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The Write Way 14 April 2006 The Direct Approach
Greetings, Mornings are starting to get darker out here as we head into the middle of autumn, and this means that numbers are thinning at the lagoon where I go for my early morning swim. Whereas in summer, there'd be up to 80 people frolicking, these mornings, we're down to 5 or 8 die-hards, your water-logged scribe included. At 5.30, it's still dark, and the lights around the lagoon brighten the scene until the sun gets up around 6. One morning earlier this week, we noticed a young teenager sitting on his bike and leaning up against one of the picnic tables nearby. Most of us play it safe and leave our bags, containing house and car keys as well as assorted Pool Toys (flippers, kick boards etc) on the island in the middle of the lagoon (see the photo here if you forget what our lagoon is like. Scroll down till you find Redcliffe ... the island is in the mid-left of the photo). But one friend had left her belongings on a seat by the side of the lagoon. We kept a close eye on our young bicyclist ... just in case he decided to dash off with the car keys, but one of our number gave us all a lesson in the Direct Approach. She, too, had been watching the bike-rider, but instead of just casually swimming by the area where he was seated, she swam right up to him, got out of the water, walked over to him and said, "Are you all right, love? Do you need any help? We're all worried that there might be something wrong." With an embarrassed mutter, he was off ... never to be seen again. What a great technique! She explained that she's found that this always disarms people, and she has another method of dealing with potentially troublesome youngsters who roam around in groups. She chooses one and calls out, "You! At the front there. How's your mum?" She claims that the invariable response is an aghast, "D'you know my mum?" To which she replies, "Yes, I used to work with her! How is she?" And again, there's either an embarrassed, "OK," and then the group vanishes in a puff of illicit smoke, or, she strikes up a genuine conversation with the object of her attention, and any rowdy behaviour is averted because they're all reminded that their mums could find out where they'd been. How simple is that? And no, I can't think of a way to turn that into a writing tip ... I just thought it was a t'riffic insight into human nature ... But ... Ummm ... Now I come to think about it, you could use that idea to write an article about teen behaviour, or child psychology, or parental responsibilities or lots of things really. There! It was a writing tip after all! And speaking of things pyschological ...did you see the sign on Pavlov's door? It read, "Please knock. DON'T ring the bell."
This week's quiz: Here are some psychological words ... Do with them what you do best! catharsis, anomia, diathesis, aphagia, imprinting, hypomania, eidetic, anhedonia, empiricism, agnosia 1. belief that all knowledge comes by way of empirical experience, that is, through the senses 2. an inability to experience pleasure 3. memory of almost photographic accuracy 4. refusal to eat; loss of ability to swallow 5. purging of emotional tensions 6. inability to recognize objects by use of the senses 7. constitutional predisposition to a particular disease or abnormality 8. inability to name objects or to recognize written or spoken names of objects 9. mild manic state in which the individual seems infectiously merry, extremely talkative, charming and indefatigable. 10. a learning process in early life whereby species specific patterns of behavior are established And a true story with a psychological bent... An MIT student spent an entire summer going to the Harvard football field every day wearing a black and white striped shirt, walking up and down the field for ten or fifteen minutes throwing birdseed all over the field, blowing a whistle and then walking off the field. At the end of the summer, it came time for the first Harvard home football game, the referee walked onto the field and blew the whistle, and the game had to be delayed for a half hour to wait for the birds to get off the field. The student wrote his thesis on this and graduated. Last week's quiz: polysemy, fictile, ugsome, glabrous, muliebrity, aposiopesis, sternutation, properispomenon, slubberdegullion, hendiadys 1. sudden breaking off of a thought in the middle of a sentence, as though the speaker were unwilling or unable to continue - APOSIOPESIS (And who among us hasn't experienced this?) 2. capable of being molded; plastic - FICTILE 3. a figure of speech in which two words connected by a conjunction are used to express a single notion that would normally be expressed by an adjective and a substantive, such as grace and favor instead of gracious favor - HENDIADYS (This little ripper comes from the Greek hen dia duoin 'one by means of two') 4. a word which has the circumflex accent on the penultimate syllable - PROPERISOMENON (Now there's a word you're going to need!) 5. a mean, dirty wretch - SLUBBERDEGULLION (What a brilliant word! It just sort of rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?) 6. having or characterised by many meanings - POLYSEMY 7. the act of sneezing; a sneeze - STERNUTATION (Bless you!) 8. having no hairs; smooth - GLABROUS (This would have been a good word to use when discussing our hirsute friends) 9. loathsome, disgusting - UGSOME (Another wonderful word ... this time originally from the Old Norse word uggr 'fear') 10. the state of being a woman - MULIEBRITY (This comes from the Latin mulier 'woman' and is used to draw a contrast with the state of maidenhood) If you've received this little missive from a friend, you can get your very own issue, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed every Friday morning by clicking now. Did you know that every newsletter is archived? So if you've missed anything since 1998 or want to revisit some favourites, you can do so any time! Don't forget to bookmark the page when you get there ... or even make it your Home Page. (For Internet Explorer, just click on Tools ... Internet Options ... General ... fill in www.write101.com/archives/index.htm and click OK. For Netscape, select Edit ... Preferences. Then select Navigator from the left menu, click Home Page and enter the URL above next to Location and click OK.) An Ape that wants to play Hamlet after being type-cast as King Kong, a talking anvil and that rottweiller ... Dr Morgenes is still caught in the nightmare that is the casting couch. Help him find a plot! Just click on the Comments button at the end of the entry to add your contribution. If you have friends who fancy themselves as writers, invite them to contribute (just forward this newsletter in its entirety to them). I often trawl this for comments to post on my site ... so if you say something about the newsletter or site, be warned, you may end up being read by one of the 2,000+ unique visitors who visit Write101 every day! Make your Mark on the World. Then stop by our Map of the World and read the messages. (Just click List) and add your mark. A Little Something Extra Literature is filled with references to eyes ... they're the windows to our souls ... they shine like the stars ... you can be the apple of someone's eye ... But did you know that you can also learn lots of things about people if you know how to read their eyes? Read this and try it over the weekend! "Eye tricks? What can you do with your eyes? More on that in a moment. First, let's look at what you can tell by watching a person's eyes. "By watching what they are watching, you can learn a lot about people ..." Click here to read exactly what your eyes reveal about you. And here's a great resource for your research on characters with problems ... an online self-help book by Dr. Clayton E. Tucker-Ladd (a Clinical Psychologist licensed by the Illinois Department of Professional Regulation for 34 years).
Word of the week: Tarantism (n) a nervous disorder characterised by an uncontrollable impulse to dance; popularly attributed to the bite of the southern European tarantula or wolf spider ... But of course! That explains some of those people you see on dance floors! Oxymoron of the week: simple psychology And this week's Latin phrase is one you may find yourself using if you put into practice some of the tricks you learn from the LSE. Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit [AHD ee-OON-doom KWOH NEE-moh AHN=tay EE-eet] (To boldly go where no man has gone before) Kind regards, Jennifer P.S. Want to donate to the upkeep of this newsletter? Here's how: 1. Pay by PayPal: OR 2. Click here to subscribe for a full year OR 3. Use your credit card on my secure order form. (You can also access the PayPal subscription link from this page if the link above didn't work for you. With PayPal, you can use your credit card, PayPal account or pay online using your own cheque account.) OR 4. Send a cheque (made payable to Jennifer Stewart) Copyright 2006 Jennifer Stewart Individual articles copyrighted by
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