From a provocative piece by Roxana Robinson in The New York Times’ Sunday Review (June 29) on a subject that has haunted me since I became a self-published novelist:
“Fiction writers aren’t in this for the money, since most of us don’t make any,” she writes. “So what are we doing, messing about in other people’s lives?”
What indeed? Robinson’s novel “Sparta” is about a young male Marine – and while most of the vets she’s heard from have been supportive, one reminded her that she’s never been in combat and knows nothing about it. Just as a few readers have asked me, Whatever would possess you to write from a gay man’s viewpoint in “Water Music”?
Robinson has my stock comeback, Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina"...
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Read MoreA new German study on brain activity during creative writing has got me thinking about one of the great intellectual mysteries: How do you write? How do I write?
It’s something that’s difficult to teach – one of the many reasons I’m not a teacher – and impossible to portray. Think about it: Movies about writers (“All The President’s Men,” “The End of the Affair”) always depict them in the throws of action or passion – which leaves very little time for writing.
In the study, Martin Lotze and his University of Greifswald team conducted brain scans while reclining subjects wrote on a propped-up writing desk. (The scanner’s magnetic field would’ve sent a computer flying.)
The novice writers showed more activity in the visual centers of the brain, while the experienced writers – who were also asked to copy some text and then riff on a short story – demonstrated more action in the speech areas. This led Lotze to conclude that the novice writers were watching their stories play out like movies while the experience writers were narrating them as if hearing an inner voice.
OK, that stopped me cold, because one of the great pleasures I’ve had since childhood is watching my stories on my brain’s big screen, and I’ve been writing fiction since I was 9...
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