Susan Sarah here, glad to say that Autumn has arrived at last, and oh how lovely it is!
Recently I gave a talk for my local romance chapter, Washington Romance Writers … and with a little editing, et voila! It does double duty as today’s blog. Maybe some of this will interest the Wench group, with so many writers (and so many readers deeply appreciative of writer-types) among us.
Here are a few thoughts on how writers, as mostly right-brained creative types, have an important role in this very left-brained society...
Fiction writers have an inexplicable, irresistible compulsion to express themselves via the art and craft of writing -- often with a right brained, spontaneous, creative approach. Historical writers combine that with historical research and painstaking detail, a left brained activity. As diverse as fiction writers are, we all have one thing in common –- we are storytellers. It’s a talent, a hobby, an art, and definitely a compulsion. Story compels us to think in terms of characters and narrative, and to think in terms of the whole – the story, the book. And we can't do all that without facts, detail, and a touch of plot logic.
Let's look at this: historical novels have been popular for centuries, and they are doing solidly well in the market, from historical romance to mainstream historicals. Historical romance comprises a large percentage of bestselling romances. According to the statistics on the Romance Writers of America website (http://www.rwanational.org), romance novels:
-- generated $1.37 billion in sales in 2006
-- about 6,400 romance titles were released in 2006
-- 26.4% of ALL books sold are romances
-- historical romance is a 17% wedge of the market pie ….
…You still awake? OK, stop reading for a moment and do this: touch your right hand to your left knee. Now left hand to your right knee. Stand up if you can, and stretch up with the left hand while lifting the right foot and knee…make sure to cross the midline of the body as you do so … now repeat …
What we’ve just done is synchronize the left and right hemispheres of the brain.
Those physical exercises - similar to some done in tai chi, qigong, and yoga - help the brain to organize and balance itself by moving opposite limbs and crossing the midline of the body. For example, moving the left hand stimulates and activates the right brain, moving the left hand does the same to the right brain. Little exercises like this help to combat the brain fog that reading all those statistics may have caused….
None of those statistics would exist without the creative side of publishing—the writing itself. None of us could discuss the romance market, trends, technique, research, blogs, genre, publicity gimmicks – the left-brain concerns in the writing world -- without right-brained creativity. They balance each other out, support each other.
A little information about the brain: the left hemisphere of the brain is sequential. It processes, sorts, decodes, categorizes. It’s linear. The right hemisphere interprets simultaneously, grasps concepts, comprehends the elements of the whole. It’s non-linear.
Most people tend to be either right or left dominant, though many are mixed dominance. Artists, writers, creative types tend to be right brained, while statisticians, scientists, and computer geeks are often predominantly left-brained and analytical in their approach. And left handers can be either left-brain left handers, or right-brain left handers, from what I understand. I haven’t done much research into that, being a totally dedicated right hander myself.
(for more info on the brain, take a moment to watch this informational - and just really cool - video: Pinky And The Brain http://youtube.com/watch?v=Li5nMsXg1Lk )
We live in a left-brain, informational world, where left brainers are regarded as the take-charge, smart, practical, reliable sorts among us. Right-brainers are mostly regarded as artsy, creative types who just need to get real. But lately that attitude appears to be changing, as the brain is more minutely studied and better understood in all its functions. Scientists and doctors know that the brain works most efficiently when it is in a harmonic and balanced state.
For instance, I’ve always found that I write a whole lot faster and better on a keyboard than with paper and pen. I wondered why until I learned a little more about how the brain works. When both sides are stimulated, when it’s firing on all cylinders, the writing comes faster and better than if I sit there with my right hand holding a pen on the paper... while my left hand sits there doing pretty much nothing. But if I wiggle the fingers of my left hand, and activate the right brain—the seat, essentially, of the creative side of the work—the ideas start rolling and my pen starts to fly across the paper. But if I really want to get some good writing done, I go to the keyboard, and use both hands for true left/right activation and equilibrium.
Another thing scientists have discovered about the way the brain works is that it actually organizes itself, and comprehends best, through story.
Facts are so available now – the internet is a phenomenal information source, and the world is chock full of info and facts. So now it has more need than ever for context, for comprehension and integration of all those facts. There is more and more a need for story elements to balance all the facts we are constantly receiving.
Scientists and businesses are now realizing that story is essential to the balance and understanding of life, as important as facts and information. This is something that fiction writers have known for a long time – story and art are essential to a whole and balanced life.
Story can hone our understanding of something through context and metaphor, which works better for the brain’s comprehension and absorption than lists of facts.
Recently I read a fascinating book -- Daniel Pink, A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future http://www.amazon.com/Whole-New-Mind-Right-Brainers-Future/dp/1594481717/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/104-0909932-3134344?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1192757547&sr=8-2 (I'd reduce it to that tiny url thing, but I haven't figured that out yet!)
Anyway, Pink (love the name!) says that the informational age is peaking, and a conceptual age is emerging. Business, science, and medicine are incorporating right brained concerns into their very left brained worlds. Yale medical students are asked to take art history classes so that they can learn to be visually observant and become better diagnosticians; British sports teams have poets in residence; corporations employ artists and writers to inspire their technical staff through the use of images and story narrative instead of lists of facts, and those crazy exploded drawings that never made much sense to me.
Storytelling, these scientist types have finally figured out, informs and supplements analytical thinking. And analytical thinking … we storytellers must admit …. informs and supplements storytelling. Any right brained creative writer can attest, and I am one of them, that it’s all well and good to be crazy right brained and spontaneous and wildly creative, but that left brain has to kick in sooner or later, or we’re sunk.
The right brain comes up with story, narrative, character, insight, emotional impact, meaning and substance. The left brain takes care of sequence, plot logic, chapter divisions, editing, and just plain finishing the damn thing. Businesses and sciences are finally acknowledging the importance of right brain elements like design, story, narrative, harmony and cohesion to expand the potential of the left-brained informational world that has evolved over the past few hundred years.
All this is really good news for we airy-fairy, artsy-fartsy, storytelling, daydreaming types who are now getting more respect from our analytical, grounded, logical left-brain counterparts.
When I read Daniel Pink’s book … the future of historical romance writing and romance writing, and storytelling in general, looked a lot rosier (okay, pinker. I could not resist). We of the storytelling persuasion have always had a purpose in society—from cavemen leaping around by firelight, to bards and poets, to songwriters, novelists, and historical romance writers. We help others to understand life and facts (and facts of life) by pointing out meaning and substance.
Here’s a little example of the differences in the left-brain and right-brain approaches:
Henry the Eighth had six wives, four of whom were queens.
Katherine of Aragon was first, then Anne Boleyn, then Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Katherine Howard, and Katherine Parr. Henry married Katherine of Aragon in 1509, and then divorced her to marry Lady Anne Boleyn in 1533….
Henry the Eighth had six wives.
The first Katherine was his brother’s Spanish widow and she may or may not have slept with the brother
The first Anne was a charismatic, enigmatic noblewoman with six fingers who gave him a daughter and lost her head
Jane was a plain, shy woman with a touch of slyness, too, who endured a terrible childbirth and lingered a week after a C-section, and believe me, you don’t want a Tudor C-section…
The second Anne was a Flemish noblewoman who had a strong body odor, bad teeth, and a fondness for beer.
The second Katherine was a giggly, flirty teenager who, when arrested for adultery, ran screaming to Henry’s chamber and pounded her fists on his door as his guards dragged her away
The third Katherine was a calm, capable, mature woman who tried her best to bring together a very dysfunctional family by reuniting the bloated, obese, ailing, frustrated king with the two daughters he had repeatedly disinherited.
Both approaches give you facts and information. One is a quick and informational list, while the other provides context, and helps us grasp the whole. Very simply, the mind comprehends story concepts better than facts and lists. But it takes an integrated approach of both fact and story to balance our understanding of the world. And historical fiction combines the best of these elements by integrating facts, details, and knowledge with human context and emotional punch, to give the subject strength, staying power, and sometimes magic. The integrated whole helps us make sense of our world, and helps us understand it.
Storytelling has a purpose, and story matters. The scientists are just figuring this out, apparently – but some of us knew it all along....
~Susan Sarah