There’s lots of stuff on the Internet about teaching the right-brained child. But there’s nothing about teaching the right-brained college student. After all, if you’re in college, professors assume that you can think through ideas logically and understand complex thoughts, without having to draw them, dance them, or otherwise use only your right brain.

They also assume you can write a coherent paper.

I’ve just finished teaching a theatre history class. It’s a requirement for theatre majors, many of whom spend a lot of time in their right brain. They are funny, charming, interesting people. But a lot of them find history daunting. Especially if they have to write about it. It worried me to have to give grades of D and F to people I really like.

Left Right Left Right

When I worry, I do research. And I learned that the analytical vs. creative, left-brain vs. right-brain dichotomy is, in fact, a massive oversimplification. As quoted in an article on teaching, psychology researcher Michael Corballis explains:

“To say that the two hemispheres have somewhat different functions is not a myth. But it is wrong to say that one or the other side is universally dominant. Dominance is task-related, not person-related. If we’re talking or reading, the left brain is dominant, but if we are navigating the right brain is dominant. I think there is a strong desire to categorize people into two groups (good/bad, strong/weak, fat/thin); it’s a kind of easy simplification.”

He also points out, the article continues, that that creativity is often considered a right-brained characteristic, but language, which can be quite creative, takes place in the left brain for most people.

Let me repeat that. Language is creative. It is mostly a left-brained, analytical process. Creative people write. (They even write analytical papers about history. And about writing.)
Corballis continues: “People do, of course, vary in analytic powers and in emotionality. This doesn’t mean they fall into distinct groups. Both measures are continuous rather than discrete. For example, you can be both analytic AND emotional!”
Like me. I’m a writer, an actor, and a theatre history professor. Left, right, left.

Learning Stuff You Hate

Oh, you say, but I HATE writing and learning dry facts! I want to make Art! I want to work with People!

Yeah, well, we all have to learn stuff we hate and aren’t good at. Okay, my inborn, goddess-given talent is writing and analytic thinking. But to get by in the world, I’ve had to learn at many things I hate and am lousy at. I can’t fix or make things very well, and the TiVo seems to break every time I use it. My eye-hand coordination stinks: don’t toss me your car keys unless you want them to land in the dirt.

Speaking of people, however, I found that people skills were very hard to learn.

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence has several aspects.

I have some of them—I couldn’t be an actor without ‘em. And of course my students had to have some left-brained logical intelligence—they wouldn’t have got into college without it.

However, I was not born with the people-skills part of emotional intelligence. Learning that was much harder for me, and affected my life much more than my inability to re-wire a lamp. I was a nerd before they were cool. I spent high school and a lot of college hiding from people. As a result, I didn’t learn to collaborate, to grease the wheels, to manage life in a bureaucracy.

I could have just holed up and become reclusive and grouchy, but where’s the fun in that? Also, it’s very hard to make a living if you can’t stand people. Theatre, that ultimately collaborative art, taught me a few lessons. Writing for fundraisers—people with brilliant social skills—taught me even more. The hard way. I screwed up a lot. (Still do. Sigh.)

Meanwhile, several of my flunking students have great people skills

Exercise Both Sides

I learned my people skills by having to exercise them. I whined and howled, but I did it. Kind of like going to the gym.

Interestingly, improved people skills meant improved writing skills.

So you hate to write. It means that you need the exercise. Writing and logical thinking are like people skills because without them, life is much harder. No one understands your e-mails. Your resume is incoherent. You’re a brilliant actor, a terrific salesperson, but the paperwork kills you. You’re late for everything because planning is too analytical for you.  

The exercise of a research paper will also improve your life. Today, we are overwhelmed with information. Anything you want to know, you can find on the Internet—if you know how to search.

And life requires research. Recently, the Internet has told me how to stretch an aching muscle in my hip, how to get out of a magazine subscription scam, and has found me a recipe to us up half-a-cup of pumpkin puree.

To all of you who hate to write—writing papers will teach you how to navigate your life.

If only someone had told me that about my people skills.

Just saw Adam Rapp’s play Dreams of Flying, Dreams of Falling.  I call it Buried Child meets The Cocktail Party.

I love the words. They move from the amusing party chatter of rich white people to fierce poetic visions. The clash of language gets reinforced by things like geese thumping into the house and being carried into the glowing dining room as sad feathery masses. The final image is even creepier than that.

Usually I don’t like plays where the language flaunts itself; where the writer wants us all to see how poetic s/he can be. Here, linguistic dissonance makes the poetry work.

On one level, this is about how rich white people take from everyone else and get their just, if weird, comeuppance.  On another level, the internal angst of us well-off folks gets translated into strange images that don’t immediately make sense—except on a visceral level.

Rapp and director Neil Pepe use lots of standard stage business to underline the ordinary—you know, where the guy is just about to drink the poison when something distracts him. Christine Lahti, as the fierce cougar Sandy Cabot, turns in a brilliant performance. All her outrageous actions come from someplace deep inside, so we see that something awful drives her. 

I mean this as a review of the words, not the actors, all of whom are great, or the production, equally good.  So check it out for yourself. The Atlantic Theatre Company at Classic Stage Company, New York City, closing October 30.

Are you on this map?  Or this one?  

Then wear your tick repellant. And scrutinize your skin for ticks every time you wander in the wilderness—or in your back yard.

Lyme disease comes from ticks that live on deer. It was named for Lyme, Connecticut, where it was first discovered. We’ve always had our own herd of deer, commuting through our yard, fertilizing the lawn and eating everything. This year, however, Lyme disease hit Ithaca, NY, and I immediately got it. I’m an avid, if amateur, gardener, so I had lots of opportunities.

I never saw a tick on me. I didn’t get the nice bulls-eye rash.  So it took three feverish weeks, two trips to the emergency room, and two days in the hospital before the physicians could figure it out and give me doxycycline. Then I spent a week being so tired that walking to the kitchen seemed like a day's work.

 

My physicians are not dummies: Lyme disease is hard to diagnose because the symptoms mimic lots of other diseases. Fever, aches, generalized rash--one of my doctors said that medical schools give these symptoms to students so that they'll do endless research.

Oh, and if the physicians don't figure it out, and the symptoms go away, they are likely to come back as heart or neurological problems--although this diagnosis is controversial, so you'll be in even more trouble trying to get treatment.

 

I now have a can of tick repellant, and plan to tuck my pants into my socks and button my shirt to the ears. I also plan to check for ticks often, just like my dad used to do when I was a kid running around in the woods and fields.  He may have used a magnifying glass—the little suckers can be as small as the periods in this article.

I lost five weeks of summer 2011. Fair warning!

For more, check out the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society, or the many blogs by Lymed folks.

 

 

Once I had a Shakespeare teacher who gave several great lectures about the Bard’s betrayal themes .

Shakespeare knew best.

There’s my friend Joe, for example.  He’s the second in command in a small marketing and event planning organization.  And the only person in the group who can write.  (I believe him on this. When it comes to cranking out words day after day, many are called, but few are chosen.)

The board president had a friend. She got the event planning job. Same salary as Joe. She cannot write. He pointed that out at the hiring meeting. She got hired anyway.

“Just tweak this for me, Joe,” she’ll say. “Do your magic on this,” she’ll say. Neither tweaking nor magic can help her stuff. So if it’s something Joe also needs, he has to rewrite the whole thing.

Did I mention that she has the same salary as Joe?

 

Then there’s Bob. For twenty years, he has run a small organization in a college. Now he’s invited all over the world to tell ‘em how he does what he does. Meanwhile, the college nickel and dimes him constantly—because his advanced degree is not the same as the advanced degrees in his department. International reputation? Pah.

Notice that these are white men in their fifties. Hardly an oppressed group. Except for the “fifties” part.

America loves Young Turks. Then they wear them down, nickel by dime, one tiny betrayal after another.

Then they hire another Young Turk, and the cycle continues. Experience? Pah.

No wonder we can’t figure out answers to the world’s problems. We keep betraying those who might be able to help.

" . . . and I want world peace!"

Some guy on an airplane just decided that a seatback in his face was not acceptable. His violent response to the situation made the national news.

 

Been there done that, artistically speaking. Way back in 2007, while at the Last Frontier Theatre Conference in Valdez, Alaska, I took a class from Margaret Lally called “Writing the Rant.” 

 

As taught by Lally, a rant was a kind of performance art. You write an outline, then get up and improvise your way through it. I ranted about my airplane trip from Ithaca NY to Anchorage AK. The way you elbow through line after line, lugging backpacks and suitcases. The way you sit on the tarmac until you are thoroughly steamed, both physically and mentally.  

But in the climactic moment, I ranted about the seat in front of me. Although it held only a baby seat, the parents had tipped it all the way back, so their darling would be comfy. I spent the flight from Detroit to Anchorage with a seat in my face.

 

Meanwhile, the baby in question never occupied its little throne, but instead wandered from parent to parent, who had strategically placed themselves on opposite sides of the aisle. I’m sure the flight attendants really enjoyed that. I know I did.

 

Here’s a rough outline of my ranting conclusion.

 

“Finally, I placed both feet on the offending seatback and shoved. Hard. Seats fell like dominoes. Hundreds of people went face down in their laptops. Pretzels flew everywhere. Lots of screaming. Three flight attendants gang tackled me.

 

"You know, the security people were really nice about it all. And my accommodations at Gitmo are much more comfortable than that dammed airplane.”

To quote Lily Tomlin (and Jane Wagner): "Art. Life. Life. Art."

 

 

 

“Do your magic,” say some of my writing clients.

In my avocation--acting and playwriting--directors talk about  “the magic of theatre.”

I wish it were magic.

Over the years, I've discovered many people, both writing  clients and theatre folk, who believe in magic.  To them, advance planning, regular meetings, and an overall vision of the production translate to hierarchical, autocratic, uncreative, and limiting. Not collaborative. Patriarchal.

Also a lot of work.

And you don't look cool. When you know what you want, people can see you as a little obsessive, a little dictatorial.  Not loose and creative.

Unprofessional

Many years ago, a colleague, irritated by another’s writing, called it “unprofessional" She used the term in the vague way that people say something is “inappropriate.”

In other words, she disliked both the person and their work, but didn’t want to say anything directly insulting. But I'm happy to insult anyone who believes that careful work means uncreative work.

Merriam Webster defines “professional” as: (1 characterized by or conforming to the technical or ethical standards of a profession (2) exhibiting a courteous, conscientious, and generally businesslike manner in the workplace.

Tricky.  Conforming to technical standards while remaining unfailingly courteous can kill a project. A good collaboration is like a good marriage: if you disagree, you better get it right out in the open where you can look at it, or it will fester.

But too many creative people avoid the businesslike approach for fear it will mess up their mojo.

What's the answer?  Craft.

Craft

“Professional” means knowing, and practicing, your craft, even when it feels tedious and uncreative--or sweaty and inappropriate. Developing an overall plan after carefully considering your audience, reviewing past mistakes and triumphs so you can use them to create better work, methodically going through each step of the process, setting and meeting deadlines—where’s the magic? I mean, we're not making assembly line widgets here, we're making Art!

Ask anyone who makes a living by building things—tables, computer code, articles, quilts, plays—and they’ll tell you. If you work hard and well, sometimes the magic happens.

Magic is an elusive little bugger. Craft is how you sneak up on it.

 

I  thirstily look forward to you blog posts.

 

I allow no comments to post to email me direct please.

Everything you learn will help you in your writing. Here’s a particularly oddball tidbit for writers.

My father believed in the religion of science. He was a wonderful dad, and taught me about gardening, carpentry, and—despite my protests—mathematics. He would not, however, have much use for the many alternative therapies I try for my fibromyalgia .

My friend Mary does something called Sound Healing , in her beautiful studio in the woods. After we talked for awhile, she said “Okay, Judith, now I’m going to ask you to dowse in order to choose the tuning forks and Tibetan bowls I’ll use to heal your body’s vibrations.”

Somewhere in Scientific Heaven my father said, “This is not Science.” He sounded disgusted.

I told him science believed in controlled experiments.

Mary gave me a small, heavy glass bead suspended on about six inches of thread. I held it over my palm and told it a lie: “My name is Fred.” I did this with my eyes closed so I wouldn’t skew the experiment. When I looked, the bead was swinging left and right.

Then—eyes closed--I told it a truth: “My name is Judith.” Now the bead swung toward me and away, toward and away.

“Welp,” said my father.  (“Welp” is New England for a very noncommittal “Well.” *)

I held the bead over a Tibetan bowl. With my eyes closed. When I opened them, the bead was swinging toward and away. “Yes,” said Mary, and picked up the bowl.

It went on like that. Close eyes. Hold string. Bead swings. No. Yes. No.

Then it stood still. Hah, I thought, it isn’t working. “That’s a No,” Mary told me. When I tried again, I got a definite swing. Yes. No. Yes.

My father gave up and went back to Scientific Heaven.

Sound Healing also works. But I was going to tell you how learning about dowsing helped my writing biz.

A few months after my experience with Sound Healing, I was hired by a woman to help her put together her memoirs. She is the opposite of my rational, father-trained self. Using her formidable intuition, she has healed herself of the physical and mental ailments brought on by difficult parents and an early, abusive marriage.  

Every day, she uses her dowsing bead to learn what supplements to take. Because I’ve learned that there are many things Science can’t explain—like dowsing, like Sound Healing—and because I am still the rational, organized person my father trained--she chose me to help her put together her memoirs.

We make a good team.

Meanwhile, I’ll keep learning about new things. Because you never know.

If you own, or manage, your own business, run, do not walk, to BNI (Business Networking International) .

Your business will grow. Your understanding of how to run a business will grow. And you’ll meet a bunch of terrific people.


So why did I leave?

I had the chance to work on my own writing—plays, a novel—instead of other people’s writing.  I’m gonna keep doing the latter, so if you want something written—web content, articles, brochures, memoirs—let me know.  But I’m going to stop marketing my freelance business, and start marketing my own writing.

And I know how to market my own writing thanks to BNI, where I learned about referrals and networking as an art.

Why BNI?

Structure.  The meetings are incredibly well organized. That doesn’t mean boring. We get to know each other through one-to-one meetings. So there’s lots of catching up, happy teasing, and love through the rough spots.

Referrals.  We refer one another.  If you need any kind of home repair, painting, etc; if you need any kind of insurance; if you need acupuncture, chiropractic, massage, dentistry, psychotherapy; if you need anything at all, give me a call.  I know a lot of great people.  I know them well.  I’ve used their services.

Training.  BNI offers annual training. The meetings all have an Education Minute. And there’s a whole roomful of entrepreneurs to learn from.

Why didn’t I join sooner???

Because of the cost of dues—which I made back in six months. Because I had to be at every meeting, 7:15 a.m. every Tuesday, or send a substitute. But when I knew I had to take the opportunity to do my own writing, I hated to leave!

There’s this great Bollywood movie that has a scene with everyone singing and dancing on top of a moving train. Somewhere in that song is “I love-a you all!” 
I can't find it on You Tube.  But--

I love you all.

Someone recently asked me if I did marketing.  I didn’t know how to answer the question.

The online Marketing Teacher puts it succinctly: “Marketing is made of price, place, promotion, product (know as the four P's).”   

So my first answer is no, I’m not a specialist in marketing.

What about the subset of marketing, Marketing Communications?  Can I do that for you?

It depends on which of the eleven parts of Marketing Communications you need.

1.     Personal Selling.
2.     Sales Promotion.
3.     Public Relations (and publicity).
4.     Direct Marketing.
5.     Trade Fairs and Exhibitions.
6.     Advertising (above and below the line).
7.     Sponsorship.
8.     Packaging.
9.     Merchandising (and point-of-sale).
10.     Marketing (and Internet promotions).
11.     Brands.

Therefore, Marketing, and Marketing Communications make up your plan.  Writing is how you go about executing parts of that plan.  With the help of a graphic designer , I can create these parts of your plan.

• Press releases
• Direct marketing letters
• Advertising copy
• Web content
• Annual reports
• Speeches

Let’s go back to the original question—can I “do marketing”?  I understand enough about marketing to write the pieces that a small business or non-profit needs.  If you’re small enough, I can even help you create a communications plan.  

Larger groups need a specialist to develop and manage the whole process.  The Public Relations Society of America has lists of such people, as does Marketing Power.

But even if you're a small group, you need a plan.  And then you need a writer.