Dead Beat and Peter Greenaway’s Love-In
tags:
cineam, writing process
“Peter, Peter, Peter!” “What’s the matter, Dead Beat? Something I said?” “It’s always something you said.” “What did I say?” “The death of cinema.” “Well you know that is correct. Cinema’s death date was in 1983, when the remote control was introduced to the living…
» read
leave a comment The Writer As Paleoanthropologist
tags:
art and science, writing process
It comes as no surprise to Dead Beat, amateur paleoanthropologist that he is, that Neanderthal skeletal remains have been found further east than previously known - in Southern Siberia and Uzbekistan. Neanderthals as you know are our closest relatives - remains date back 400,000 years…
» read
Constants, Units and Uncertainties
tags:
science, writing process
Dead Beat, as you know, considers an appreciation of science a necessary prerequisite for any writer worth their NaCl. He has a particular interest in constants. Indeed he will never forget his Grade 8 science teacher trying to catch a gormless student unawares by asking…
» read
1 commentE-Mail Queries
tags:
advice column, writing advice, writing process
Dear Dead Beat, It seems that more literary agents are willing to accept e-mail queries. Do you have any advice how to go about writing them? Computer Shy. Dear Computer Shy, Yes e-mail is becoming more acceptable in the publishing world. However not all agents…
» read
The Myth of Writing
tags:
myth, writing process
So Casey Jones blows his lonesome whistle in the dark of night outside Dead Beat’s window. Dead Beat sits up in bed. A half-moon shines its light through the curtains making the shadow of a train derailing. “Is that you Case?” I whisper. “The one…
» read
Great Writing - A Product of the Mind
tags:
Literature, Writing, writing process
Mapping and analogy. Go back and re-read if you have forgotten. This is important stuff, Dead Beat does not lie.
Remember Hofstadter is concerned with developing computer models of how human thinking works. You see this is the core of it. We can talk about form in writing. We can ‘instruct’ in the craft - characters, setting, line, imagery, rhythm and so on, but how do we utilize it? What is happening in the minds of writers?
Why do two people with the same understanding of form produce different ‘qualities’ of work?
What makes a great poet great? We know what is happening on the page - we can see formally what has occurred? But what happened in the mind to allow this to occur? What processes were at work? And if we could model them, could we then ‘teach’ them?
Could we become better writers?
Dead Beat says, you bet!
Keep in mind that ‘the great poet’ probably does not really know what is occurring in his or her mind.
So analogy. Here is what Hofstadter says: One should not think of analogy-making as a special variety of reasoning (as in the dull and uninspiring phrase “analogical reasoning and problem-solving,” a long-standing cliché in the cognitive-science world), for that is to do analogy a terrible disservice. After all, reasoning and problem-solving have (at least I dearly hope!) been at long last recognized as lying far indeed from the core of human thought. If analogy were merely a special variety of something that in itself lies way out on the peripheries, then it would be but an itty-bitty blip in the broad blue sky of cognition. To me, however, analogy is anything but a bitty blip — rather, it’s the very blue that fills the whole sky of cognition — analogy is everything, or very nearly so, in my view.”
So what is analogy and how can we utilize it to improve our writing abilities:?
» read
Self-Referential Sentences - Dead Beat Lays Down A Challenge
tags:
writing process
So Dead Beat as you know has been chewing the fat with Douglas R. Hofstadter on Self-Referential Sentences - sentences which refer to themselves - are you up to the challenge? Here are a few D.B. enjoys: - I have heard this sentence is a…
» read
leave a comment 
