SpideryWriting - Ghost Writer, SEO Writer, Content Writer & Storyteller

Our Wonderful Brains

I've always been fascinated by the way our brains work. Whether or not you believe the statistic that most people only use about ten percent of their brains (and I know a few people who use a lot less than that!) it is still an amazing organ we have between our ears.

Recently someone contacted me on a business networking site with the intriguing message 'I would like you to click your Amygdala forward at all times'. I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about but, being me, I immediately researched it on Google. It turns out that your amygdala (pronounced a-MIG-duh-luh)is in your brain's frontal lobes. There are two of them, one on each side of the brain, and they are situated roughly at the half way point between your ear and the corner of your eye, about an inch inside. All kinds of wonderful things happen if you managed to activate your amygdala, or 'click it forward'. Don't just take my word for it, have a look at Neil Slade's site.

To reinforce the brilliance of our brains, I will leave you with this little gem, which I received by email. I've adapted it so as to make it unique for this blog. (You see I can't stop thinking SEO!)

Olny ceelvr poelpe can raed this. Try it. Sikm the txet qckiluy and you will fnid  that you can aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht you are rdanieg. Its vrey hrad to blveiee uitnl you try. Aoccdrnig to rscheearch crraeid out at the Uinervtisy of Cmabrigde, it deosn't mttaer waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are in, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a cmoeltpe mses and you can stlil raed it wouthit porbelms! Tihs is bcuseae our mnids raed the wrod as a wlohe, not ecah lteter  illdidvianuly. How amzanig is taht? And to tnihk I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

The Unquiet Moon

I was reading a book on organic gardening this morning and it mentioned the effect of the moon on planting. I remembered a feature I'd written a few years ago for Your Garden magazine about the Italians' method of gardening by the phases of the moon. They take it very seriously here and there are even calendars printed with a planting guide and moon almanac.

It got me wondering, so I have been doing a bit of research. I discovered that there is more than anecdotal evidence that crime increases during a full and new moon. A team of psychologists at the University of Miami studied fifteen years of homicide statistics relating to Miami Dade County and found a clear correlation between murder and the moon's phases, with a sharp increase during a full or new moon and a decline during the other two phases. they repeated it for Ohio's Cuyahoga county in case the results werea fluke but found the same thing.

What has this to do with writing? Apart from adding a bit of interest to one of the novels I am writing by adding a bit of crime during a full moon, I was thinking how the moon affects writing and creativity in general. Are people more productive during a particular moon phase? Do the words flow more easily by the light of the silvery moon? (The rhymes certainly don't, if "moon, June, spoon" is anything to go by!) I am going to start keeping an eye on my own output and see if the inconstant moon has any effect.

Wish Lists

I found some old notebooks the other day, ones where I had made a note of my 'wish lists'. The books dated back to 1999 when I was still teaching English and we'd been in Italy five years. I was amazed to find that almost all the things I had on my lists had happened. I wanted to write full time - check, to restore the house we were living in then - check, to then move house - check and to find a house which was 'private and not isolated' on the edge of a village. Check again.

Wish lists are powerful things and have a tremendous impact on your subconscious, which beavers away in the background fulfilling them in whatever ways it can. Needless to say I have a new wish list and have also made a slideshow with affirmations and music which I am watching when I remember. Pictures are even more powerful than words for your subconscious (even for a writer!)

Maybe this time I should add a time limit as I got what I wanted last time but it took ten years!

Selling Out?

Is SEO writing the work of the devil? I read a forum post recently from a writer who declared that she would rather stab herself in the eyes with her pen than do SEO writing as it was so 'soul destroying' and tantamount to selling out. What complete tosh!

Writing is writing. If you love words then anything that involves shaping them and working with them is a creative challenge. I get as much kick out of writing a web article and incorporating key phrases as I do writing a poem. To me the challenge lies in making the text flow, making it readable and interesting while also ensuring it contains the words that Google loves and will rank it highly as a consequence. And why not for goodness sake? If you have a page of prose and can tweak it to help your rankings then do it. It isn't selling out, prostituting your art or anything else.