I'VE BEEN READING this book that was on a lot of year’s best lists. Wait, actually it was on one list, but other people linked to it on twitter several times and I keep clicking on the same link and was surprised to keep seeing the same book on all these lists, which were the same list.
I figured it out, eventually, but it made for a hyper-awareness of this particular book.
I’m still in the middle of it, and will eventually review it on Goodreads, but there was a short, two or three paragraph section that caught my eye.
In it, in a section that mentions synesthesia, it talks about some neurologists believe a developing baby brain, as it become a toddler, and eventually a child, might sense the world more like someone with synesthesia does.
Interesting, but that lead to a digression about a child animising the objects around them. And how that too is part of the development of understanding the world.
On new year’s, we’d been babysitting my nephews, and I decided to see if my youngest might give me some anecdotal evidence that there is any truth to this. The book suggested asking a young child about what happens to the sun at night. So I asked.
“What happens to the sun at night time?” I asked.
My youngest nephew (herefore to be called, Younger) said, very matter of factly, “The sun gets sleepy, and he has to rest. So he lays down and sleeps until morning.”
My older nephew (I shall dub him, Elder), who is in school, was aghast, he immediately gave a very long, but essentially correct, explanation about the solar system and earth’s rotation while orbiting the sun.
Younger went quiet for at least two seconds after Elder’s explanation before he quite confidently said, “That makes absolutely no sense.”
Kids. They’re pretty awesome.
A QUICK SET OF GOALS for 2014. They’re pretty simple.
1) Write 500 words of fiction per day. That would add up to 175,000 words in a year. That's a pretty impressive number for a pretty small amount of work on a daily basis. I managed to get 1k out today during lunch. If I don't get it done, no big deal. It's the journey, not the destination.
2) Revise and Edit. Tons of stuff to do really. Tons.
3) In order to help with my nuts and bolts of plotting, I’m thinking of crafting a super complicated time-travel story. Because the airtight time travel story is really the holy grail of plotting, I think. They don’t get done often.
That’s about it for me. Happy 2014, folks.
