I thought we’d have a little fun today and explore some writing trivia. I found some wonderful sites with some great facts, and wanted to share some of those with you:
1. John Steinbeck used 300 pencils to write East of Eden and was known to use up to 60 pencils in a day.
2. The word “colygraphia” means “writer’s block.”
3. Gertrude Stein claimed the water-drinking patterns of her dog, Basket, taught her the difference between sentences and paragraphs in writing.
4. Graham Greene would write 500 words a day and then stop – even in the middle of a sentence.
5. Agatha Christie suffered from dysgraphia, which meant she could not write legibly; as a result, she dictated all of her novels.
6. When Dr. Seuss was stuck writing his books, he would go to a secret closet filled with hundreds of hats and wear them till the words came.
7. In the 1891 UK census, 6,000 respondents identified themselves as writers, editors, or journalists; by 1901, the figure had risen to 11,000.
8. Introverts make the best writers. There is a stereotype that writers are lonely, maladjusted introverts who don’t enjoy interacting with other people. While this stereotype isn’t completely true, studies have found that introverts are more creative and thus better creative writers. One of the reasons for this is likely that introversion gives someone more time to think alone, and thinking alone helps to spark creativity.
9. Creative writing is similar to professional athletics. A German researcher, Martin Lotze, studied the brains of both professional athletes and professional writers and found that their brain activity was very similar during athletic competition and the writing process. Interestingly, Lotze found that professional writers and amateur writers had a key difference: Professional writers used their speech-processing center of the brain to develop their stories, while amateur writers relied on their vision centers to imagine the story first.
10. Our language is constantly changing. The English language changes at an astonishing rate. By one estimate, a new word is added to the dictionary every two hours. The conventions for how to use words also change at regular intervals. For example, some of the leading style guides, such as Chicago, APA, MLA, and AP change their rules for how to use punctuation, pronouns, and specific words and phrases at regular intervals. Writers need to keep up with the latest style changes to ensure their writing meets the mark.
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