The Brain On "Story"

For our guest blog today, the Femmes welcome back author Carolyn Haines. Carolyn has got to be the hardest working woman in the book business! Thanks for being with us, Carolyn, and for this thought-provoking post .....

 

It’s Sunday afternoon, tax day for 2012, and I have just come in the door from Daddy’s Girls Weekend, which was held this year at the Malaga Inn in Mobile, Alabama. My thoughts aren’t on taxes, or even books, but on the value and joy of friendships and the remarkable bridges that reading can build.

Around my feet are dogs and cats, and the horses are grazing safely in the pasture. The weather has been perfect until today, when the mug stepped up to bump gy and we have some horribly muggy weather. Summer is here in southern Alabama. I have no complaints. For this moment, this day, I have nothing except gratitude.

Daddy’s Girls Weekend was exceptional fun. We learned and talked books and swapped author and conference stories. We drank a little and ate a lot and talked more books and authors and swapped tall tales. (The more the liquor flowed, the taller the tales grew!)

Some writers met with success in pitching to agents and editors, and some got helpful tips. Some readers met new authors and took home armloads of books.

And now that it’s all said and done I realize that I have the best blessing in life—that of good friends. I watched the attendees at DG Weekend as they met each other, some for the first time, and had a chance to talk with Dean James and Jeannie Holmes, returning faculty at our gathering, and Anton Strout, T.R. Pearson, and Mary Welk, new to DG Weekend, and agent Marian Young, editor Michelle Vega, and publisher Ben LeRoy.

It was old home week—even for those new to our quirky little Southern charms.

There was an instant bond. We are all book lovers, and I am in the insanely wonderful position of having written characters who are mutual friends of all who were at the conference.

I’d like to see some scientific studies done on what happens to a person’s brain when reading fires the imagination, and then when writer/characters/readers all come together.

For a long time I’ve understood that people who don’t read have a spot in the brain that simply has never been turned on. I grew up in a poor farming community, which meant really hard work. Reading for a lot of the young men, who knew the future was a combine or tractor, was a command performance to get out of high school. The concept of reading for pleasure was laughable. Everyone learned to read (amazing to me how the United States has fallen in true literacy) but not everyone learned to love reading.

Here are some statistics on functional literacy I recently found.

Compared to the rest of the world, the U.S. is doing well. According to the latest International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS), between 19% and 23% of American adults performed at the top levels for each of the three literacy scales: document literacy, prose literacy and quantitative (number) literacy. Sweden is the only country that scored higher.

Yet many Americans are being left behind. The same survey found that between 21% and 24% of U.S. adults performed at the lowest level for all three scales, a figure echoed by the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS).

Another report had these statistics:

This government study showed that 21% to 23% of adult Americans were not "able to locate information in text", could not "make low-level inferences using printed materials", and were unable to "integrate easily identifiable pieces of information." Further, this study showed that 41% to 44% of U.S. adults in the lowest level on the literacy scale (literacy rate of 35 or below) were living in poverty.

These are statistics that mean the difference between a “sort of good life” and terrible poverty. Without the skills to work, a person won’t be hired. Without comprehensive reading skill, a person can’t train themselves and build a better life (something many WWII veterans did).

There were a lot fewer college degrees in 1945, but a lot more educated people. I could get into a rant about what’s wrong with education, public and university-level, but I won’t. Instead I want to focus on “the poverty of the imagination.”

People who aren’t taught to love reading, to love story are impoverished in ways that are incomprehensible to those of us who love books and stories. I can go day-tripping to 1730 Greece or 2095 Mars—and I don’t need a drug to do it. Just a book and a good writer. I can suffer the joy and pain of love won and lost. Or the adventures of a young boy who must find his way in a magical world and accept his destiny to stand up to evil. Oh, the adventures I’ve had.

When I stopped and spoke with the attendees at DG Weekend, I found readers (and writers) who had fully working brains and imaginations. And the coolest thing of all was that the characters I’d created in my Bones series of mysteries had touched these readers and brought us all together for a glorious weekend of fun, mischief, books, and stories.

We are all mutual friends because of Sarah Booth and Tinkie.

Indeed, my friends have enriched my life, even the fictional ones.

 

 

Comments

[Dana]

Carolyn, thanks for blogging with the Femmes! I know what you mean; there's a special kind of...something that happens to us when we get together to talk books. It lasts far longer than the event.

[carolyn haines]

Reading can change a person's life, I believe. Thank you, Dana.

[Carole]

I was one of those attendees at DGW. It gave readers and writers an opportunity to rub elbows with a wide assortment of talent. I feel like I have made life long friends. I am a reader, not a writer. And to have the opportunity to get a peek inside the writing process was fascinating. Thank you Carolyn!

[Elaine Viets]

Welcome to the Femmes, Carolyn.
I wonder how many of those non-readers grew up with no one to read to them -- a parent, a grandparent or aunt? I was lucky enough to have all those people read stories to me. I think it sparked a life-long love of reading.

[carolyn haines]

Thank you, Carole. DG Weekend was a total blast. I've been caught on film doing a lot of things I shouldn't! But it was a writers' conference--bad conduct is expected. And yes, Elaine. My parents and grandmother read to us, told us stories, recited poetry, and acted out skits. My brain was stimulated, and I will always be grateful to my folks for that.

[An'gel]

Carole, I could not have said it better! I completely agree! Carolyn, you write such wonderful books with characters we love because they are so much like you...funny, warm, genuine, loyal and kind.

[A Facebook User]

DGW was incredible! To meet and spend time with "old friends" I'd never actually met before and the ton of new friends I made was so much fun. And, knowing that all of these friends have one thing in common: the love of the written word. Fantastic!