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Oct. 24th, 2011 11:56 amI don't actually think backwards. I don't think forwards, either.
I was discussing this with my mother yesterday, and we've finally decided I have never thought lineally. Contexts, parallel thoughts, new ideas, cultural analysis - they're there, part of the whole. I translate things into lines and serried ranks for other people - the value of standard schooling is one learns some of the basics of standard thought - but my brain prefers whole concepts, preferably complex.
For novels, this is fine. My brain takes the complexities as underlying materials and as world building and then works narrative on top of that. No-one really notices (I hope) that I write sequences in an entirely special order, as long as they have a reasonable resemblance to a novel's style of narrative at the end of the day.
For articles and for my current project, I'm having to do massive amounts of translation*. Gillian's-brain-speak into apparently rational argument. A lot of the way ideas link and work together gets lost along the way and once I've ordered the ideas, they don't want to go back into the pot to be thought of in other ways. Well, mostly they don't. I find this frustrating. It's as if a recipe for rich fruit cake always turns out light-as-air sponges Sometimes I want the idea in its original context, full of fruit and wonder**.
What I'm working on today is a case in point. I'd done a complete draft of the section (5000 words of draft) and then took out the bits that now belong in the new chapter (they fit in with both but don't derail the other quite as far) and what I have left is 50% translated and good argument and 50% an alien spaceship. It's a very *nice* alien spaceship, but examiners (and editors, as well) don't really like alien spaceships unless one is a trendy philosopher. And even one is a trendy philosopher, the spaceship has to be half-human. Recognisably something. Why I can edit, I suspect, is because I have to edit myself if I am to communicate.
All this isn't actually my burning question. My burning question is how on earth do people see the world when their brains don't produce alien spaceships?
* You know, I wouldn't mind a universal interpreter with a setting "Gillianish" to apply to my more serious non-fiction.
**Sponge cakes are very pretty, but they lack wonder.
I was discussing this with my mother yesterday, and we've finally decided I have never thought lineally. Contexts, parallel thoughts, new ideas, cultural analysis - they're there, part of the whole. I translate things into lines and serried ranks for other people - the value of standard schooling is one learns some of the basics of standard thought - but my brain prefers whole concepts, preferably complex.
For novels, this is fine. My brain takes the complexities as underlying materials and as world building and then works narrative on top of that. No-one really notices (I hope) that I write sequences in an entirely special order, as long as they have a reasonable resemblance to a novel's style of narrative at the end of the day.
For articles and for my current project, I'm having to do massive amounts of translation*. Gillian's-brain-speak into apparently rational argument. A lot of the way ideas link and work together gets lost along the way and once I've ordered the ideas, they don't want to go back into the pot to be thought of in other ways. Well, mostly they don't. I find this frustrating. It's as if a recipe for rich fruit cake always turns out light-as-air sponges Sometimes I want the idea in its original context, full of fruit and wonder**.
What I'm working on today is a case in point. I'd done a complete draft of the section (5000 words of draft) and then took out the bits that now belong in the new chapter (they fit in with both but don't derail the other quite as far) and what I have left is 50% translated and good argument and 50% an alien spaceship. It's a very *nice* alien spaceship, but examiners (and editors, as well) don't really like alien spaceships unless one is a trendy philosopher. And even one is a trendy philosopher, the spaceship has to be half-human. Recognisably something. Why I can edit, I suspect, is because I have to edit myself if I am to communicate.
All this isn't actually my burning question. My burning question is how on earth do people see the world when their brains don't produce alien spaceships?
* You know, I wouldn't mind a universal interpreter with a setting "Gillianish" to apply to my more serious non-fiction.
**Sponge cakes are very pretty, but they lack wonder.