Janet Cameron

Public Domain 1. Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good. - Samuel Johnson. 2. I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offense. - George Eliot 3. An author is a fool who not content with boring his contemporaries, insists of boring future generations. - Baron De La Brede Et De Montesquieu.  4. And when her biographer says of an Italian woman poet: "during some years her Muse was intermitted," we do not wonder at the fact when he casually mentions her ten children. -  Anna Garlin Spencer 5. Until he starts to sell, a writer is a bum to his family, a lazy lout to his friends, and a self-deluding parasite to his neighbours. When he becomes known, he is "one helluva neighbour" to his neighbours, a genius to his friends and a favourite cousin to his family. But none of them buy his books. - Clifford Welles. 6. With sixty staring me in the f...

Photo Copyright Janet Cameron There are four basic human emotions. The key word here is "basic."                Happiness                  Fear                Anger                 Despair Words that describe feelings can convey a variation in intensity of one of the above, or else a combination of two or three different emotions. Just as a tickle is a tiny pain, so  apprehension  is a mild form of fear.   Anxiety  suggests a little more than apprehension while  terrified  is stronger. Some words are combinations of more than one emotion.  For example,  excitement  suggests optimism with a touch of uncertainty, in other words, a combination of happiness and fear. This is, of course, a volatile mixture.  A  traumatised ...

I'd like to look at some rather scary statistics.  Current research indicates that our attention spans are shortening. In the year 2000, the average attention span was 12 seconds, in 2012 that average had shrunk to 8 seconds. The attention span of a goldfish is 9 seconds.  Of course, we all know statistics can be manipulated, even so, I believe there is a trend.  Let's look, first of all, to the barriers that inhibit our thinking. We are constantly busy and distracted. The trouble may be that we multitask even when we don't know we're multitasking. We talk socially or about business on the telephone, probably with the radio or tv banging away in the background.  We work on the computer and have to remember to be mindful of the dinner vegetables bubbling away on the stove. Our senses are constantly bombarded with sensations and our brains have to block the overflow. It takes energy for our brains to resist all this superfluous stimuli, and this negativity c...

Public Domain Wikimedia Commons Louis de Jaucourt, (1704-1779) was a great scholar of the Enlightenment, born in Paris, who studied theology in Geneva. He  influenced his readers by his intelligent use of language and metaphor, and by inviting their complicity through sound psychological processes. Overcoming the Loss of a Manuscript Today, we are lucky as there is a degree of safety in storing our work online. It might be plagiarised but it is unlikely to be lost. It wasn't so in times past. The saddest thing about this great man's life was that he worked for twenty years to produce a work of six volumes on Anatomy, but the ship carrying his manuscript sank on its way to Amsterdam, and his labours were entirely lost.  Yet, undeterred, he went on to contribute more articles to the Encyclopédie than any other writer, and he did this voluntarily. He was already wealthy so he was willing to participate without payment. He wasn't as well-known or...

Some children have innate grammatical abilities that outperform their language skills Photo copyright Janet Cameron Is the Human Mind Hardwired with Innate Rational Knowledge? Radical philosopher Noam Chomsky, born in 1928, believes that language reveals the nature and the essence of the human mind through the vehicle of thought.  His views are unpopular with many thinkers, and yet, despite the controversy, most agree his contribution to the subject has been revolutionary. Chomsky denies the empiricist view of the mind as a “blank” or “clean” slate, informed by experience.  According to Chomsky, all languages share a “fundamental universal grammar, which is hardwired into the human brain.”  This grammar does not need to be learned. Transformational grammar, according to Chomsky, contains two elements: The surface structure – this applies to the specific language spoken or written. The deep structure – this is hardwired into the human brain. ...

Mark Twain - Wikimedia Commons 1. Unproved with original learnings, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book . Edward Gibbon 2. Until he starts to sell, a writer is a bum to his family, a lazy lout to his friends, and a self-deluding parasite to his neighbours. When he becomes known, he is "one helluva neighbor" to his neighbors, a genius to his friends, and a favourite cousin to his family. But none of them buy his books.  Clifford Welles 3. The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from.  Gene Fowler 4. If you steal from one author it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research.  Wilson Mizner.   5. Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.  Samuel Johnson   6. An author is a fool who, not content...

The sexy girl, the stupid girl, the deep-thinking girl - and scary Brodie herself. The interaction of conflicting ideologies between characters make this short novel a great read. The characters in   The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie   represent at least four sets of opposing ideologies, the first of which is Jean Brodie's progressiveness and Mrs. Mackay's conventionality.  The other two conflicts are expressed in the interaction of Jean Brodie and her pupil, Sandy, the former being unselfcritical, pro-Fascist and, Calvinist   the latter self-critical, anti-Fascist and Catholic.  Jean Brodie's progressiveness is obvious from her insistence on individualism rather than team-spirit and this influenced the behaviour and appearance of the young girls in her charge who all bore the Brodie stamp. For example, Rose Stanley's hat was..."dented in the crown on either side", and Sandy Stringer wore hers "turned up all round." Jean Brodie was event...

Image Copyright Janet Cameron Prolific novelist and story writer, Ernest Hemingway, was not religious but he was a great moral thinker, using biblical concepts to inform his writing. Ernest Miller Hemingway (1899-1961) was an American writer of novels and short stories, although he is more highly regarded for his short stories. He was the son of a doctor from Illinois and began his writing career as a Kansas City reporter. In 1918 during the First World War, Hemingway volunteered to serve on an ambulance unit on the Italian front, where he was wounded. Later, he became a reporter for the Toronto   Star . In time he was mixing with such icons as Ezra Pound, Ford Madox Ford and Gertrude Stein. He became a war correspondent during the Second World War, and in his later years, spent his life in Cuba, which, together with his liking for deep-sea fishing, provided him with the background for his fine, philosophical novella,   The Old Man and the Sea. Hemingway - Much ...

E.M. Forster, Public Domain It's shattering to acknowledge that racism, in all its many forms, is still as rife today as it was before World Wars I and II; it is as though we have learned nothing. I have noticed that there are many intelligent people whose knowledge of the history of our world is scant, if not almost non-existent. To expect them to take on board the lessons of the past is no easy task.  E.M. Forster, in his 1924 novel, A Passage to India, cites "fear of change" as one of the sources of British racism. In A Passage to India,  Forster exposes  British racism and its dislike of change, most apparent in characters like Ronny, the British city magistrate of Chandrapore, who ends his engagement to central female protagonist, Adela, after she retracts her accusation against Aziz of raping her. Ronny constantly repeats the opinions of his superiors, for example:  "We're not pleasant in India and we don't intend to be pleasant. We...

Photo Copyright Janet Cameron As a writer, it's useful to know a few things about emotions and how we - and our characters - can fool ourselves. Many of the ego-defence mechanisms we use are unwitting distortions of reality. Keeping up appearances is a matter of personal pride and human dignity. While self-deception blinds us to both our flaws and our underlying motivation, we allow emotions to get the better of us. Under duress, some people become more aggressive, while others become passive. Some might try to compromise or substitute. Compensatory Behaviour Some people compensate by acting up, exhibiting odd behaviour and wearing strange or provocative clothing. Of course, not all eccentrics or colourful characters are necessarily covering up for their inadequacies, but those who do may be trying to avoid their problems and responsibilities by over-compensation. Imagination and fantasy can also provide an escape for many people. Unable to fulfil their n...