Brain Thorns

“All sentences are not created equal.”

That sentence jams a cactus spine into my brain, triggering wild buzzing and a whirl of obsessive thoughts.

Even if the story I’m reading is sweet and beautiful as a cactus blossom, when I hear any variation of “All men are not tall”,  my brain revs up like an angry hornet. I know the intention: to contradict the clearly false idea that all men ARE tall. The literal meaning of that sentence is that no men are tall. Obviously that’s as false as the initial statement. The world is full of men of a wide range of heights.

The accurate meaning is “Not all men are tall.” Or, “Men are not all tall.” But hey – I know you could find a better way of stating that within the context of your story.

I saw that opening sentence in a review of  Jenny Davidson’s book, Reading Style: A Life in Sentences. The review quotes that inflammatory sentence from the second paragraph of the first chapter of Tankard’s book.

How would I edit that sentence?  That’s a fair question. The real message of that sentence is better stated in the following one: “Some (sentences) are more interesting, more intricate, more attractive or repellent than others.” I’d omit the first sentence entirely. But then I’d have to address the fact that neither sentence has anything to do with the rest of the lengthy paragraph. Oh my!

I would not write off a book based on a single sentence, no matter how annoying, but that sentence triggered my "the rest of this better be extraordinary to overcome that transgression” button, and I just showed you that further exploration did not stand the book in good stead. Had that brain thorn not been there, the awkward paragraph probably would have slipped by unseen.

Brain thorns tend to poison a reader’s outlook. Hopefully my rant will prevent you from planting this thorn in your stories. Write what you really mean and your stories will sing.

This is only one example of a multitude of brain thorns. This one is personal and stabs deep. Awkward writing and sloppy checking, like typos, missing commas, or confusing I/me or its/it’s are less distracting to me, but thorns nevertheless.

Are you aware of brain thorns as you read? Join the conversation and tell us about yours in a comment.

Right now: Delight readers by using Grammar Check to remove brain thorns from your writing. Grammar Check is often wrong and can be a distraction if you leave it turned on, but do run it before your final save. Find its location on Word’s Review tab  ribbon and use it to check a few old stories. You may be surprised what you find. Ask trusted friends or your writing group to check for thorns that slip past your eyes and Word’s functions.

Mushrooms Grow in Manure

How often do you stop to think about the source of mushrooms when you slice one up for an elegant meal you’re preparing? Did you know that commercial mushrooms grow in manure in dark caves?

“Wait a minute,” you may be thinking. “Are you trying to spoil my dinner? And what on earth do mushrooms, manure and and caves have to do with life writing?”

More than you would have guessed. Mushrooms are a gourmet item, turning many a mundane meal into a foodie’s feast. Stories perform a similar function, perhaps livening conversation at that feast. Though not all stories have mushroom-like roots in dung, and not all originate in darkness, some of the most compelling ones do.

I mention this to urge you to look back through your life and explore a few of those dark moments you generally prefer to leave behind closed doors in the dungeon of memory. Grab a pen and paper and fling open that door, fearlessly facing the never-quite-forgotten. Do this with a strong sense of hope and confidence that your exploration will result in a feast of flavorful story (perhaps for an audience of one), freeing you from the tyranny of secrecy, and you’ll experience significant health benefits as a result.

Don’t be surprised if your emotional temperature begins to rise as you explore this mental manure. Before mushroom spore is planted in horse by-product, the offal must ferment or “cure” for three to five weeks. The pile becomes quite hot in this process, killing harmful organisms like weed seeds and pathogens. Mental manure has a similar effect. It’s quite common to feel some distress as you recall dark, upsetting memories and events. When you’re done, the memory is “cured,” and succulent Truth mushrooms can grow from it.

Rest assured as you do, this is a sign the process is working, and after three to five days, your mushrooms will be planted. It will be time to shut off the cave again and let the mushroom stories grow and mature. Go outdoors and bask in the light. By the way, writing about happy positive memories has been shown to have the same health benefits as writing about dark ones.

After a suitable period of time, recheck your cave, and don’t be surprised to find a long list of stories ready to be transcribed.

Here’s a link to a collection of blog posts about the Pennebaker research and process and how to use it, along with others related to mining those mental mushrooms.

Write now: make a list of ten memories you could use as manure for growing mushrooms. Set aside some time to begin curing your compost and get started.

Photo credits:

Mushroom cave: ChestofBooks.com

Portabello Bake: Jules.stonesoup

Lifting the Clouds of Depression

“Lifting the cloud of depression is one of the documented benefits of expressive writing, aka life writing, especially in the form of journaling, rants or freewriting.”

I got sidetracked after I wrote that sentence and before I sat back down to finish this blog post, I checked my e-mail. There I found the latest edition of Amber Starfire’s stellar Journaling Through Life Ezine. The first sentence in her feature article reads, “A recent article on health said that feelings of helplessness and lack of control are significant factors contributing to depression, particularly for women.” Well, hey! You know the saying, “Great minds run in the same channels.”

Back in the ‘70s when I was a psychology grad student, Locus of Control was all the rage, and research papers and theses (including mine) in psychology departments all over the country incorporated Rotter’s Locus of Control Inventory. A strong correlation was found between a strong external locus of control and depression.

Translated to Plain People Language, that means that the less control you perceive yourself to have over your own life, the more likely you are to become depressed.

Back in the day, I scored high on internal locus of control. I just found a self-scoring version on the University of North Carolina’s psychology department site. I don’t recall finding the test irritating thirty years ago, but today my preferred answer would be “neither one” for most questions, rendering my score personally meaningless. My path to that change of perspective could make a excellent personal essay topic.

In spite of being out of sync with questions on that scale today, I still subscribe to the message of Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning that others can control every circumstance of our lives, but they cannot control our attitude. To me, that’s the ultimate in Internal Locus of Control. To date, the most powerful tool I’ve found for maintaining attitude control is “root writing”, a term I introduced in my Tree of Life Writing post.

By root writing I mean rants, freewriting about puzzling situations, and journaling in general — personal writing best done “underground” and left unshared. This writing helps synchronize head and heart and maintain that sense of personal control.

Which brings us back around to the well-documented value of expressive writing for lifting the cloud of depression. Or maybe keeping it from settling in to begin with. There’s nothing like a good session with my journal for maintaining serenity and optimism.

Write now: click over and take the Locus of Control Inventory, then journal or freewrite about the thoughts you have about your score. If you are subject to depression, try using James Pennebaker’s formula for exploring some of the “out-of-control” circumstances that may be contributing factors.