Blink and my life
Okay so last time I posted I mentioned that I'm reading the book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. Well, it is a remarkably interesting book and I have found several things that resonate with my life incredibly, and I am only halfway through it so I'm sure there will be more before the end, but this one was so timely that I had to write a little something about it. The section in question is called The Perils of Introspection, and it is about many things, but mainly it is about shallow thought vs deep thought (my words), and how sometimes a quick, or unconscious act or decision, can produce less accurate results than a more detailed examination.
He gives the example of an insight puzzle: A giant inverted pyramid is perfectly balanced on its point. Any movement of the pyramid will cause it to topple over. Underneath the pyramid is a $100 bill. How do you remove the bill without disturbing the pyramid? Now, I came up with the solution almost immediately (which he confirms about a paragraph later to be the correct one), but his point is that in a scientific experiment, people's chances of getting it right were greatly reduced as soon as they started trying to explain why or how they arrived at the answer. He uses logic problems and sports analogies to illustrate this point, but I find the philosophy can also be applied to writing and the creative process.
In my meeting with J's school principal the other day, my stepdad and I used, as an example of why this classroom has been bad for her, her joy and talent in writing. It was so free-flowing and exuberant in October, and it has slowly been squeezed out of her over the past 8 months because of the heavy load of corrections that are assessed and assigned after each writing assignment. My stepdad (a writer, publisher and teacher) and I recognized almost simultaneously that this syndrome is J being hung up on the mechanics of writing, which distracts from the creative process, and turns her joy into dread. Malcolm Gladwell, quoting psychologist Jonathan W. Schooler, describes it like this:
With a logic problem, asking people to explain themselves doesn't impair their ability to come up with the answers. In some cases, in fact, it may help. But problems that require a flash of insight operate by different rules. ... "When you start becoming reflective about the process, it undermines your ability. You lose the flow. There are certain kinds of fluid, intuitive, nonverbal kinds of experience that are vulnerable to this process." As human beings, we are capable of extraordinary leaps of insight and instinct. ... [W]hat Schooler is saying is that ... these abilities are incredibly fragile. Insight is not a lightbulb that goes off inside our heads. It is a flickering candle that can easily be snuffed out.
I believe that writing falls into this category of "fluid, intuitive, nonverbal kinds of experience," and that picking it apart by correcting spelling or figuring out what kind of rhetorical argument is represented in the text, only serves to kill the fun part of writing, making J and me both feel like it's not worth it any more. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm the first person to stand up and say grammar and spelling are vital parts of writing, and analysis of form, style and substance can greatly enrich the reading experience also. But after reading this section in Gladwell's fascinating book, I feel like I'm a little bit justified in my understanding of the phenomenon at work in both J's and my experience of our writing classes this year.
She is being made to pick apart her writing mechanically: spelling, punctuation, capitalization, word choices. I am "learning" how to analyze my own writing in terms of rhetorical content and style. This latter part has been extremely difficult for me, inspiring an unprecedented level of paralysis that I am forcing back bit by bit, in my desire to finish this course off and not look back. I've definitely learned something about myself, in taking this course and in reading this book, and I believe that is what the process is all about.
He gives the example of an insight puzzle: A giant inverted pyramid is perfectly balanced on its point. Any movement of the pyramid will cause it to topple over. Underneath the pyramid is a $100 bill. How do you remove the bill without disturbing the pyramid? Now, I came up with the solution almost immediately (which he confirms about a paragraph later to be the correct one), but his point is that in a scientific experiment, people's chances of getting it right were greatly reduced as soon as they started trying to explain why or how they arrived at the answer. He uses logic problems and sports analogies to illustrate this point, but I find the philosophy can also be applied to writing and the creative process.
In my meeting with J's school principal the other day, my stepdad and I used, as an example of why this classroom has been bad for her, her joy and talent in writing. It was so free-flowing and exuberant in October, and it has slowly been squeezed out of her over the past 8 months because of the heavy load of corrections that are assessed and assigned after each writing assignment. My stepdad (a writer, publisher and teacher) and I recognized almost simultaneously that this syndrome is J being hung up on the mechanics of writing, which distracts from the creative process, and turns her joy into dread. Malcolm Gladwell, quoting psychologist Jonathan W. Schooler, describes it like this:
With a logic problem, asking people to explain themselves doesn't impair their ability to come up with the answers. In some cases, in fact, it may help. But problems that require a flash of insight operate by different rules. ... "When you start becoming reflective about the process, it undermines your ability. You lose the flow. There are certain kinds of fluid, intuitive, nonverbal kinds of experience that are vulnerable to this process." As human beings, we are capable of extraordinary leaps of insight and instinct. ... [W]hat Schooler is saying is that ... these abilities are incredibly fragile. Insight is not a lightbulb that goes off inside our heads. It is a flickering candle that can easily be snuffed out.
I believe that writing falls into this category of "fluid, intuitive, nonverbal kinds of experience," and that picking it apart by correcting spelling or figuring out what kind of rhetorical argument is represented in the text, only serves to kill the fun part of writing, making J and me both feel like it's not worth it any more. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm the first person to stand up and say grammar and spelling are vital parts of writing, and analysis of form, style and substance can greatly enrich the reading experience also. But after reading this section in Gladwell's fascinating book, I feel like I'm a little bit justified in my understanding of the phenomenon at work in both J's and my experience of our writing classes this year.
She is being made to pick apart her writing mechanically: spelling, punctuation, capitalization, word choices. I am "learning" how to analyze my own writing in terms of rhetorical content and style. This latter part has been extremely difficult for me, inspiring an unprecedented level of paralysis that I am forcing back bit by bit, in my desire to finish this course off and not look back. I've definitely learned something about myself, in taking this course and in reading this book, and I believe that is what the process is all about.
posted by infobabe | 9:07 a.m.
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