Saturday, June 21, 2014

Oh, wow …

… This Is Your Brain on Writing — NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

All right, boys and girls, this gives an opportunity to just plain.

Let's start with this:

But Dr. Lotze also recognized a big limit of the study: His subjects had no previous experience in creative writing. Would the brains of full-time writers respond differently?
Well, that's sure nice, because that is something you just might want to check out before you go blabbing about it. It's called doing research that is thorough and comprehensive, not merely preliminary. Here's what we want to know: how does the brain activity of a Tolstoy at work compare to that of some literary Joe Doaks? There could well be no difference. Both are using their brains. Both are using, say, pen, ink, and paper. People doing carpentry use the same tools in much the same way. But the results are often quite different. How come the people who write articles like this seem to always take leave of their critical faculties?

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