Love is a Powerful Brain System
"Men are so adulterous!"
"What makes you think men are more adulterous?"
"Men are definitely more adulterous."
"Well... who do you think these men are having sex with?"
I have become a new fan of TED online, which is this amazing website that gives all of us the option to watch amazing performances and speakers for free, so that good ideas can proliferate. Helen Fisher on Romantic Love really got me thinking, both as a person, and as a writer. It's about ten minutes. Fisher discusses what she says are the three brain systems of love:
- Sexual love
- Romantic Love
- Attachment
I found this video so interesting. Fisher talks about the differences between men and women in terms of how they think, gather information, and how we are moving toward a collaborative society. She talks about the recurrence of the "companion marriage," and "romantic love," which is a throwback to one of my favorite 19th century authors, Margaret Fuller.
She mentions how the three brain systems aren't always connected to one another, which explains how one can feel attached, and yet not have a romantic love, for someone. Or to be sexually attracted, but not feel attached. And these feelings can change from minute to minute. She asks why it is that we fall in love with one person, rather than another.
Isn't that the real question all romance authors are asking? I feel like that's my question, anyway.
As a romantic author, I felt like this video really helped me first to understand, perhaps, the underpinnings of love from a biological standpoint, with an emotional filter layered on top. This, I feel, is important to understanding what, really, is important in terms of writing about love, in any of its forms. I'd love to hear what you think about this video.
Do you agree with what Fisher has to say? And how are your projects coming along?
Choose the Bolder
"When you cannot make up your mind which of two evenly balanced courses of action you should take--choose the bolder."
- Ezra Pound
This month, you're doing what many think is the impossible: you're writing a novel-length book in thirty days.
Fifty-thousand words in thirty days.
Are you insane?
Yes, yes you are, and I love that about you.
I know many of you might be struggling at this point. This is the rough patch, really. You're close to the end, but so far from it, you know?
So I'm sure you're at a crossroads. You don't know the next step your characters should take. You're tempted to go back and edit what you have written. Whatever you do, don't do that.
Here's a suggestion: choose the bolder path. What would happen if, say, one of your characters died? Or did something almost as radical?
Maybe it makes sense, what you're about to do. And then again, maybe it doesn't. That's not the point of NaNoWriMo. The point is to put pen to paper, and at the end of the month, have something to workshop. Get that? Have something to workshop by the end of the month.
Good luck. If you need a place to vent about your work, leave a comment and we'll see what we can do about sparking your imagination.
In the Midst of Living
"My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living."
- Anaïs Nin, French Writer
First, I need to say that last week the lovely Evangeline at Edwardian Promenade awarded the I Love This Blog to me, and I have to spread the love around. See the end of this post for the award, and my nominations. <3
This week's exercise is to take a look around you. So often do we writers get lost in the act of writing, that we forget we are supposed to be writing about life. Who are these characters that we spend our every waking moments with? How can we possibly know who they are, and how to make them distinct, if all we do is sit around our houses dreaming about them?
NaNoWriMo is a difficult time for any writer, whether you have a plan/outline or not. I found that during the second week, I began to lag a little. Things weren't coming as quickly, and I was losing some of my pep.
I knew I had to leave the computer. There was something about sitting in the same spot day in, day out, writing to fulfill the daily goal, that exhausted me. I took a digital camera and small writing journal, and went for a walk.
I took pictures of whatever I saw that inspired me, with the plan to print them out and tape them to the walls around my desktop. I sat by the little lake at the center of my campus, and absorbed. I never wrote anything.
Three years later (i.e. a couple of weeks ago), that moment crystallized into the following:
At Ohio State, my favorite place on campus was Mirror Lake. There are beautiful flowering trees there in the spring, and ducklings that swim in time with The Truman Show soundtrack on my mp3 player. In the winter, the lake freezes over and everyone tests their courage by walking across it. In the fall, the most zealous Buckeyes jump into the lake to show their loyalty against M*ch*gan. There are benches, and sometimes people play their guitars. I would walk around the lake, usually listening to classical music, and breathe it in. I'd stare at the fountain in the center, and how it sometimes made a rainbow on very bright days.
Simple, reminiscent, evocative. Do you have such a moment, and can you use it for your writing?
Awards to Blogs I Love
(Listed alphabetically)
A Six Word Story
This month, I'm doing a series of short exercises, one a week, to help those of you who are stuck with your WIP. Maybe you're doing NaNoWriMo, maybe not. In any case, it helps to have an exercise to spark your imagination.
This week's exercise is a challenge in brevity. The goal of NaNoWriMo, for instance, is to write 50k words in a month. A 50k word work is about the length of a short novel, similar to an Avon or Harlequin romance. This can be a challenge in and of itself... how do you write a novel with developed characters and an interesting plot in 50k words? Some writers, who are cheating themselves, will litter their WIP with adverbs, adjectives, and unnecessary description just to make that word count goal.
Here is a popular and well-known writing exercise... Hemingway was once given a challenge to write an entire story in only six words. His answer:
For sale: baby shoes, never worn.
Apparently, he thought it was his greatest literary work ever. It speaks to the audience, and pulls them in. We know the ending to the story, and can surmise how it began. Most importantly, we care.
Here are some of my six word stories:
He smiled, and her world ended.
She always hated writing the beginning.
Her lips were chapped. Damn frogs.
Required: knight in armor (shining optional).
There are many writers who practice this sort of flash fiction through their Twitter accounts, where each update can only be 140 characters long. Can you tell a story in a sentence? What is your six word story? Do you even count these micro-narratives as stories?
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