On the first day of April I signed up to Camp Nanowrimo, an internet based creative writing project where participants try to write 50,000 words of a novel in a month. On April 30th I posted my final count. I only managed 30,000 words.
I knew I wasn’t going to make it from quite early on. The colourful, super friendly Nanowrimo website gave me a graph showing me day by day exactly how much I was falling behind; just how much lower my average words per day was than the rapidly increasing target needed to finish on time; the glaring little endnote that if I continued at this rate I would finish some time in late May.
In the last week the near impossibility of reaching my goal haunted me. In theory, sure, I could rattle out 5000 words a day. But when I sat in front of the keyboard the words would come so slowly. I would look up, two hours would have passed, and the word count would only be 600 words up. What was I doing wrong?
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I recently studied Peter Stockwell’s two-week course on cognitive poetics via Future Learn, a free online study resource. Cognitive poetics is a tool of literary criticism that applies some elements of cognitive psychology to understanding of literature, and particularly how readers engage with and understand a text. In this article I’m going to talk a little bit about what cognitive poetics is, and then briefly about Future Learn as a useful tool for the writer.
Cognitive poetics begins with the idea of the “Theory of Mind”. This is our capacity to recognise other entities as having beliefs, perspectives and world views of their own. Somewhere in our earliest childhood we begin to recognise that those around us might be thinking, feeling creatures like ourselves. But how do we know that they are people? And how can we figure out what their individual beliefs and perspectives are?
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Apostrophes are surprisingly difficult to use. They shouldn’t be. The rules surrounding them are straightforward. But even if you can get a handle on the rules, which I’ll talk about in a moment, errors can be difficult to spot when they inevitably slip through the editorial net.
I had a document back from a very pleased editor today, which is a nice thing to happen. However, looking at the text, the first thing I noticed was that I had written “the doors over there” as the penultimate piece of dialogue. I didn’t spot the mistake, my readers didn’t spot it, and the editor didn’t spot it. Apostrophes are tricky beggars*.
You may be asking yourself what the mistake was. It’s impossible to tell without the context – but the context is that the character is trying to indicate the location of a particular door, ie. the door is over there, rather than pointing out a particularly interesting group of doors. So the sentence should be “the door’s over there” not the “doors over there.” This sort of error is easy to miss. Given the right context, the incorrect sentence would be correct. Mis-used apostrophes can easily appear in the guise of misplaced words or awkward ideas.
So what are the rules for apostrophes?
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Numbers are important.
I don’t remember much about the songs I wrote when I was a teenager and hoped that playing the guitar would help me talk to girls. But this morning I caught myself singing a couple of lines from one of them:
“The sky falls in but you’re exactly the same,
And 41 angels turn acceptance to blame.”
Why would these lines stick in my head?
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Is there a fundamental difference in the best ways to structure factual essays and fictional stories? Recently I’ve begun to wonder if they are closer than I thought.
I have a spiel I give to students. It goes like this: An essay, paper or presentation is not like a story or a novel. You are not spoiling it for me if you start by telling me how it ends. I do not want to be surprised by your conclusions. Instead, I want to know where you’re going right from the first paragraph.
We’ve all heard the saying “tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you’ve told them.” But what are you supposed to tell them? A lot of students lapse into vague generality; “I’m going to talk about such and such” or “I’m interested in this and that.” But the most important part of a paper isn’t the theme, it’s the idea – in the same way that the most important part of a story is not the genre but, well, the story! If you aren’t telling me the story, or your idea, then why am I reading your paper?
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On the first day of April I signed up to Camp Nanowrimo, an internet based creative writing project where participants try to write 50,000 words of a novel in a month. On April 30th I posted my final count. I only managed 30,000 words.
