The Right Word
Eureka
I decided to tackle the problem of writer’s cramp. What brought this on? I think I have it and I decided to explore how I can work out the cramp. When I began to seriously envision getting from A —> B ( the thought of writing a book —> having a box of them in the storage room that no one wants ). I heard a person of experience describe “creative writing” in a way I never considered it at my writing group. It REALLY appealed to me because to me it was the scientific method cloaked in literature! He described a process ( I am taking some license with what my brain turned his great observation into ) akin to ::
imagine you are writing a story
you were organized and didn’t take any shortcuts
that means you have an outline
You :: Character is here —> Character gets there :: you are at a certain point in the outline and you wish to get to another place in your outline — this is the many roads lead to roam time
Edison :: filaments in a bulb if I heat them they will shine light —> I want this bulb to shine brightly for a long time :: lets start trying lots of different filaments and see what works the best
World :: this coronavirus makes lots of people sick and screws things up — lets make everyone well so we can get back to football :: I think it is time to argue about whether you mean soccer or football — I fear our challenge is yet we are still in the arguing phase
My writing group leader exposed something to me that was not obvious. Just like Edison, there is nothing wrong with trying multiple paths from A —> B and not getting down about it. The truth is we all ended up with a serviceable incandescent bulb that worked pretty well. I imagine some of you have a few stragglers somewhere in your home today that have not been replaced by CFL or LED but that story is for another day. The lesson here is unless you like being angry or don’t learn from lessons, trial and error and refining the truth (or your writing) is the path to knowledge and serenity.
That means if I am a stream of consciousness writer ( the first draft for now ) that is okay. It just might mean that another post might need to back reference the half-baked post later. The invention of the hyperlink has made it so learning about footnotes and endnotes is not as important these days. Of course, the more of you that choose to COMMENT, the more likely my half-baked stuff gets exposed for what it may be. Some of these posts have evolved in my thoughts for a long time while others are just my emotions at the moment. The subtitle today is eureka! What a great word that I had to look up to learn more.
An explanation of eureka is well represented in Wikipedia. It even ties to another word (heuristics) worthy to be a “word of the day”. The word eureka translates closely to “I found it”. So eureka should often be followed by an exclamation point because very few things translate to excitement like finding something. Alas, it is time for a tangent about Wikipedia.
I love Wikipedia because rarely can any documentation approach make me think more relationally than it. I have contributed both in content and financially. I consider it one of the high-water marks of the internet. It is the very best distillation of “the wisdom of the crowd” or the network effect that I experience frequently. The wisdom of the crowd is very different than the mob. The designers of Wikipedia wisely adopted a model of moderation and experience.
I remember the encyclopedias of my youth. In our case, acquired by my mom with weekly loyalty shopping at the Acme grocery store. That store often had loyalty programs to acquire plates or glasses (or encyclopedias) in return for buying a certain amount of groceries in a given week. While the consequences of not being loyal leading to one too few salad plates, missing out on the letter S in the encyclopedia seems more consequential. My Mom was a strategic shopper armed with envelopes full of coupons and was purpose-built to exploit any loyalty program or sale.
The set of encyclopedias made by Funk and Wagnalls is the target to which I compare today’s Wikipedia. While teachers of today undoubtedly frown upon the use of references to Wikipedia in paper writing, I would imagine that is more pertinent to ensuring that youngsters go through the process of writing without shortcuts. The model for curation of content on Wikipedia is impressive and incorporates what I previously mentioned as the wisdom of the crowd coupled with well-designed moderation.
While it is true that you might find nonsense on Wikipedia at times, moderation on the site is like baseball approaching three strikes and you are out. Fools, angry partisans and the emotionally distraught can certainly (1) sign up for the service (2) make foolish or inane edits (3) and even keep overwriting thoughtful content with their crazed beliefs or opinions. The genius of Wikipedia is that the process from signing up to getting banned from making edits is swift. By creating a penalty box and swiftly calling the game tight (for hockey lovers, minor and major penalties) the Wikipedia methodically culls out stupidity and anger. Once you have figured out how to separate the wheat from the chaff (a thresher) you are on the road to continuous improvement and lessened the speed bumps on the road to success. When I was a boy, my father, an avid newspaper consumer often said “paper never refused ink”. I think having a process to quickly and methodically strive toward truth is a great thing in the grand tradition of my Dad. I wish that Twitter and Facebook were to model themselves after the non-profit Wikipedia and rapidly remove the sources of stupid to a large extent. It is interesting to me that politicians and partisans and tech-moguls manage to ignore this wonderful example right under their nose. Wikipedia lets anyone look and at the beginning assumes your motives are good and therefore lets you edit. Where it differs is it rapidly identifies stupidity, anger, and impulse and wisely allows such folks to continue to look but alas, do not touch.
So I have had my eureka moment and for that I am glad. I hope that you all enjoyed this post and it made some sense. Comments and likes are welcome and appreciated (I learned recently from a fellow Newsletter writer that the like button is useful to keep track of what you have read!). Each time I learn something new about myself or a new way of doing things (thanks C) I am always EVENTUALLY happy. Sometimes what I have learned has shaken a former belief and it is time to give it more thought. It is easy sometimes to just assume that the last thing you heard is right. That is called recency bias and here is an explanation (thank you Wikipedia). Here is the music of the night because learning new stuff just makes me feel this way.
24+
I had trouble this evening reading this. For some reason, it didn't flow as well as your other writings.