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The
Write Way
1 February 2008 The Great Leap Forward Greetings, I hope you managed to wangle a conversation or two around to the connection between grammar and glamour last week, but if you think that was interesting (Yes, I know, I know ... "get a life!" is what you're trying to say, isn't it?) however ... if you thought that was worthy of a moment's consideration, this week I have what could be a conversation starter, filler or stopper (depending on the mindset of those in your Social Circle). I've been reading a great book by one of my current favourite writers, a chap called Richard Dawkins who's a professor of biology and currently holds the rather impressive Charles Simonyi Chair of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. In the course of the book, Dawkins writes about the amazing and revolutionary changes that occurred in human culture when we went from primitive stone tools, that had hardly changed in a million years, to expertly made stone knives, spears, axes, adzes and the like as well as cave paintings, carvings, figurines and even musical instruments such as bone flutes. What happened? Well may you ask ... We've all heard the Fringe Dwellers and their theories about space ships and aliens, but Dawkins presents an idea that I'm sure will be as near and dear to your heart as it is to mine, boys and girls, for in considering what could account for this blossoming of human knowledge and culture, he writes, "...perhaps the Great Leap Forward coincided with the sudden discovery of what we might call a new software technique: maybe a new trick of grammar, such as the conditional clause, which, at a stroke, would have enabled 'what if' imagination to flower." Did you get that? Grammar could be what made it possible for human thought to take wings! And it makes perfect sense when you consider that every act, every creation, every structure, every event in human life begins as a thought ... from your breakfast to landing on the moon, from your garden shed to the pyramids, from painting your living room to putting a tunnel under Sydney Harbour ... Everything starts with someone, somewhere thinking, "What if we ..." And we have to have words to frame and test all those "what if" moments in our heads before we put them out for public discussion. When words only existed to "talk about things that were there, on the scene," as Dawkins writes, then we couldn't formulate thoughts to cope with "the possibility of using words referentially as tokens of things that were not immediately present." But once people became accustomed to thinking and talking with conditional clauses, they could suddenly share and develop their thoughts and Wow! In the blink of a geological eye, we've come from living in caves, spending every day searching for food, then huddling around a flickering fire at night, to the present where we live in caves built on top of the ground, spend every day out at work, then huddle around a flickering telly at night ... Hmmm ... OK ... moving right along ... The point is that now when your children (or students) complain about grammar and ask why they have to learn stupid old clauses and tenses, you can leap from your chair with a cheery "Aha!" and begin, "Well, Kiddy-my-own, in actual fact there's a jolly good reason to learn grammar, and it all started 40,000 years ago when ..." Read more of "The Ancestor's Tale." And this week's Little Something Extra shows what happens when someone follows through on one of these "what if ..." moments. We meet up with first-time author, Wendy Walker, as she gives us some insights into how she wrote her debut novel, "Four Wives."
This week's quiz: Match each word with its definition:
This little story illustrates the truth of that old saw that all things are relative ... The skydiving instructor was going through the question and answer period with his new students when one of them asked the usual question, "If our chute doesn't open and the reserve doesn't open, how long do we have before we hit the ground?" The jump master looked at him very seriously and said, "You have the rest of your life." 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. For all the flash new browsers, you'll have to do a search on my mate google to find what to do. There's a search box on the archives page!) 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 here: mailto:WritingTips-subscribe@yahoogrups.com And I'm even prepared to offer a shameless bribe. 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. Last week's quiz: perigee, advection, corona, albedo, nadir, graupel, anabatic, neap, aphelion, diffraction 1. the point in the orbit of a planet or a comet at which it is farthest from the sun - APHELION 2. the point on the celestial sphere directly beneath a given position or observer and diametrically opposite the zenith - NADIR 3. the horizontal flow of air, water etc - ADVECTION 4. a white or coloured circle or set of concentric circles of light seen around a luminous body, esp. around the sun or moon - CORONA 5. describing wind that is created by air flowing uphill - ANABATIC 6. the bending of waves, esp. sound and light waves, around obstacles in their path; change in the directions and intensities of a group of waves after passing by an obstacle or through an aperture whose size is approximately the same as the wavelength of the waves - DIFFRACTION 7. the ratio of the amount of radiation reflected from an object's surface compared to the amount that strikes it; varies according to the texture, colour and expanse of the object's surface and is reported in percentage; fraction of the total light striking a surface that gets reflected from that surface - ALBEDO 8. designating tides midway between spring tides that attain the least height; of decreased range, which occurs about every two weeks when the moon is at one quarter or three-quarters full - NEAP 9. small white ice particle that falls as precipitation and breaks apart easily when it lands on a surface; form of frozen precipitation consisting of snowflakes or ice crystals and supercooled water droplets frozen together - GRAUPEL 10. the point in the orbit of a heavenly body, esp. the moon, or of an artificial satellite at which it is nearest to the earth - PERIGEE Golf raises its winsome head a little later, so to tide you over, here are the Top 10 Caddy Replies (thanks to Dave Wagner for finding these and passing them along) ... 10.)
Golfer: "Think I'm going to drown myself in the lake."
A Little Something Extra As I mentioned earlier, this week's LSE is by Wendy Walker, whose first novel, "Four Wives," has just been released. This is a little ripper of a yarn, well worth reading for those of us who love to hear about how the "other half" lives. Mind you, after being a fly on the wall in the lives of these characters, maybe you'll agree your own life isn't so bad after all. Admittedly there are beautiful houses on magnificent estates, willing servants to cater to that over-powering need for morning coffee and more Beautiful People in flash frocks than you can poke a stick at, but there are also secrets simmering beneath the surface ... illicit affairs ... substance dependency ... discontent and repressed memories that threaten to shatter marriages and lives. Talk about a page-turner! Women will appreciate the insights into why you can appear to have it all and still be unhappy and unfulfilled, and men will appreciate discovering a few clues to explain why their wives suddenly resent them playing golf ... How
a Stay-Home-Mom Became a Writer by Wendy Walker,
author of Four Wives I remember the day I began this
journey with perfect clarity. Sitting in my office, there was a cup of coffee on
the desk, a laptop open to a blank screen. From the window I could see my son
with the sitter walking to the swing. Even now, I can feel the all-consuming
guilt that held me captive as I watched him toddle hand-in-hand with someone
else. A mother’s guilt is a powerful thing. What was wrong with me that after
only a year on the job as a stay-home-mom I was trying to forge a new one as a
writer? I had hardly noticed the desire
when it crept in. Driving in the car to my child’s activities, I found myself
constructing characters and dialogue. At night while I waited for the baby to
call, I put together story lines and plots. The part of me I left behind when I
opted-out to raise my kids kept calling me until, finally, there was nothing
left to do but admit to myself that this was something I wanted, and needed.
When I finally turned away from the window that day, I began to write. I wrote one page. Click here to follow Wendy's story of what she did next: http://www.write101.com/fourwives.htm Word of the week: Inquiline (adj) as an animal living in the burrow, nest, den or body of another animal, especially of another species. Since we made nodding acquaintance with our troglodytic ancestors this week, this seemed to sort of fit ... It comes from the Latin prefix in (meaning in, into) and colere (meaning to live in). Oxymoron of the week: filing system (or is it only me?) Here's a Latin phrase for every day you wake up ... O diem praeclarum! (Oh, what a beautiful day!) [OH DEE-em pri-KLAH-room] Did you know that you can have your very own Latin reminders? How about undies proclaiming, Bene est rex esse? (It's good to be king) Or a shopping bag that warns, Emptrix nata sum (Born to shop)? Click here for these and more. Kind regards, Jennifer P.S. Want to donate to the upkeep of this newsletter? Just $17 a year seems a small price to pay for all this wit and wisdom, don't you think? C'mon, that's just a tad over than 30 cents a week! Here's how to toss a few pennies in my Running Away Fund: 1. Pay by PayPal:
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a blank email to: mailto:WritingTips- Copyright Jennifer Stewart 2008 Individual articles copyrighted by their authors. |
