This week: Wise or Smart, Intelligent or Functional Edited by: Fyn  
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"A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new." – Albert Einstein
"Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail." – Confucius
"Never be bullied into silence, never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life, define yourself." – Robert Frost
"Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens." – Carl Jung
"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." — Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life." – J.K. Rowling |
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Comments overheard while having coffee at a coffee shop.
"You aren't very smart, are you?"
"She's not terribly intelligent, but she has street smarts."
"He sure don't talk too good."
"People can be so stupid! Don't they know that … blah, blah, blah … so (expletive deleted) obvious!"
I once wrote a children's book about the differences between intelligent and smart. I think about what people say, how they say it and what they actually mean regardless of what they are saying. I listen between the lines. I notice how some people make less sense the more riled up they get, and how others make a point and then walk away. I watch as people say one thing, but do the opposite and realize they seriously have no clue what they are doing. I've learned that 'doublespeak' has become a new form of language.
I remember my grandmother telling me that so and so would speak as if they 'had a mouth full of rocks' and made about as much sense. And that while she wasn't positive she was right, that it seemed to her that people would often climb on the 'groupthink' train and not know where or when to get off. Of course, this is the same grandmother who told me we had two ears and one mouth for a reason --so we'd listen twice as much as we spoke. She'd also tell me to listen to what I said and make sure my mouth was saying what my brain was thinking.
My Grandmother Annie had a thing about language. She spoke English, French and Italian fluently. Sometimes she'd slip from one to another because she could express herself 'more fully' in one over another. She was big on 'clear expression' and always stopped me if I said something was 'okay or good or great.' She wanted more. She expected the why and how and urged me to give her depth and levels. She wouldn't settle for a word like pretty or beautiful because she wanted me to tell her why I thought that or compare it to something else or give her, as she put it, more.
Annie was the one who taught me about perspectives. If something was 'hard', was it because I needed more experience, more practice? Was it because I wanted to take the easy out? Or was it because I was attempting something I wasn't capable of -- yet? She once had me describe a street in New York City when we were on a visit to Times Square. What did I see? Apparently she'd asked the kids she was nanny to the same question. I was able to see all three compositions after that fact. We'd all stood in the exact same spot. Literally. One would never know we'd even been in the same place. One had focused on looking up, at the lights and the buildings. Another, on the myriads of people on the sidewalks and compared them to a river full of fish. I saw the pigeon pecking at a piece of donut, the way the water was a swirl of colors in the gutter, and a lady pulling kid behind her by his arm and he was having to run to keep up. We each had our unique perspective.
Years later, I took a writing class outside to do a similar exercise. They sat in a row on a concrete boundary to a fountain take notes, making observations for a descriptive essay.. Fifteen students, fifteen very different perspectives. None of them saw exactly the same things. While clearly describing the same couple with a stroller, even those descriptions varied. Part of the equation is how an individual sees things. Experience, mood, lighting, interest--all will color how something is perceived or what might draw a person's focus. The student who was trying to get pregnant, the student who had just lost a child, the grandfather and the single student all had very different takes and descriptions on what they saw. Our life experiences form a filter and color what we see.
I know a young lady who has spent much time living on the inner-city streets. She was homeless for over a year. While not a pleasant time in her live, by any means, she survived it and came out the other side. She's a brilliant writer, clearly 'street-smart' and yet, day to day decisions aren't always the most intelligent. She, I am sure would disagree. That perspective thing again.
Perceptions are a truth. Perhaps not the truth, but the a character's or a person's version of the truth all the same.
These are things to keep in mind as characters develop and move through their storied lives. They will each have (perhaps I should say, need) their own unique perspectives on their world. When characters all have similar perspectives all the time, the writing, the story falls flat. It is those differing perspectives on any given situation that all for descension, diversity and angst which moves a story forward. |
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For Authors: October 17, 2018 Issue [#9179]
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