Ken Stange

Writers’ Traits (Quirks?)

When I was still warping young minds in my “Intro Psychology” course, I tried to emphasize the fact that we all have personal ‘issues’, problems for which psychologists have a label. It is just that the degree to which the problem is serious varies greatly. Unfortunately the label usually doesn’t include any such qualifier. So when describing someone by that label, the implicit implication is that he or she is at the extreme end of the scale.

We all get ‘depressed’, but it isn’t necessarily severe or chronic enough to need treatment or lead to repeated suicide attempts or complete withdrawal from the real world. We all have addictions. We all have memory problems. We all have learning problems. We even all have hallucinations, but not so constantly or intense as to motivate destructive behaviour, as with someone who has schizophrenia.

Some of those ‘problems’ (which are better described as behavioural tendencies) are more common in certain occupations. (Or genders or countries or income status.) Writers are known for some specific ones, which often are assumed to be related to their creativity.

I’m hesitant to generalize, but I think I’m reasonably aware of my own tendencies. And I’ve been thinking about how common they are to other writers.

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Writers’ Traits: Generalizations

Generalizations are dangerous. Forgive this didactic digression from the topic, but you can take this lecturer out of the lecture hall, but you can’t make him stop lecturing. Ask my long-suffering wife.

Generalizations are dangerous because they are often misinterpreted. And they are misinterpreted because people don’t know (or appreciate) what an average means, and they have no knowledge of measures of variability or how they are absolutely essential to understanding the meaning of an average.

Quick example! Consider the difference between these two sets of exam grades.

·      10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%, 90%

·      50%, 50%, 50%, 50%, 50%, 50%, 50%, 50%, 50%

The average—at least the commonest ones reported (the mean and the median)—is 50% for both groups. However, the variability is obviously very different. But you wouldn’t know that, or assume that, if you only knew the averages.

If I were to report to my students that their ‘average’ exam mark was a 50%, many of them would assume 50% was a typical score. (At least before I gave them this lecture!)

So before I dare make any generalizations about writers, I wanted to emphasize this. I strongly suspect that the variability among writers is extremely substantial. As I blithely make generalizations, I constantly think of writers I know that fail to fit them. These are not “exceptions that prove the rule”, but they are a caveat about assuming that I’m assuming little variability. I’m not. 

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Launch For My Latest Book

Gulliver’s Books (157 Main St. West, North Bay) is hosting a launch for my latest book tonight, Going Home: Cycling Through The Heart Of America. It’s at 7:30, so I’m thinking more about what excerpts to read than about writers’ traits.

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The Book Launch

The launch at Gulliver’s Books on Thursday for my book, Going Home: Cycling Through The Heart Of America, went well. Like doing a literary reading, these events involve leaving the secure solitude of one’s study and suddenly being the centre of attention. Naturally some relish this, but others are very uncomfortable in that sort of social situation. Having taught for 40 year to classes (sometimes of as many as 200), I’m fairly comfortable. (Although some of my students certainly weren’t always giving me their undivided attention.)

At these book launches you have to, at least in some ways, take on the role of a sales person. Although presumably you sincerely believe in the value of your product, it still is a difficult role for many writers to assume. It certainly is for me, for I couldn’t sell a glass of water to a man dying of thirst.

Like all self-promotion, it is something that writers often are not very good and as well as very uncomfortable doing. (I fall in that category.) But it is valuable for increasing readership—which does matter to writers.

Unfortunately, the opportunities for doing it are decreasing as the number of independent bookstores diminishes. It is just one more reason to mourn the passing of the independent bookseller. All readers should support the remaining local bookstores, just as they have supported local writers.

Gulliver’s is a fine exemplar. The owners, Suzanne and Bernard Brooks, have been wonderfully supportive of the local literary community for over 25 years.

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Writers’ Traits: Attention Deficit Disorder

ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) or ADDH or ADHD (Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity) are—like bipolar disorder, dyslexia, and autism—more and more frequently diagnosed. Whether all—or even most—of these diagnoses are valid is often quite justifiably questioned. You name it, and I can assure you that most people have some of the defining characteristics to a greater or lesser degree. But, nevertheless, having a term for this cluster of characteristics can be useful.    

Recently the ADD characteristics have been linked to creativity. Supposedly it may be an aid to creativity. Highly efficient behaviour, and learning, requires focusing exclusively on the task at hand, no matter how boring. But not being distracted means you’re not noticing things that are more interesting to you, or unusual relationships between things. And what is metaphor, if not making such unusual connections?

Another characteristic of ADD is that there is concentrated focusing on what was distracting you, just not what you’re supposed to be attending to. I can say that this true of me. When I’m writing, it has my full attention, and I’m oblivious to what is going on around me—and time passing. (This includes meal times and appointments.) But other times I’m as flighty as can be. When I’m reading the news online or surfing the Net, I’m the guy who clicks on the sidebar links competing for my attention.

So I’ll just add ADD to my list of disorders. However, it’s nice to know that some researchers view it as an adjunct to creativity.

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Writers’ Traits: Alcoholism

Writers have a reputation for being serious drinkers—although some are even teetotallers. And drinking has a bad rep—at least in North America, which still has a nasty puritanical streak. For 13 years, Americans put up with total Prohibition!  But even now drinking as much as is typical in many other countries is treated as a ‘problem’. According to the NIH (National Institute on Alcohol Abuse) anyone who has more than 14 drinks in a week is considered a “heavy drinker” and “at risk”.  If that’s taken as the definition of being a heavy drinker, it’s probably fair to say a lot of writers are heavy drinkers. (I feel better knowing I’m in good company.)

Of course there are people for whom alcohol consumption is indeed a problem or ‘abuse’, and this is unquestionably a very real and common problem. Alcohol abuse is usually defined as resulting in harm to one's health, interpersonal relationships, or ability to work. That makes sense.

There are plenty of examples of writers known for being notorious imbibers who damaged their health by their habit. Just one famous example is the great poet, Dylan Thomas, who drank himself into an early grave while on a reading tour.

And such writers as Hemingway offer amble evidence of excessive drinking damaging one’s interpersonal relationships. He had four unsuccessful marriages and ruined several close friendships by his drunken behaviour. 

But whether it damages a writer’s ability to work is not so clear. It certainly didn’t seem to have that effect on Dylan Thomas or Ernest Hemingway. Nor apparently did it harm other great writers such as Faulkner or Fitzgerald or the many other writers whose drinking may have been a very serious problem in other aspects of their lives.

Some writers even insist it is essential to their writing, because it gets the creative juices flowing. Or say it essential for their sanity in a world where their work is not valued sufficiently. I’m sure for them this is just a price worth paying for being able to work.

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Your Man Friday’s Ideas: Enviable Uncommon Senses

It is easy and natural to assume everyone and every creature perceives the world the same way we do, but of course, this not true. A lot of apparently inexplicable animal behaviour can only be understood if we realize that they might have senses we can’t imagine—but can sometimes envy.  

TEN SUPER-SENSES
We have retained and developed those senses that evolved as useful for our survival, but they are different for other creatures with other needs. Here is a list of some amazing sensory capabilities that serve other members of the animal kingdom. (Any of them are worth following up on for fascinating reading.)
http://listverse.com/2013/04/13/10-unusual-animal-senses/

MAGNETIC FIELD DETECTORS AND INTUITIVE TRIGONMETRY
A surprising number of creatures can sense magnetic fields, including ants, bees, sharks, turtles, tuna, salmon, and homing pigeons, as well as many migratory birds. Even dogs, for some unknown reason, often poop in alignment with magnetic north!) And many animals seem to be able to do trigonometry intuitively. (No math course and calculator—or huge cerebral cortex—required.)  Here is an amazing example of foxes using this special sense and their intuitive grasp of trig to get dinner. http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2014/01/03/259136596/youre-invisible-but-ill-eat-you-anyway-secrets-of-snow-diving-foxes

WE CAN’T KNOW WHAT A DOG’S NOSE KNOWS
Snakes have the equivalent of the olfactory epithelium we have in our noses (but tuned for different size molecules) called Jacobsen's Organ. A snake's forked tongue collects chemicals from the air and delivers it to this organ, which is located in the roof of its mouth! With it they can detect pheromones (which we can’t) that they use to find potential prey. Dogs have it too (but in their noses), and it partially accounts for their incredible sense of smell, which is estimated to be 10,000 to 100,000 times as powerful as ours.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/dogs-sense-of-smell.html

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Writers’ Motives: Money?

“I'd have stopped writing years ago if it were for the money.” I use this quotation from Paulo Coelho as the header for this blog. I certainly don’t write these blog entries for the money. So why am I lured back to continue with it?

I may not haul in the big bucks with my books, but it nevertheless makes more financial sense to just spend my time working on my next book. But then it also makes more financial sense for me to spend the time taking some job at minimum wage, for I’d be earning more per hour than I do writing. 

Allegedly Samuel Johnson once said that "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." Well then, there are a helluva lotta blockheads out there. And clearly all poets are hopelessly blockheads, for even the most renown have to support themselves by other means.

So at least I’m in good company.

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Travellers In Europa: 01-Ursula In Avignon

http://kenstange.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=1762

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2014-02-27 THURSDAY

Travellers In Europa: 04-Sophia In Istanbul

http://kenstange.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=1771

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