Spidery Writing: Ghostwriting and Web Writing

How to Click Your Amygdala Forward

I first heard of clicking your amygdala forward when a guy contacted me on Linked In and had this as part of his signature. (Something like 'have you clicked your amydala forward today'?')I was intrigued and immediately Googled it. It's all very interesting and for those of you keen to access your creativite zone, here's the low down.

The amygdalae are two almond-shaped structures (in fact amygdala means 'almond-shaped') located on each side of the brain in the frontal lobes. To find them approximately, imagine a line drawn from the corner of your eye to the top of your ear and about halfway along and an inch in is the amygdala.

The frontal lobes are responsible for pleasure, emotion, psychic ability, intuition, creativity and all the 'good stuff' and various things can 'click' us into this positive states, including smelling something nice, meditating and laughing. The problem is trying to access this at will.

Neil Slade has a very interesting site about the amygdalae backed up with solid research and describes various techniques to make the brain jump into frontal lobe mode. Here are three ideas he mentions that I use when I remember!

• Imagine tickling all over each amygdala with a feather - this simple technique creates blood flow to the frontal lobes and improves with practice.
• Think of the amygdala as a switch and imagine putting this switch to the 'on' position.
• Imagine flicking each amygdala with your finger as if it was a pencil eraser and 'see' it moving back and forwards in response to the flick. This is a very good technique that I read on Neil's forum and have used myself with some success.

Have a go at clicking your amygdala - it's harmless, painless, free and let's you access the best bits of your brain. What more could you ask?

Elizabeth Gilbert on Creativity - My New Hero!

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray and Love (which, of course, is set in Italy!)discusses creativity in this short and inspirational talk for TED.

I love motivational books and speakers and the Internet really is your friend with so many resources to educate, inspire and entertain. Recently, I have been trying to watch short films after lunch to get me in the mood for the later afternoon's work at the keyboard. I have to say it has definitely helped. Also, to get a writer talking about 'the muse' is just the icing on the cake. Elizabeth has such a charismatic and warm presence on stage too and a wonderful way of expressing herself. In short - I just loved it!  I hope you enjoy what she says as much as I did.

The 80/20 Principle

I am an avid lapper-up of business books and am currently re-reading Richard Koch's The 80/20 Principle. The premise on which the book rests - what Koch calls the universe's "wonkiness" - is that 20 percent of effort reaps 80 percent of rewards. This has been proved to be the case for everything from the wear on carpets to the percentage of the nation's wealtiest individuals. It was first highlighted by the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto while studying wealth and income in England in the 1800s. Apart from noticing the unequal distribution pattern, Pareto also noticed it could be reapplied succesfully to other situations and time periods and thus the Pareto Principle (or Pareto's Law) was discovered.

Of course 80/20 is a catchy simplification. Often the proportions are 70/30 or 90/10, but the truth is there staring us in the face. A lot of us waste our energy and efforts doing stuff that brings little or no satisfaction and no benefits.

How does that affect business - in my case the writing business? Well, contrary to popular belief, being busy busy busy really does nothing at all. What we are after is focussed 'busyness' - analysing the work that brings you the most satisfaction and the greatest revenue and being ruthless about the rest. An example is the client who takes up hours and hours of time and energy through calls and emails and then wants a free article or massive discount. We all know people like this, energy vampires who think of you as their own private bloodbank. In your personal life they are bad news. In your business life they are catastrophic.

Speaking personally, I know that I often do far more than is necessary for far less than I should. Equally I know that I can't apply the 80/20 principle too ruthlessly as I have too soft a heart (and yeah yeah, I know there is no sentiment in business, but a little doesn't hurt). So I will continue to help where I can and deliver more than expected. But I know I must also do some hard thinking and make sure that my skills and talents are used to their best advantage on the 20 percent of things that bring me the greatest personal and professional rewards.

Ghostwriting in Medical Literature - Senator Grassley Report

Following on from last year’s scandal about a major pharmaceutical company hiring ghostwriters to write review papers highlighting the benefits of certain drug therapies and downplaying the risks, a US senator has just published a minority staff report on medical ghostwriting.

Senator Charles E Grassley’s enquiries were initiated two years ago when he began looking into “industry practice to get articles published in major medical journals touting the benefits of a company’s product without public disclosure that the company initiated and paid for the development of the articles.”

The report, published on June 24, 2010, is a follow-on from this original enquiry, and stems from the lack of transparency apparent in the use of medical ghostwriters. The implications are obvious – if a well-known medical ‘name’ apparently writes a report, letter or article endorsing a particular product, this may then be a factor in persuading a physician to prescribe the drug.

Senator Grassley wrote to a number of medical schools and medical journals asking about their position on ghostwriting and this report relates the findings so far. The main findings were:

• Although all medical schools either prohibit or do not condone medical ghostwriting, the report points out that the practice is hard to detect.

• Despite attempts by medical journals to crack down on ghostwriting by introducing stringent authorship requirements, in practice “the prevalence of ghostwriting has not changed much in the past decade.

• The involvement of pharmaceutical companies in medical publications “remains veiled or undisclosed.”

• The National Institute of Health does not have any coherent joined up policy on disclosing the financing of ghostwritten articles by the pharmaceutical industry.

The report recommends that “in the interest of transparency and accountability, all parties who contribute substantively or financially to a publication should be acknowledged. Only then can readers understand the context of a study and be aware of any commercial interests that initiated and influenced the results or recommendations presented in the publication.”

How Many Words a Day Do You Write?

"So, how many words a day do you write?" a friend asked me the other day. And on the surface it seemed quite a simple question. I thought for a moment. "I guess I must write well over five thousand words a day if you include daily journal, non fiction book, proposal,  emails, blogs, web articles and letters." (Yes, I actually do put pen to paper to write to my Mum!)

"I mean for a novel," she said. Ah. Now that is different. "Well, I think I'm comfortable writing between five hundred and a thousand a day, " I said. "On my own stuff." She was shocked. I asked why.

"I thought it would be about ten or twenty thousand or something!"she said.

I think it's a pretty common preconception that novelists churn out thousands of words a day. Some do. Barbara Cartland, that doyenne of the romance genre, used to write beween six and seven thousand  words a day, but she used to dictate her novels to an assistant, which kind of doesn't count.

Steven King says in his book On Writing that he usually manages two thousand words a day and that he even writes on weekends, holidays, Christmas... a true labour of love.

But actually writing a story? When I'm working on my own material, I know from experience that I average about 600 words a day (per novel) and that I only work Monday to Friday. It may not sound a lot, but it means that in eight months I have written 80,000 words, which is an average novel length. For clients, especially those who have already got a plot outline, this output doubles - even quadruples sometimes. But as I work on several projects at once, mixing all kinds of writing work, I don't write novels full time.

Once I'd explained this to my friend, she was relieved. "That seems kind of doable," she said."Maybe I can write a novel after all!"

So to encourage people faced with the daunting task of writing a novel, I'd say this. Take it steady, don't go crazy, stick to your 500 words a day - don't make it a chore - and you'll get there.

Online Dating Assistants - the New Ghost Writing

Although ghostwriting used to be associated with writing novels and non fiction books for people, the remit has slowly been extended to blogs, articles, tweets, websites, speeches and so on.

The latest addition to the ghost writer's portfolio is online dating. An article in the Washington Post describes how the busy bachelor whose days are so full he has to use online dating to find a companion, is now SO busy that he can't even interact with any ladies who respond to his profile. In fact, he can't even write his profile - no time, no time!

Answer? Outsource it of course! Hire a ghostwriter - AKA online dating assistant. This person will write your profile, engage in witty email interchange and messages with Miss Right until the date is fixed up. That's where their job ends as the busy bachelor should actually turn up for his own date, but who knows, maybe he'll outsource that too!

Books Are Friends

I was reading an article the other day about finding your true passions and one test was to imagine you had to give away everything you valued, one thing at a time, and see what was left at the end. I tried this out on my morning walk with the dogs through the woods behind the house, a place that is party to all kinds of weird and wonderful thoughts of mine!

Excluding people and animals, I started mentally chucking things out - tv, radio, house (ouch), pictures, photos, clothes, shoes and jewellery until I was left with something that didn't surprise me for one minute. Books.

My mother told me and my sister when we are little that 'books are friends' and it is something that has stayed with me ever since. I always have at least two on the go, usually more. I can't read fiction during the day - daylight hours (over breakfast for example) is strictly non-fiction time, while the night is for novels.

So when I am homeless and in rags with tv, no jewellery and no internet, at least I will have my old friends with me - the ones with pages and covers that is.

Twice Shy

Whenever a tv show comes on that I have already seen I immediately switch channels, whilst my husband is quite happy to watch something again. "It's a waste of your life!" I cry, "watching something twice."

I think the same applies to most fiction. I definitely don't re-read thrillers, crime mysteries and the like. What's the point? If the whole aim is to keep you guessing  'whodunnit' then reading it again comes into my 'waste of your life' category. I actually know someone who reads the endings of thrillers before buying them, to make sure she is going to enjoy the book. That really baffles me.

I do read non-fiction over and over again as well as the occasional long novel. I am currently reading Penmarric by Susan Howatch. I know I've read it before but I don't remember a word so far!

No, in my opinion, there are so many books in the world that reading something twice is definitely a waste of your life!

Wonderful Weather

I give English lessons twice a week to Marcella, a lovely Italian lady. It's more of a labour of love really, I keep my hand in as I used to be an EFL teacher and we chat about all manner of things. She's a big animal lover like me as well as being a passionate gardener, so we always have lots to discuss.

At the end of our last lesson, I asked her in English if she had seen the weather forecast. "Saturday it will rain," she said and we both immediately made glum faces. "But Sunday," she added, "will be wonderful!" Now as a teacher I knew she had used the wrong adjective, that to describe a sunny day it is more appropriate to use "beautiful"  rather than the more effusive "wonderful."  I was about to correct her when I thought, you know what? I rather like the idea that Sunday will be wonderful! Who knows what could happen if I have a wonderful Sunday? Suddenly everything opened up - anything was possible.

Saturday rained, as predicted, although fortunately not on the dog kennels where I was doing my volunteering stint. And Sunday? Well I woke in a good mood, because I knew I was going to have a wonderful day! And that made all the difference. It was sunny and although nothing really extraordinary happened, it really was wonderful.

Not My Type

A writer has to write, or in my case, type. I know many writers swear by notebooks and coloured pens but I am not one of them. I can easily be transported into another world while sitting at the keyboard and find it harder when I'm using a pen because I find my hand hurts when I write that way.

There is just one problem. I have never learned to touch type, or to type in any recognisable way, in fact. This is a big handicap - or 'bif handicat' as I have just typed! This undoubtedly stems the creative flow and I get very annoyed as my fingers find their way onto the wrong keys as if to deliberately trip me up.       

I know I should find a good touch typing program online and I do seem to remember once finding one that was very creative and intuitive and used colours. I just don't have the patience to practise, that's the trouble. My mind whirls on to the next topic before I have finished typing the first. I find it incredibly frustrating. I swear out loud whenever I see someone's hands flying effortlessly across the keyboard while conducting a conversation in those US tv movies (it always seems to be in US movies!)

Perhaps voice recognition software is the answer. But then I would still have to go through it and correct it with my rubbish typing. I read once that Barbara Cartland, pink-clad doyenne of the romantic novel, never wrote anything down but just dictated her stories at breakneck speed to secretaries who struggled to keep up with her torrential output. So maybe that is the answer. Get a secretary!