Ever see this card trick, available at a Website near you?
You may have been alerted to it by an e-mail forwarded from your uncle’s best friend’s sister’s dogsitter’s third cousin. (It’s been floating around for years.) Simply pick one of the cards below:
Concentrate on that card. Really hard! Don’t look at anything else for 15 minutes! Then click to a new screen, and viola! Your card has disappeared!
Of course, the card you picked disappeared because all the cards have disappeared. Though they resemble each other, the cards on each screen are different. The trick is predicated on the fact that you can’t remember all the cards from the first screen to the second, because you weren’t paying attention. Showing all the cards on one screen makes it obvious.
When I lined up the cards next to each other, as above, and, remembering how this trick fooled me, I thought, “I shouldn’t have put lead paint chips on my baloney sandwiches growing up, even though the chips gave it that pure crunchy goodness.”
While people pay copious sums to Ricky Jay and Penn and Teller to dazzle them, for absent-minded folks like myself, this attention deficit disorder can be a killer in the fiction game.
When we are writing fiction — really in a groove, riding that caffeinated buzz or just high on life — our attention is so sharply focused that we could cut a frozen steak with it.
If only I could keep that going. I get up to pace. I get interrupted by a phone call. I need to eat something. And so on.
Perhaps more importantly, we are constantly reminded as writers to read fiction for more than entertainment: examine the structure, characterization, symbolism, and language. Learn from Moby-Dick rather than simply enjoying it, though most people enjoy getting their thumb staple-gunned to a wall than reading Moby-Dick.
Future novelists
Wife is particularly good at this kind of reading, because she has reservoirs of discipline that never welled up in me, much less evaporated over the years. For instance, when we’re discussing books we’ve both read, wife will say something like, “The narrative voice in Ragtime is unlike anything else, and the plotting remarkable, in how the connective tissue of the historical characters all fit perfectly.
“And Doctorow can get away with so much because he has the perfect voice — the prose just flows off the page. I’ve learned so much from that book that I can use in my own writing.”
“Yes, I agree” I say, thinking, “Well, I know I liked it.”
I can blame this propensity on my abject, dissolute inability to concentrate on anything for more than six minutes, which in turn I can blame on being brought up on the television farm. I can hum the theme song from “The Price Is Right,” but I can’t verbalize what I learned from reading “Invisible Man,” one of my favorite books, other than “In order to be a great writer like Ralph Ellison, you have to write really, really great.”
(It’s unclear to me what would have happened had I been born in the era before television, particularly in the 19th Century. Ignoring the fact that I would have been a peasant in The Pale, I may have been more focused. There was no “Price Is Right.” Hell, there was no radio. All you did for fun was push a hoop with a stick, study Torah, and hide in the basement during Monday Night Pogrom.)
I have a sorry history of wanting to quit something if I can’t do it right the first time. That’s why I don’t play guitar, speak French, juggle four balls, or bother to put the cap on the toothpaste.
I don’t know art, but I know what I like
I am curious if there are others who write fiction yet do not consciously “study” novels or stories, or who have microscopic attention spans. Do you also burn everything you cook? Miss the plot twists in a movie? Have gotten into three (3) or more automobile accidents when you were driving?
Admittedly, I’ve been in three accidents when I was behind the wheel, but only two were my fault. Nobody was hurt. And one happened when I was 18, so it doesn’t count. Right?
i don’t study fiction. i just read.
Oh Bookfraud, you’re not the only one with this problem. I have the attention span of a fruit fly. That’s why I write short pieces all the time. 2000 words and I’m out of there.
I am not a novelist. I barely write short stories.
Two authors that make me just want to sit down and write are Stephen King and Tom Robbins, but on the other hand, when I sit down to write, invariably something shiny catches my eye.
The movie Basic? I had to have my then-husband explain it to me, after I’d watched it. I still don’t entirely get it, and I’ve seen it at least five times. I like it, I just don’t quite get it…
i don’t study fiction. i just read.
i don’t study fiction. i just read.
Oh Bookfraud, you’re not the only one with this problem. I have the attention span of a fruit fly. That’s why I write short pieces all the time. 2000 words and I’m out of there.
Oh Bookfraud, you’re not the only one with this problem. I have the attention span of a fruit fly. That’s why I write short pieces all the time. 2000 words and I’m out of there.
I am not a novelist. I barely write short stories.
Two authors that make me just want to sit down and write are Stephen King and Tom Robbins, but on the other hand, when I sit down to write, invariably something shiny catches my eye.
The movie Basic? I had to have my then-husband explain it to me, after I’d watched it. I still don’t entirely get it, and I’ve seen it at least five times. I like it, I just don’t quite get it…
I am not a novelist. I barely write short stories.
Two authors that make me just want to sit down and write are Stephen King and Tom Robbins, but on the other hand, when I sit down to write, invariably something shiny catches my eye.
The movie Basic? I had to have my then-husband explain it to me, after I’d watched it. I still don’t entirely get it, and I’ve seen it at least five times. I like it, I just don’t quite get it…
I can’t say that I “study” novels – although I have spent a lot of time re-reading Ondaatje.
Lately my attention span has been less than short. Isn’t Einsteinium an element that only exists in laboratory conditions and only for a fraction of a second? or is that some other element? Anyway, that’s been my attention span of late.
I always have to do a new thing three times – I know from experience I won’t get it right the first time.
Find I usually read a good novel three times, too. Once for the story, once for the thought/philosophy and once for critical examination of technique.
I also have a nasty mind about claims of ADD’s. I often wonder if it’s an excuse or a rebellion – much the same thing I used to feel in school when the teacher demanded we memorize something.A little voice used to trumpet “I won’t, nyah, nyah…”
On the other hand, somethings don’t need to be dissected every frigging time – just enjoyed.
le: amen to that. but i wish i wouldn’t feel so guilty about it.
michele: interesting. i don’t have the attention span to do short stories — i can’t stand going over something over and over and over. i always want to produce something new.
madame d.: it’s always something shiny, isn’t it? and did you see “cache”? can someone please explain “cache”?
quinn: i like the science reference to one’s attention span. quite apropos. or einsteinian.
bernita: i admire your patience. i don’t claim add, but neurosis: once i’ve finished a novel, i think, “there’s so much more to read and i’ve got to read something new or i’m going to explode.” but that’s just me.
I can’t say that I “study” novels – although I have spent a lot of time re-reading Ondaatje.
Lately my attention span has been less than short. Isn’t Einsteinium an element that only exists in laboratory conditions and only for a fraction of a second? or is that some other element? Anyway, that’s been my attention span of late.
I can’t say that I “study” novels – although I have spent a lot of time re-reading Ondaatje.
Lately my attention span has been less than short. Isn’t Einsteinium an element that only exists in laboratory conditions and only for a fraction of a second? or is that some other element? Anyway, that’s been my attention span of late.
I always have to do a new thing three times – I know from experience I won’t get it right the first time.
Find I usually read a good novel three times, too. Once for the story, once for the thought/philosophy and once for critical examination of technique.
I also have a nasty mind about claims of ADD’s. I often wonder if it’s an excuse or a rebellion – much the same thing I used to feel in school when the teacher demanded we memorize something.A little voice used to trumpet “I won’t, nyah, nyah…”
On the other hand, somethings don’t need to be dissected every frigging time – just enjoyed.
I always have to do a new thing three times – I know from experience I won’t get it right the first time.
Find I usually read a good novel three times, too. Once for the story, once for the thought/philosophy and once for critical examination of technique.
I also have a nasty mind about claims of ADD’s. I often wonder if it’s an excuse or a rebellion – much the same thing I used to feel in school when the teacher demanded we memorize something.A little voice used to trumpet “I won’t, nyah, nyah…”
On the other hand, somethings don’t need to be dissected every frigging time – just enjoyed.
le: amen to that. but i wish i wouldn’t feel so guilty about it.
michele: interesting. i don’t have the attention span to do short stories — i can’t stand going over something over and over and over. i always want to produce something new.
madame d.: it’s always something shiny, isn’t it? and did you see “cache”? can someone please explain “cache”?
le: amen to that. but i wish i wouldn’t feel so guilty about it.
michele: interesting. i don’t have the attention span to do short stories — i can’t stand going over something over and over and over. i always want to produce something new.
madame d.: it’s always something shiny, isn’t it? and did you see “cache”? can someone please explain “cache”?
quinn: i like the science reference to one’s attention span. quite apropos. or einsteinian.
bernita: i admire your patience. i don’t claim add, but neurosis: once i’ve finished a novel, i think, “there’s so much more to read and i’ve got to read something new or i’m going to explode.” but that’s just me.
quinn: i like the science reference to one’s attention span. quite apropos. or einsteinian.
bernita: i admire your patience. i don’t claim add, but neurosis: once i’ve finished a novel, i think, “there’s so much more to read and i’ve got to read something new or i’m going to explode.” but that’s just me.
Hey book.
While I am not a novelist I am fascinated by not only the story, but the form, style, function, symbolism and narrative styles of novels.
For instance, reading Bleak House by Charles Dickens and understanding that he introduced to brand new elements to the novel.
The dual narrative.
And a detective in a central role is the the forerunner of the genre.
Thos wo elements of style are as interesting as the multi-layered story itself.
Hey book.
While I am not a novelist I am fascinated by not only the story, but the form, style, function, symbolism and narrative styles of novels.
For instance, reading Bleak House by Charles Dickens and understanding that he introduced to brand new elements to the novel.
The dual narrative.
And a detective in a central role is the the forerunner of the genre.
Thos wo elements of style are as interesting as the multi-layered story itself.
Hey book.
While I am not a novelist I am fascinated by not only the story, but the form, style, function, symbolism and narrative styles of novels.
For instance, reading Bleak House by Charles Dickens and understanding that he introduced to brand new elements to the novel.
The dual narrative.
And a detective in a central role is the the forerunner of the genre.
Thos wo elements of style are as interesting as the multi-layered story itself.