brainshift

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

Brainshift

Some people are really hung up on getting the right shoe on the right foot in the right order every morning. Or left, depending on their inclination. It’s a superstition sort of thing.

I feel the same way about the right and left sides of my brain. Except I can never remember which is which, which can definitely lead to some bad luck.

It always seems to make more sense to me that the left side of the brain should be the more creative side, because the concept of “left” in general is less conforming than “right”. We’re practically all right-handed, right? And creativity should be an act of the unconventional.

But the reason we’re almost all right-handed is because that’s the left side of our brain asserting itself. The left side of the brain controls the right side of the body’s actions, etc.

So really using the left side of your brain is more conformist. Those who prefer the left brain are actually the math whizzes, and the supposedly really imaginative people are predominantly right brained.

But I have a certain routine to my day — a left brain concept to begin with, I wonder? — which involves not only the creation of new writing but the processing and refining of writing I’ve already done. I work on three books at once. I start by editing a chapter of an already completed manuscript of one book. Then I type five new pages of manuscript into the computer from a second book, performing a first edit on the material as I go through it. And when those two jobs are done, I switch to writing a completely new manuscript.

And somewhere in there I think I tend to forget which side of my brain I put on first that morning.

There actually is a clear explanation for this. While the left brain is in charge of logic and precise mathematics, the left hemisphere of your brain is also dominant in language. That side of your brain processes what you hear and handles most of the functions of speaking.

Since writers are primarily hearing voices and talking to themselves all day, that’s a big part of the creative process. I suspect even more so during the editing and processing stages of the raw writing.

The right side of your brain is big on helping us interpret visual imagery. It makes sense of what we see. It also plays a role in language, but in the sense of interpreting a person’s tone and the context of what you’re hearing.

That is writing a new manuscript in a nutshell. The images and the dialogue come flying at you and you’ve got to organize and transcribe those unprocessed concepts somehow onto the page in a manner that not only makes sense but that hopefully offers some flair and panache as well.

That moment when I make the shift from editing and typing to drafting a new story each morning is when my brain tends to stall. If I think — no pun intended — of the move in these terms, it does make sense that I can’t just flow from one process to another. I might be working on writing the whole time, but the first two activities have me primarily accessing my left brain, while creating new material definitely puts me in the realm of the right.

So it’s no surprise my poor old think-box isn’t all that swift at making the shift some days. Especially since I’m never all that certain whether I put on my left or my right brain first that morning.

What surprises me is that I stall at the moment I want to begin something I’m eagerly looking forward to doing — writing a new manuscript. Generally I know precisely where I’m starting, and I’ve got an outline prepared of what I want to write. But that full creative process, man …

In all honesty I must be employing both sides of my brain during all three of these processes, editing, typing and drafting, just with one side more dominant at any particular moment than the other. So sudden brainshift obviously involves a struggle to see which side can maintain control. Not a problem you usually run into putting on your footwear. Your left foot doesn’t suddenly start kicking your right foot. No! I get the sock first! Gimme!

My corpus callosum must be a mess some days! For example, I tried to write that term “corpus callosum” from memory there, with the vague impression that I knew it was the right word. But trying to employ a vague impression is very much right brain activity, while remembering how to spell it correctly is very much left brain activity. So with my right brain leading the way, the first time I typed callosum, I got every single vowel wrong. But then my left brain kicked in and I logically went to check the proper spelling, and …

It’s a miracle anyone ever manages to write anything. But no surprise that all good fiction is based on resolving conflict.

*****

Photography by Renee Beaubien, at Beyond the Prism

on Flickr, at:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/128997372@N08/

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Coming Event! Grindcore Madness!

A music documentary by Dylan Baillie

And when he’s not shooting metal mayhem, he shoot food videos with his father.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7--BpmTUF5s

John Baillie

*****

REALITY FICTION AND BEYOND!

The Big Mosquito continues, with 3 postings this week, and only 1 next week. There’ll be no Sunblog at all! Numbers 8, 9 and 10 of 49 go up Monday August 31st, Wednesday September 2nd, and Friday, September 4th. With number 11 next Monday, special Labour Day edition, September 7th. As always, at:

http://realficone.blogspot.ca/

Sylvie gets involved on the dream scene, Jason gets hired to investigate no less than 2 mysteries, and it’s time to Meet the Moberlys! Philip Marlowe never had it so good.

Featuring:

13.   dreaming is true

14.   power lunch

15.   senseless diary

16.   let’s dance

17.   the old man

18.   the girlfriend’s pov

Sink Decomposition Series

by Fandango Moberly

#10 of 50

Holiday Schedule:

8 of 49: Monday, August 31st

9 of 49: Wednesday, September 2nd

10 of 49: Friday, September 4th

11 of 49: Monday, September 7th

12 of 49: Friday, September 18th

13 of 49: Monday, September 21st

14 of 49: Wednesday, September 23rd

15 of 49: Friday, September 25th

then back to two a week until the end of the book.