Oddly enough I did some research into left and right brains while developing the Macroverse characters. These videos bring home the difference in vivid and first-hand detail.
Of course the writer has a problem. The artist can tap in directly to his right brain, which is visual and holistic. But the poor author needs to use his left brain to generate words to express what his right brain has shown him.
I’m trying to learn how to relax and shut down my left brain, so giving my right brain chance to work. Stephen King called it his mental eye, explaining he meant all his senses (On Writing page 175). I’m a left brain person: linear, logical, analytical. I need my right brain to bring my writing to life. “This memory search [of the right brain] will be brief but intense,” King says, “a kind of hypnotic recall.” Somewhere else in that book he compares fetching up ideas with an archaeologist unearthing bones.
I need to learn, and Jill Bolte Taylor has convinced me of it. Her book “My Stroke of Insight” is hard to get hold of, but soon to be reissued I believe. I’ve ordered my copy.
