Write Said Sarah

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A Diamond in the Rough

lettersandlight:

 

One of the most commonly asked questions on the NaNoWriMo forums is “How do I do this?” It seems like such a small question, with such a HUGE answer. It is, and it isn’t.

Over the last decade that I’ve participated in NaNoWriMo (technically it’s nine years, but this will be my tenth event) I’ve learned a lot about writing, myself, and the process of doing this insane word-count sprint. The age-old saying of the first draft being a “diamond in the rough” is old, and maybe a bit cliche… but it’s an accurate analogy.

Think of your NaNoWriMo novel as a diamond. In its finished form, it will be faceted, beautiful, a sparkling gem worthy of the whole world to see.

But if you’ve ever seen a diamond in the rough, you know that’s not how it starts.

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staff: Name The Office of Letters and LightFirst Post August 2010Location Berkeley The Office of Letters and Light organizes events where children and adults find the inspiration, encouragement, and structure they need to achieve their creative potential. One such event, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), takes place all November—which means it starts today! NaNoWriMo challenges you to write a 50,000-word novel, from scratch, in the month of November. Participants exchange advice and writing tips on the web and through group write-ins held in coffeeshops, living rooms, and libraries all around the world. Last year, 200,500 people took part!

staff:

Name The Office of Letters and Light
First Post August 2010
Location Berkeley

The Office of Letters and Light organizes events where children and adults find the inspiration, encouragement, and structure they need to achieve their creative potential. One such event, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), takes place all November—which means it starts today! NaNoWriMo challenges you to write a 50,000-word novel, from scratch, in the month of November. Participants exchange advice and writing tips on the web and through group write-ins held in coffeeshops, living rooms, and libraries all around the world. Last year, 200,500 people took part!

312 notes &

sciantics: Are Bird’s tweets grammatical? Are the rules of grammar unique to human language? Perhaps not, according to a recent study, which showed that songbirds may also communicate using a sophisticated grammar—a feature absent in even our closest relatives, the nonhuman primates. Kentaro Abe and Dai Watanabe of Kyoto University performed a series of experiments to determine whether Bengalese finches expect the notes of their tunes to follow a certain order. To test this possibility, Abe and Watanabe took advantage of a behavioral response called habituation, where animals zone-out when exposed to the same stimulus over and over again. Birds isolated as babies from other birds were still able to learn artificial rules of grammar, but they failed to respond to songs with modified syntax—that is, normal Bengalese finch songs with the notes shuffled. However, after being reintroduced to other birds, it took them only two weeks to learn to respond to the shuffled songs, indicating that the birds needed to hear other birds’ songs to absorb the precise rules of Bengalese finch grammar. This study revealed that Bengalese finches can learn grammar and, furthermore, that their grammatical abilities involve a specific part of the brain region distinct from other brain regions involved in singing. This is similar to what neuroscientists understand about human language processing. (Via Scientific American) (Bengalese Finch Image by: BS Thurner Hof)

sciantics:

Are Bird’s tweets grammatical?

Are the rules of grammar unique to human language? Perhaps not, according to a recent study, which showed that songbirds may also communicate using a sophisticated grammar—a feature absent in even our closest relatives, the nonhuman primates.

Kentaro Abe and Dai Watanabe of Kyoto University performed a series of experiments to determine whether Bengalese finches expect the notes of their tunes to follow a certain order. To test this possibility, Abe and Watanabe took advantage of a behavioral response called habituation, where animals zone-out when exposed to the same stimulus over and over again.

Birds isolated as babies from other birds were still able to learn artificial rules of grammar, but they failed to respond to songs with modified syntax—that is, normal Bengalese finch songs with the notes shuffled. However, after being reintroduced to other birds, it took them only two weeks to learn to respond to the shuffled songs, indicating that the birds needed to hear other birds’ songs to absorb the precise rules of Bengalese finch grammar.

This study revealed that Bengalese finches can learn grammar and, furthermore, that their grammatical abilities involve a specific part of the brain region distinct from other brain regions involved in singing. This is similar to what neuroscientists understand about human language processing.

(Via Scientific American)

(Bengalese Finch Image by: BS Thurner Hof)

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First post.

More informative than entertaining so far as titles go, huh? That’s ok. I forgive myself. Nobody’s perfect the first time. And I am writing to nobody right now, but not for long. I started this blog for my reading and writing students. I wanted to give them a place to read about awesome stuff and write for an actual audience. (Hi guys! Glad you’re here!) I’m not exactly a social media queen, so might make dumb mistakes. No, I’ll probably be fine. I mean, I did have a LiveJournal in, like 2002, or something.

I could go on listing my imperfections, but I think you get the point.