin after you're already accustomed to the weapon?
The current rule in my dojo is that you grab a weapon and then
stick with it no matter what (leads to some funny scenes of big
guys who mistakenly grabbed kid-sized sticks!) because being
picky is an etiquette violation. But yes, the weapons were all
designed to work in the hand (if your hands are more or less average
size, anyway).
I do think, though, that most humans would immediately reject a
sword with a big crossbar fixed to the end, even if it had a really
nice hilt.
Chimps do poke sticks into holes (termite/ant hunting) so it's not
a totally inapplicable tool use for them. It was odd that they
were so willing to poke crossbar-sticks uselessly at the hole,
rather than turning them end for end.
>>I can't imagine why this would be given that they are more
>>arboreal than we are; mistaking a visually contiguous branch
>>for a logically connected one sounds bad.
>Definitely. Maybe they were being shown things other than branches, things
>foreign to them?
The concept being tested was "rake": what objects can be used to
rake an out-of-reach treat closer? Given how heavy chimps are,
out-of-reach treats in trees must be a common experience, though I
don't know if raking for them is a common reaction. The chimps did
learn to do it quite quickly. But they were much more tolerant of
uselessly floppy rakes than human children. And they would pull on
a "rake" that was touching the treat but not in such a way to hook
it, where human children had a clear model of connection that led
them to reject such rakes. I.e., the child has a choice of two
rakes but can only pull one (and she knows it). One is touching the
fruit but on the wrong side, so pulling it will leave the fruit
behind. The other is touching on the right side. Human children
glance at the situation and pull the useful rake; chimp children
don't.
I suspect that they work more by kinesthetic feedback in a real
situation, and that the "one try only" situation here is hard for
them. Maybe the treetop visual situation is so complex that
basing conclusions on visual data isn't very helpful? I often
can't tell if a branch will move a fruit till I pull on it.
The nice thing about the book is that it's long on data and short
on sweeping conclusions, so you can draw your own. They give
chimp-by-chimp results so you can even consider individual variation.
(One of their chimps was *much* better at this stuff than the other
seven.)
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Patricia C. Wrede
news:11cb4f3...@corp.supernews.com...
>
> What I love about her writing _in most SF books_ is the way she starts you
> out at a brisk pace, then acclerates pace and tension right to the
> denoument. It seems simple, but really involves bringing you into a
> unique place and keeping your disbelief suspended and your uncertainty
> factor high right up to the end.
>
> For that style, in that universe, I'd go with "Hellburner" or "Downbelow
> Station" or "The Pride of Chanur". They are more fun, and they snap you
> up and carry you along beautifully.
They snap *you* up. I bounced off all of those titles within the first
page, usually within two paragraphs, though a couple of them I slogged
through the first chapter anyway in the hope that it'd wear off or go away
or something. It didn't.
I'm still not sure why I bounce, though we've discussed it at length here in
the past. Last time, somebody posted the opening "grabber" paragraphs of
something, assuring me that I couldn't *possibly* fail to love this...and I
had to tell them that not only could I fail to love it, I bounced off it
less than halfway through the bit they'd posted. It's not any of the
obvious things -- plot, characters, structure, dialog, those are all just
fine. It's something to do with the way she handles prose.
I've read a couple of things by her that I didn't bounce off of; the only
ones that remains on my shelves, however, are the Morgaine titles. Some
day, in my copious free time, I am going to find a copy of "Downbelow
Station" and/or the Chanur books and sit somewhere and stare at them until I
figure out what my problem is and why it happens so *fast*. It's obviously
some sort of fundamental incompatability that has nothing to do with quality
of writing, but so far I haven't been able to pin it down beyond that.
Patricia C. Wrede
Bill Swears
> They snap *you* up. I bounced off all of those titles within the first
> page, usually within two paragraphs, though a couple of them I slogged
> through the first chapter anyway in the hope that it'd wear off or go away
> or something. It didn't.
>
>
>
I have a similar problem with her fantasy. I have enjoyed some of it,
but I have to force myself into the read, and I only stick with it
because I know I'll enjoy knowing the story. I only ever read "The
Fire's of Azeroth" from morgaine, and never got around to the rest of
them.
Cherryh's SF prose doesn't really flow, it's a staccato voice and it
tends to jump abruptly scene to scene, and if you aren't carried away
immediately by the action and initially sketchy characters you aren't
going to have an easy time getting started.
But that language contributes significantly to the edgy, frenetic pace
she sets. So if you can get past the non-traditional presentation, and
the need to hit the ground running, without even the basic story
information, the gestalt is one heck of a ride.
Have you tried the Foreigner series? "Foreigner" starts out with a
couple throwaway vignets to introduce you into the milieu, then
introduces the main character a couple centuries later. It has plenty
of action, but a somewhat different pacing. I could't say it *will* be
a better read, but it might strike you better. Certainly my wife felt a
much stronger connection to that work than any of her other projects.
Bill
David Friedman
"Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
> I've read a couple of things by her that I didn't bounce off of; the only
> ones that remains on my shelves, however, are the Morgaine titles. Some
> day, in my copious free time, I am going to find a copy of "Downbelow
> Station" and/or the Chanur books and sit somewhere and stare at them until I
> figure out what my problem is and why it happens so *fast*. It's obviously
> some sort of fundamental incompatability that has nothing to do with quality
> of writing, but so far I haven't been able to pin it down beyond that.
What about _The Paladin_? It's rather different from all of those.
Zara Baxter
<jz...@bellereti.com> wrote:
>In article <1gyzmq5.j5mi561t7g0rgN%green...@cix.co.uk.invalid>,
>green...@cix.co.uk.invalid says...
>
>> I find Cherryh transparent and Mary Gentle hard work. I haven't read
>> enough McKillip to comment.
>
>Whereas I find McKillip transparent,
I love McKillip's work, but she has this ... almost "cold" feeling to
her writing, which is what makes it dense for me. Now I'm going to
have to figure out what I mean by cold, but it might be about distance
from her characters, or perhaps more about not letting us see their
emotion, but letting us infer it from their actions. I should go find
some examples and dissect.
I'm not referring to the Riddlemaster series, here, but more recent
stuff like Atrix Wolfe, Winter Rose, Forests of Serre.
>Cherryh sufficiently hard work that I've taken a pass ever since around _Cyteen_,
I found the Faded Sun trilogy the most accessible work of hers -- but
it feels the most tired in theme. Cyteen I adore, purely for the
psychological intricacy of it.
[aside: Does anyone else find that they can love the writing, plot,
setting and characters, but if the theme is offensive in some way,
they don't enjoy the overall story? I've been finding this in my crit
group especially, where if the theme rubbs me the wrong way, I just
can't shine to the story.]
Zara
Ric Locke
> Some day, in my copious free time, I am going to find a copy of "Downbelow
> Station" and/or the Chanur books and sit somewhere and stare at them until I
> figure out what my problem is and why it happens so *fast*. It's obviously
> some sort of fundamental incompatability that has nothing to do with quality
> of writing, but so far I haven't been able to pin it down beyond that.
Well <fx: cracks knuckles> given your advice here, and some samples of your
writing, I can suggest something...
Cherryh never _explains_. She writes the stories as if they were addressed
to someone who lives in and/or is familiar with the milieu, the social
structure, and the technology being used in it, or something sufficiently
related that the difference is that between a mystery set in New York and
one set in London. She never tells you how the drive works, even on the
most basic level -- she simply shows you the effects of the drive on the
people by describing their reactions to it, in terms that assume that the
reader is already familiar with similar things.
Vide the thread, above, on the use of technique to get the reader familiar
with the world. Cherryh's techniques are so subtle that they might as well
not exist unless you persevere in a particular story-series.
She does extensive infodumps, but they aren't addressed to _us_, to
twentieth or twenty-first century readers; they're addressed to
contemporary readers _of the story_. /Gate of Ivrel/ begins with four pages
of infodumps regarding the gates and the social structure of the planet --
but we don't really learn what Vanye's status is until almost the end of
the book, because she's explaining a /particular/ set of customs from a
family of customs-sets the reader is supposed to know.
Lois Bujold does something similar, but she writes in milieus that are
moderately to somewhat familiar already -- the Vorkosigan stories are set
in a space/sf Universe with space drives and flying cars, so in many ways
it doesn't matter that she doesn't address us way back in the past, and the
fantasies follow familiar tropes enough that it's important what the
differences are, not the absolute value, so to speak. Cherryh's universes
are *strange*.
I like it quite a lot when I'm in the right mood, but given your regular
and clear instructions to inclue and inform the reader about the world, and
the fact that you follow your own rules, I can see you bouncing off
anything from Cherryh that isn't close enough to your own worldbuilding to
give you a head start. The _Morgaine_ stories have enough in common with
EFP that a person familiar with standard fantasy tropes is finding
differences, not learning from scratch.
Regards,
Ric
Dorothy J Heydt
Zara Baxter <za...@vile-temptress.org> wrote:
>
>[aside: Does anyone else find that they can love the writing, plot,
>setting and characters, but if the theme is offensive in some way,
>they don't enjoy the overall story? I've been finding this in my crit
>group especially, where if the theme rubbs me the wrong way, I just
>can't shine to the story.]
Well, for example, I can't even attempt to read Mary Gentle,
lovely person though she is and sorely missed from this group. I
remember picking up _Ash_ in a dealer room once and reading the
first page or two and rebounding, boinnnnnnnggg, all the way over
into the next aisle among the buttons and bumperstickers.
Zara Baxter
wrote:
>Well, for example, I can't even attempt to read Mary Gentle,
>lovely person though she is and sorely missed from this group. I
>remember picking up _Ash_ in a dealer room once and reading the
>first page or two and rebounding, boinnnnnnnggg, all the way over
>into the next aisle among the buttons and bumperstickers.
This is *such* a great visual image.
Zara
R. L.
wrote:
/snip/
>I love McKillip's work, but she has this ... almost "cold" feeling to
>her writing, which is what makes it dense for me. Now I'm going to
>have to figure out what I mean by cold, but it might be about distance
>from her characters, or perhaps more about not letting us see their
>emotion, but letting us infer it from their actions. I should go find
>some examples and dissect.
/snip/
>[aside: Does anyone else find that they can love the writing, plot,
>setting and characters, but if the theme is offensive in some way,
>they don't enjoy the overall story? I've been finding this in my crit
>group especially, where if the theme rubbs me the wrong way, I just
>can't shine to the story.]
Sorry to add another term to your 'to define' list, but that kind of
assumes the theme is something one finds out early in the story, doesn't
it?
R.L.
Catja Pafort
> > > I find Cherryh transparent and Mary Gentle hard work. I haven't read
> > > enough McKillip to comment.
[Bill Swears]
> > I don't think CJ would much like being called either dense or
> > transparent.
> I'm not sure what "transparent" means in this context, but I have no
> difficulty reading Cherryh's writing and occasionally find her prose
> strikingly good.
Transparent = the prose, while admirable, sits in the background and
serves the story; I don't have to work at it, I don't go 'huh' in the
middle of passages, I don't get pulled out of the flow of the story by
the words.
Catja
Khiem Tran
> [aside: Does anyone else find that they can love the writing, plot,
> setting and characters, but if the theme is offensive in some way,
> they don't enjoy the overall story? I've been finding this in my crit
> group especially, where if the theme rubbs me the wrong way, I just
> can't shine to the story.]
I find it makes a difference whether the theme was intentional or not.
I'm much more tolerant if the author has openly set out to pursue a
certain theme that I don't agree with, than I am if the theme appears
accidentally or by stealth. If it's the former, I can read the story as
an opinion piece. If it's the latter, then I can bounce out pretty
quickly, especially if the author seems to think they are advancing one
theme but I can read a different one instead. (One of my pet niggles is
something that appears to be "this would happen if X were true", that
turns out to be "with unlimited resources and auctorial fiat, anything
is possible".)
This might be another example of different reading tool sets for
different genres. I do as much lit fic reading as I do SF, and I quite
often find SF stories I bounce off because I read subtext that wasn't there.
Khiem.
Brian M. Scott
<warl...@hyperusa.com> wrote in
<news:oeuglf3cedn7$.kxgtsdlmd1ps$.d...@40tude.net> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:
[...]
> Cherryh never _explains_. She writes the stories as if
> they were addressed to someone who lives in and/or is
> familiar with the milieu, the social structure, and the
> technology being used in it, or something sufficiently
> related that the difference is that between a mystery set
> in New York and one set in London.
Bingo. Thank you: I hadn't consciously noticed it before,
but that's a major part both of why I like it and why I
consider it dense. (The other part has to do with the
writing at the sentence and paragraph level and fits better
in a response to Bill's post.)
[...]
Brian
David Dyer-Bennet
> What I love about her writing _in most SF books_ is the way she starts
> you out at a brisk pace, then acclerates pace and tension right to the
> denoument. It seems simple, but really involves bringing you into a
> unique place and keeping your disbelief suspended and your uncertainty
> factor high right up to the end.
>
> For that style, in that universe, I'd go with "Hellburner" or
> "Downbelow Station" or "The Pride of Chanur". They are more fun, and
> they snap you up and carry you along beautifully.
<total croggle>
Downbelow station was the most pedestrian, plodding, *totally boring*
first half of an SF novel I've ever seen. (Possibly it suddenly
became exciting half-way throug; I wouldn't know.) And I'd been
largely predisposed to like Cherryh around then, from having liked a
couple of early books very well (Hunter of Worlds I remember as
first-rate).
I've only stopped reading a book part-way through about a half a dozen
times, and Downbelow Station was one of them.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd...@dd-b.net>, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/>
RKBA: <http://noguns-nomoney.com/> <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/>
Pics: <http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/> <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/>
Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>
David Friedman
green...@cix.co.uk.invalid (Catja Pafort) wrote:
The closest I can remember to being pulled out is when I sat back to
admire how well she had said something--and that wasn't very common.
Patricia C. Wrede
news:ddfr-9B9699.1...@news.isp.giganews.com...
I believe that that's the one somebody quoted the first couple of paragraphs
of on rasfc, the one I bounced off of less than halfway through the quoted
bit. It's kind of hard to remember, though, when all I have to go on is a
vague recollection of four sentences of something that simply *would not*
stick to my brain even at the time. It might have been something else.
Patricia C. Wrede