Tag: IWSG

IWSG: Is Writing by Hand Better?

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 17 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writers’ Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by Tara Tyler, Ronel Janse van Vuuren, Pat Garcia, Liza, and Natalie Aguirre.  Are you a writer?  Do you feel insecure?  Well, then this is the support group for you!  Click here to learn more and to see a list of participating blogs.

As you know, I love space, and I love science.  It may surprise you to learn, though, that I do not love technology.  I’ve never felt comfortable sitting in front of a computer, especially when I’m trying to do something creative.  I do all of my writing by hand, with pen and paper, then mindlessly transcribe whatever I’ve written into the computer when I’m done.  Some people call me old-school for that, or they say I’m a Luddite, or they tell me to get with the times and stop wasting paper.

But recently, I saw a popular science video on YouTube that said writing by hand increases connectivity in the brain, promotes creativity, and improves your overall neurological health.  The YouTuber in this video said all writers should do basically what I do: limit your time on the computer and do as much writing by hand as possible.  I was excited to share that video with you today.  I was excited to write a whole blog post based on that video, saying: “See?  My way of writing is better than yours!”

However, I don’t share things on the Internet without fact checking them first.  So I read the research paper that that YouTube video was referencing (the paper in the links below), and I found that it did not say what that YouTuber said it says.  What it says is that writing by hand activates different parts of the brain than typing on a keyboard or touchscreen.  It also says that the brain is more active when you’re writing by hand compared to using a keyboard or touchscreen.  But that doesn’t necessarily mean writing by hand is better.

In fact, I think the correct interpretation of that research paper is that we all should do a little of both.  According to the paper, writing by hand slows down the writing process, which promotes problem solving and “fosters deeper thought and creativity.”  So if you’re someone who writes exclusively on the computer, writing by hand might help you problem solve your way out of writer’s block.  Meanwhile, writing on a computer or tablet “may favour brainstorming and fast generation of ideas […].”

Personally, I’m going to keep doing most of my writing by hand, because that’s what I’m used to and it’s what I enjoy most.  However, as of right now, I’m at the very beginning of a brand new writing project (think Harry Potter, but on the Moon, with magical spaceships and magical extraterrestrials).  I have a lot of stuff I need to figure out for this new project.  As someone who does all his writing by hand, maybe a few brainstorming sessions on the computer would do me some good right now.

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

Here’s a link to the paper I read.  It’s titled “The Neuroscience Behind Writing: Handwriting vs. Typing—Who Wins the Battle?”  I didn’t cover everything that that paper says in this blog post, so it is worth your while to check it out.

If you’re not up for reading a neuroscience paper, here’s a popular science article that (in my judgment) covers a lot of the same material well.

As for the original YouTube video that inspired this post, I debated whether or not I should include a link, and ended up deciding not to.  That video is spreading misinformation, and I don’t want it getting any more views than it already got.

IWSG: I Promise I Won’t Spread Misinformation

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 20 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writers’ Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by Jennifer Lane, Jenni Enzor, Renee Scattergood, Rebecca Douglas, Lynn Bradshaw, and Melissa Maygrove.  Are you a writer?  Do you feel insecure?  Well, then this is the support group for you!  Click here to learn more and to see a list of participating blogs.

I have a problem.  I write a blog about space (or rather, I’m supposed to be writing a blog about space).  That requires a lot of research, and I do most of my research here on the Internet.  But it turns out that people tell lies on the Internet, or if they don’t lie outright, they tell half-truths, or quarter-truths, or one-eighth of the truth, or they offer alternative truths, or they misremember things they learned were true in grade school, or they dumb down the truth so much that it no longer resembles the truth.

Misinformation is everywhere.  Misinformation about space, science, and technology?  Check, check, and check.  Early in my blogging journey, I made a promise to myself: I promised that, to the very best of my abilities, I would not make the spread of misinformation worse.  I’m only one blogger, so there’s only so much I can do, but I promised I would not make this problem worse.  Not on my blog, not if I could help it!  So before I’d share a space fact on my blog or on social media, I’d stop and fact check it, and if I came across any space news that sounded super juicy, extra awesome, and extremely clickbait-worthy… I’d fact check that even harder.

But the sea of misinformation is growing deep, and wading through it is becoming increasingly arduous.  Fake research papers are getting harder for me to spot, and sources of information that I used to trust I now find questionable.  I succumbed briefly to the temptation of A.I., until I realized how it was slowly and subtly leading me astray.  I’m at the point now where I’m scared to post anything on my blog, because I’m not sure if my fact checking is enough, and I still don’t want to break my promise.  I still do not want to contribute to the further spread of misinformation.

So what am I going to do?  Fact check everything even harder than ever, I guess.  Do less research online and try to rely, instead, on books, science magazines, and peer-reviewed journals.  If I still have doubts about the topics I write about, I can talk about those doubts, and if I find out later that I made a mistake, I can always correct that mistake—but also, I can call more attention to my own mistakes, to make sure that you, dear reader, get the updated and corrected information.

I still love space.  Despite all the headaches my research process has caused me lately, I still love space, and I still want to share my love of space with others.  I do not want to spread misinformation.  That would be unacceptable.  But to stop writing about space, to stop blogging about space all together, out of fear that I might miss something?  Out of fear that I might make a mistake?  That would be unacceptable, too.

IWSG: Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 15 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writers’ Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by Beth Camp, Crystal Collier, and Cathrina Constantine.  Are you a writer?  Do you feel insecure?  Well, then this is the support group for you!  Click here to learn more and to see a list of participating blogs.

One of the most annoying questions you can ask a writer is “Where do your ideas come from?”  Ideas just happen, and most of them aren’t any good.  However, day after day, week after week, year after year, the average writer has so many ideas that it becomes a statistical impossibility for all of those ideas to be bad.  But if somebody insists on asking me this question—if they insist on asking “Where do you get your ideas?”—I have an easy answer, cocked and loaded.  I write science fiction.  I get my ideas from science.

Does that seem self-evident?  That should seem self-evident.  The tradition of Sci-Fi writers getting story ideas from science dates back to Mary Shelley, the woman widely regarded as the very first science fiction author.  In 1780, Italian biologist Luigi Galvani discovered that applying an electric current to a severed frog leg would cause that leg to twitch.  It was almost as if electricity could imbue life into non-living organic matter.  When Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, she’d heard about Galvani’s work.  She may not have known all the details, but she knew enough to jolt her creative brain into action.

Just recently, I learned that you can save computer files to birds.  Step one: convert computer data into music.  Step two: have a bird listen to the music until the bird memorizes the data-encoded music.  You can now retrieve your data from the resulting birdsong.  Does this give me a story idea?  Of course!  Is it a good idea?  Eh… we’ll see.  I also recently learned that Earth once had Saturn-like rings, that mosquitos can smell which viruses are in your blood, and that woolly mammoths still existed when the Pyramids of Giza were built.  Oh, and then there’s the latest news from Mars.  That’s obviously giving me ideas, too.

Having ideas is the easy part of writing.  That’s why we writers get annoyed by the “Where do you get your ideas?” question.  It’s like asking if we know how to chew our own food or tie our own shoes.  Me?  I get most of my ideas from reading and learning about science.  Are they good ideas?  No, they usually aren’t, but the more science facts I’m exposed to day after day, week after week, year after year,  the more Sci-Fi ideas I’m going to have.  Eventually, one of those ideas will be good.  It’s a statistical inevitability.

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

I threw a bunch of science facts at you today.  If any of those science facts gave you a story idea, check out the links below to learn more.

IWSG: Writing is Like Oxygen

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 28 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writers’ Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by Kim Lajevardi, Natalie Aguirre, Nancy Gideon, and Diedre Knight.  Are you a writer?  Do you feel insecure?  Well, good news!  This is the support group for you!  Click here to learn more and to see a list of participating blogs.

I’m not happy with my writing right now.  I haven’t been doing nearly enough writing.  True, there are a lot of distractions in my life—some good, some not so good—but that’s not important.  No matter what’s going on in my life at any given time, I am still a writer.  Writing is like oxygen to me, and when I go too long without writing I feel like I’m suffocating.

So I have a new plan.  This new plan should help me catch my breath, so to speak, by getting a whole lot more writing done.  Ironically, though, this plan begins with a few things that are not actually writing.

First off, I need to stretch more.  You see, I do almost all of my writing on the floor, lying on my belly, with my feet kicked up in the air like I’m a seven-year-old kid.  But I’m not seven.  I’m forty-two, and lying on the floor like that is not great for my back.  Sitting in a chair for extended periods of time hurts my back even more, so I am not going to change my ways.  But stretching before a writing session, as I would stretch before exercise, does help.

Second, there’s a lot of paper clutter in my house, most of which is concentrated in the room where I do my writing.  Years and years worth of paper, produced by years and years worth of writing, the vast majority of which I have no use for today.  It feels a little sacrilegious to throw away so much writing, but the paper clutter is annoying.  Distracting.  It makes me feel slightly claustrophobic sometimes.  And so it has to go, because old writing cannot be allowed to hamper new writing.

And lastly, I’m not sure if everyone will understand this, but I need to get back in the habit of dressing up nice when I write.  When do you dress up nice?  When you’re doing something important, when you’re doing something special.  Writing is important to me, and also very special, and dressing up nice for writing time reminds me of that fact.

None of these things are new discoveries.  I’ve known for years that I should stretch more.  I’ve known for years that all this paper clutter was a problem.  And I’ve known for years that dressing up helps me get into the mood for writing.  But just because I know these things doesn’t mean I was doing them.

So that’s step one of my plan: do those three things.  I’ll be able to breathe easier (and write easier) if I do those three things.

Now what about you?  What non-writing things do you do to make your writing process easier?

IWSG: Sci-Fi Writers Don’t Need Research… Really?

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 22 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writers’ Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and cohosted this month by Ronel Janse van Vuuren, Natalie Aguirre, Sarah – The Faux Fountain Pen, and Olga Godim.  Are you a writer?  Do you feel insecure?  Well, good news!  This is the support group for you!  Click here to learn more and to see a list of participating blogs.

Today, I’d like to tell you a story.  This story is half true, half not true, but I think it’s a good story nonetheless, and maybe some of you will find it relatable.

A long time ago, I was at a party for writers—one of those networking events they say you have to go to if you want to get published.  I ended up sitting at a table with some dude who wrote historical fiction.  He was apparently a big shot in the historical fiction genre, or at least he talked about himself as if he were a big shot in the historical fiction genre.

As the evening wore on, the conversation turned to research.  Mr. Historical Fiction knew a lot about doing research, obviously.  He and his wife had just returned from a trip to Europe, where they’d toured some castle that was going to feature prominently in his next magnum opus.  Anyway, this guy went on and on about how important research is for every writer.  Not just historical fiction writers but every writer, in ever genre.

“Unless you write science fiction,” this guy said, with a gracious nod toward me.  “Sci-Fi and fantasy writers do ‘world building’ where the rest of us do research.”

At this point, I’d run out of patience.  “Well, yeah,” I said.  “Fantasy writers have no need for research.  What would they even do research about?  Horses?  Livestock?  Agriculture?  Blacksmithing?  Swords and armor?  Military strategy?  Medieval architecture?  None of that ever comes up in fantasy.

“And as for Sci-Fi, well… my need for research is even less.  Outer space is a mysterious void that we can fill with pure imagination.  Biology?  Geology?  Chemistry?  Don’t need them.  Newton’s laws?  Not important—not when you’re writing about spaceflight.  As a Sci-Fi author, I will never need to know the difference between an asteroid and a meteor, or between dark matter and dark energy, or between special and general relativity.  It’s a good thing, too, because that relativity stuff is complicated.  Have you seen how much math Einstein put into special and general relativity?

“Nope, I have it easy.  I get to just make stuff up.  Maybe I’ll throw the word ‘quantum’ in there so that I sound smart, but don’t worry!  I don’t need to know what the word quantum actually means.  And when I get my stories published, I can rest easy in the knowledge that my audience—i.e., the nerdy people who read science fiction on a regular basis—will not notice my laziness and will not call me out for my ignorance.”

The room was dead silent now.  I carefully set down my drink.  “My point is,” I said, “we Sci-Fi and fantasy writers do world building on top of our research.  Not instead of research.”

Okay, I lied.  I didn’t say all those things.  That whole rant is the part of this story that’s not true.  But I really wanted to say that stuff.  I really, really wanted to.

IWSG: Just Keep Learning

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 22 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writers’ Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by Rebecca Douglass, Natalie Aguirre, Cathrina Constantine, and Louise Barbour.  Are you a writer?  Do you feel insecure?  Well, then this is the support group for you!  Click here to learn more!

A long time ago, I was talking to some friends about space.  I don’t remember what space thing I was talking about, specifically; I just remember it was something I didn’t understand at the time, and I was trying to learn more about it.  Anyway, I was telling my friends about all the work I was doing, trying to learn about this one specific space thing, and I guess my enthusiasm was showing, which prompted one of my friends to say: “You make me want to go learn stuff.”

To this day, I still consider that to be the single nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.  I love space, obviously, but even more than that, I love learning.  That’s what drives me to be a writer.  On a superficial level, I write because I want to share my love of space with others, and I want to show off some of the cool space facts I’ve learned over the years.  But on a deeper, more fundamental level, I write because I want to show people that learning is fun, that learning creates joy.  Yes, learning can be hard sometimes, but the struggle of learning a difficult or complicated thing increases the joy when you finally do understand that thing.

Writing is not always easy for me.  Sometimes I get discouraged.  Sometimes I get frustrated.  Sometimes I wonder: “Why am I doing this?”  But that thing my friend said to me, all those years ago, is a good reminder: “You make me want to go learn stuff.”

I realize not everybody loves space as much as I do, and I realize not everybody wants to learn everything there is to know about space the way I do.  But if you read any of my stuff, and if you still don’t care much about space, then I hope I can at least inspire you to go learn stuff about the things you do care about, the things that do interest you, the things that you do love.

The art in today’s post—that drawing of a brain hovering over an open book—is my own original work.  If you like my art, please consider checking out the I-Love-Space store on RedBubble.  Shopping on RedBubble is a great way to support artists (like me!) so that we can keep doing what we do.  Thank you!

IWSG: 42

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 18 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by PJ Colando, Pat Garcia, Kim Lajevardi, Melisa Maygrove, and Jean Davis.  Are you a writer?  Do you feel insecure?  Well, then this is the support group for you!  Click here to learn more.

I’m turning 42 this month, a truly momentous age in the life of any geeky person.  For much of my life, I’ve been a collector of inspiring quotes, so I thought this would be a good time to share a quote that’s come to be one of my favorites:

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.

– Douglas Adams

I have to admit, the first time I heard this quote, I did not like it much.  I was very young at the time, and I was very ambitious.  I had a very clear vision of what I intended to do with my life.  I had what I called my “master plan,” and I believed that so long as I followed my master plan I would become a rich and successful author.  The notion that Douglas Adams, one of the authors young me admired most, could end up where he ended up in life by accident didn’t make any sense to me.

I managed to stick to my master plan fairly well for a while, up until the 2008 financial crisis.  Master plans don’t hold up well in the face of global financial crises of that magnitude.  Anyway, very little in my life has gone according to plan since then.  Young me would have been distressed to hear that.  Young me would have assumed that meant I’d given up on writing by now.  Writing careers are hard.  How could anyone pursue a writing career without a plan?

Well, it turns out my love of writing is more resilient than that.  No matter what happens, I keep writing.  Even on days when I hate my own writing, I still feel that urge to write.  And I’ve come to appreciate how all the unplanned events in my life and in the world around me help make me a better writer.

How about you, friends?  Whatever age you are, whatever place you’re at in life, are there any inspiring quotes that have helped you along the way?

IWSG: What Are Books For?

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 21 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by Feather Stone, Janet Alcorn, Rebecca Douglass, Jemima Pett, and Pat Garcia.  Are you a writer?  Do you feel insecure?  Well, then this is the support group for you!  Click here to learn more and to see a list of participating blogs.

What are books for?  When I was young, the answer seemed self-evident.  You read a book, and the ideas and information on the page get absorbed into your brain, like uploading data into a computer.  But over the years, I’ve come to realize that books can do something far more magical than that.

You see, there are a handful of books that I’ve read and re-read over and over again.  The Lord of the Rings, The War of the Worlds, and Dune are probably my top three most re-read books.  I’ve read each of them half a dozen times at least over the course of my life.  Weirdly enough, each time, the reading experience feels different.  Some characters seem more relatable, or less relatable.  Little details seem to gain or lose significance, and the overall meaning or moral of the story seems to keep changing.

How can this be?  I haven’t bought new, updated editions of these books.  The text on the page is the same as it’s always been.  Even the typos (for some reason, my copy of Dune has a lot of typos).  So what’s happening?  If my reading experience keeps changing, but the books themselves always stay the same, then the only other factor in this equation is… me, the reader.  I’m the one who’s changed.  And every time I re-read one of my favorite books, I get a glimpse of who I am now compared to who I was five, or ten, or twenty years ago.  In the case of The Lord of the Rings, it’s been almost thirty years since the first time I read that book.

Books can impart ideas and information from the author to the reader.  That is one of their functions.  But there’s a deeper magic at work, too.  Books can also serve as psychological mirrors for their readers.  When you read a book that you love, what does that tell you about yourself?  What is the book reflecting back at you that makes you so happy?  Or, if you hate a book, what is that book reflecting back at you that makes you so mad?

As writers, our job is not merely to put words down on the page.  Our job is not merely to inform and/or entertain our readers.  Our job is also to make good mirrors.  To offer people a chance to see themselves a little more clearly.  To help them catch a glimpse of their own hearts, their own souls.  What an awesome and helpful service we writers provide!

P.S.: Oh!  Maybe that’s why they talk about “polishing” your manuscript!

IWSG: I Believe in Fairies

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 24 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by Jennifer Lane, L Diane Wolfe, Jenni Enzor, and Natalie Aguirre.  Are you a writer?  Do you feel insecure?  Well then good news!  This is the support group for you!  Click here to learn more and to see a list of participating blogs.

As you can probably tell from the name of my blog, I love space.  I also love science and science fiction.  I’ve been loving space, science, and science fiction for such a long time now that I’ve developed a highly scientific, highly evidence-based view of the world.  I don’t pay attention to astrology.  I don’t take tarot cards or Ouija boards seriously.  I don’t knock on wood or worry about black cats crossing my path.  I don’t believe in any superstitions except one: I do believe in fairies.

That’s because I happen to know a fairy.  I call her my muse, and she can be super annoying sometimes, always pestering me with new ideas and nagging me about writing whenever I take even the shortest possible break from writing.

It’s hard to deny the existence of fairies when there’s this one fairy who just will not leave you alone, not even for one goddamn minute!

Anyway, the real point I’m trying to make is that there is a highly scientific, highly evidence-based approach you could take to writing.  You could learn all about the craft of writing.  You could study plot and characterization.  You could memorize all the heroic archetypes and all twelve steps of the monomythic journey.  You could find out what words like synecdoche and antimetabole mean and then apply those concepts to your writing.

And… okay, sure, you should spend some time learning about those things.  But don’t get too technical about writing.  Don’t take too scientific of an approach.  Leave room for sudden inspiration.  Be prepared for things to suddenly make sense, and you can’t explain why.  That’s probably your muse sprinkling fairy dust on your head, causing the magical side of writing to happen.

P.S.: Of course, the great science communicator Carl Sagan once said exactly what I’m trying to say, except much more succinctly: “A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”

IWSG: I Wish I Were…

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 14 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and cohosted this month by Ronel Janse Van Vuuren, Pat Garcia, and Liza @ Middle Passages.  Are you a writer?  Do you feel insecure?  Well, then this is the support group for you!  Click here to learn more and to see a list of participating blogs.

Each month, IWSG asks its members a question, and this month’s question is kind of a strange one:

If for one day you could be anyone or *thing* in the world, what would it be?  Describe, tell why, and any themes, goals, or values they/it inspire in you.

I wasn’t sure how to respond to this question at first, and I was considering skipping it and talking about something else.  But then I got thinking….

I’m pretty unhappy at the moment: unhappy with the state of my personal life, the state of my art/writing progress, the state of my financial situation, the state of my country and of the world at large….  Given all that, there are plenty of other people I’d rather be right now.  Transforming into an inanimate object doesn’t sound so bad at the moment, either.

But despite all of the problems I’m facing, there are a few things I wouldn’t want to give up.  Chief among them: my stories.  The weird, Sc-Fi worlds I’ve created inside my own head.  All the characters (humans, aliens, robots, etc.) who inhabit those worlds.  No matter what, I wouldn’t want to give any of that up.  I especially do not want to give up the two or three new story ideas that popped into my head within that last few months.

And the thing is all of the story worlds I’ve created are the product of my experiences.  My good experiences, my bad experiences.  My hopes and dreams, my successes and triumphs, and also my failures.  My disappointments.  My mistakes.  Swap my life with the life of somebody else, replace my experiences with the experiences of another person, and those stories wouldn’t be the same.  And the two (or maybe three) new story ideas that I’m currently working on… the ones that I am most excited about right now… they wouldn’t exist at all if not for the particular blend of fears and anxieties that I’m dealing with right now.

So despite everything, the only person (or thing) that I want to be right now is myself, because I am the only person who can tell the stories currently sitting in my head.

P.S.: Okay, after writing this whole post, I reread the initial question and realized that I’d misunderstood it.  I missed the “for one day” part.  If I could become someone else for just one day, I’d want to be an astronaut on the International Space Station.  I think my writing would benefit from me knowing, first hand, what it’s like to be in space (provided I got to go back to being myself the next day).