Hello everyone! Hello, hello, hello! How are you doing??? This is Vincent LaVel Moorehead: writer, reader, book blogger extraordinaire. I can't believe that I just threw out my first name. Shocker, right? :-) I just feel more like an academic today. I've done SO much reading that I feel like my brain is about to burst. Let's see, I have International Relations, British Literature, Intermediate Creative Writing, A Vietnam War Seminar....yes. :)
Anyway, I wanted to give y'all some GREAT News! I wanted to tell y'all something that I have waited for such a long time. On Sunday, right when the Super Bowl ended, I finished writing my novelette "The DNA of Souls." It's a science-fiction story about an alien named Marcellion that's imprisoned in a human facility. Dun, dun, dun! I had such a fun time writing the novelette. It's 38 pages and as I said before, I'm submitting it to the Writer's of the Future Contest. That's a fantasy/science fiction novelette competition so if y'all are considering a contest, this one is a great opportunity. I've only allowed a select group of people to look at the novelette while I edit. I may post some of it when I have a cleaner draft of the novelette. I cannot wait to submit it, but I need to be patient and let the editing process be. This is an exciting time!
Which means, I can get back into my novel. :D I have put my manuscript to the side for approximately 2 and 1/2 months. I had around 100 pages, 4 chapters and a prologue for my novel "Dragon Earth." I needed time to rest from a rough patch I experienced last semester, but now I'm back in action! I am reviewing my outline this week and I'll probably jump back into the novel today. :D I can't believe I would say that this soon, but I ask myself "what am I waiting for?" I have so many ideas spinning in my head. Hopefully, I'll look at my outline and see what I need to change and tweak before I get deeper into my novel. :)
So, chapter 5 of "The Midnight Disease." Alice W. Flaherty wrote this chapter called "How We Write." Now, I want to tell you. I spent a limited amount of time highlighting this chapter because my main focus is on Writer's Block, how it's caused, and how it can be reversed. Because this chapter focuses on more evolutionary and neurological challenges to writing and reading, I skimmed through this chapter. The next chapter is similar to the next chapter, called "Why We Write." Also, another chapter that will be interesting but doesn't totally relate to my research. So, let me give you my thoughts and a brief overview of the chapter and I will be gone. :D
From the get-go, Ms. Flaherty says that she is partially distinguishing the "drive" to write from the "control" of human language. She talks a lot about humans primarily learning to speak and then putting their thoughts down on paper. Particularly in the middle of the chapter, she distinguishes from writing and reading, which is quite interesting and I think you'll understand as I get into the chapter. The first sciency term she uses in the Doctrine of Modularity. Basically, this means that different brain functions are located in different parts of the brain. Easy. :) The sensory region of the brain means brain input while the motor of the brain means brain output. Sensory regions relate to speech, sight for reading, and sign language while motor regions relate to controlling the larynx, mouth, and hand. Neurologists have found that language is controlled by the left hemisphere. However, scientists have asked themselves why injuries to one hemisphere of the brain affects the opposite side of the body (example is damage to left side of brain affects right side of body.) One theory holds that humans used to walk with their heads on backwards. Funny, I know. :) Just a theory, but that's one that exists. A different theory states that a function spread over two hemispheres of brain would require longer nerve fiber connections, which would result in slower processing feeds. I think the second theory is interesting, although those who created it sort of assume that the body knew this somehow and kept these nerve fibers on side side to achieve supremacy. Again, not sure what I believe but it sure is interesting.
Ms. Flaherty connects semantics or figurative language which the temporal lobes and syntax with the frontal lobes. This is because of research conducted with Wernicke and Broca aphasics patients and those with Broca dealt with issues with syntax and the opposite with Wernicke patients. It's interesting because semantics deals more with poetry, such as words linking boat to ship. Syntax deals more with what we call "realism" and metonymy, and deals more with cause and effect or simply logic.
One thing I'll leave you with before I go is with some stats/facts. They're quite mind-boggling:
-10% of American adults are illiterate and read at less than a 6 grade level. (This is absolutely terrible!!!)
-Oral language evolved more than 100,000 years ago according to the Theory of Evolution; however writing evolved 5,000 years ago (first in Sumeria and kept changing with Chinese, Sumerian, and Mayan cultures).
-More right hemispheric activity with speech than writing
The last fact deals with how speech deals more with emotion and writing sucks out emotion. One can easily place voice inflections in their speech to distinguish how he/she/they are feeling, but writing requires thinking to convey this emotion. Ms. Flaherty discusses the Nixon tapes and how the President and his counsel used grammatically incorrect language, but in writing, humans are more pressed to write grammatically. Interesting, is it not? ;-)
Well, I had better get back to the "land of the living," wherever that is. I must read and study and hang out with friends a bit more. So goes the world of college. Have a wonderful day and I will see you soon. Mwah! :-)
-LaVel
Thanks Greg!! ^___^ :)))
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