Dyslexia and Emotional Memory

This is a question that has been puzzling me for years. If you know anything about the dyslexic brain - either as an expert or an owner - please take a moment to write a comment below.

It's like this: I am dyslexic. I have a cluster of abilities and disabilities that fit beautifully with the classic description of the condition. But I also have one or two other attributes that seem far enough off the norm to be noteworthy, which I haven't seen mentioned in books on dyslexia. One of these is an ability to recall emotions. I call it 'emotional memory'. It is tied closely with a very strong sense of empathy - whereby I tend to pick up on other people's emotional state very easily.

I use this in my writing, of course. If I am writing about a character in a certain situation, I find I know what they would be feeling and start to feel it myself. Then all I have to do is write it down. Not always pleasant for me, but it seems to work.

I have asked experts if this emotional memory is related to dyslexia. They say 'no'. But I am not so sure. I have known several highly empathetic dyslexics. Also, I'm not sure that this would be easy to test in a scientific study. And even if it could be tested, it doesn't relate to the process of learning to read and write, so may not be of interest to the educational establishment.

So how about it? Are you dyslexic? Do you find you know what people are feeling before others do? Or maybe you are a dyslexic and don't pick up on other people's feelings. Either answer would be interesting to me. Are you an expert on dyslexia? Have you read a study on this subject that concludes one way or the other? Any input would be valuable.

I'm looking forward to hearing from you.

Dyslexia and Disability

It happens like this: I'm filling in an application form for a job or a writers' residency or anything that I really, really want. I go through all the stuff about qualifications and experience and why I'm the perfect person for whatever it is. And then I get to a box marked 'Disability'.

The organization I am applying to will probably have a policy of interviewing all the disabled candidates who can tick the other required boxes. Dyslexia is officially a disability. If I put a tick there, I am extremely likely to make it to the next stage.

And I should be able to tick the box. I have problems with my short term memory. I can't sequence events very well or know when a word is misspelled or remember people's names or hold visual information in my head or track the flow of time. This is my dyslexia. It is an inherited cluster of problems. A specific disability.

But...

I don't regard myself as disabled - whatever the official description of dyslexia may say. Sure, I'd like to be able to remember stuff better and do all those neat things with time that everyone else seems to manage without effort. But I wouldn't give up my sense of three dimensional space - which seems to be another of the cluster of dyslexic attributes. (I won't call them symptoms). It is the way I experience the world. It is a sense akin to touch, in that it can feel textures. Akin to sight, in that it operates over any distance. X-ray sight, in that it can penetrate walls and ceilings, experience the texture of the bricks or slates I know to be on the other side. It is an abiding sense of the shape and feel of the spaces all around me.

What about that box on the form? Maybe I put a tick in it and write a note on the side to explain. Assuming they can read my bad handwriting.

Those CAN awards

A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. Of course, that may have been said by a visual artist, rather than writers. But who knows?

Anyway, here is a picture from the recent Leicester International Short Film Festival. It shows Gav, Alex and myself proudly holding the two awards won by Pixacillus. Bav, unfortunately had had to leave before the pic was taken.

Self satisfied? Maybe. Can you blame us for enjoying the moment?

Missing Persons

Here is a blog article well worth looking at if you are interested in crime writing. A good bit of research into missing persons. http://theonlyconsequence.blogspot.com/2007/11/interview-with-pi.html

Pixacillus scoops at CAN

It's gone midnight but I can't sleep, so I thought I'd post this brief message on the blog. I've just got back from the Leicester International Short Film Festival ('CAN' to its friends). My short film, Pixacillus, picked up the Audience Choice Award and the Creative Leicestershire Award. So thank you to the audience and to Creative Leicestershire for that.

I say 'my' film. In reality it belongs to BRAG Films. You can find out more about BRAG and CAN by following the links above.

Planned a Crime Novel in a Morning

A quick report back on the Grace Dieu workshop yesterday.

This workshop - planning a crime novel - is the one that gives me the most fear in prospect. What if the participants aren't responsive? What if they don't come up with any ideas for the novel plan? What if they come up with an idea that just isn't going to work?

This is the fourth time I have given this workshop, so I should know better by now (or is it the fifth?). Every group is brimming full of ideas to fit into crime novels. Worryingly, may of these ideas concern methods of killing people - though the ability to think these things and talk about them is probably very healthy. (At least, I hope so. :-) ) Either way, the group yesterday came up with a great outline for a crime story. A murder victim with a multi-layered past. Someone we don't meet in the story, but who would nevertheless have cast a long
shadow over everything that happened.

Home in the evening and exhausted. Riding the wild horse of this particular workshop does tend to leave me mentally zapped. Happy though.

Planning a Crime Novel in a Morning

On Saturday morning, I'm heading back to see my friends at the Grace Dieu writers' group to give a crime writing workshop. Perhaps I should correct that statement. It isn't really going to be a workshop about writing. We'll be playing around with crime stories. We'll be planning a novel - working out the main moments of change that will drive the story forward. But I don't think we'll be doing much writing. I suppose the term would be storycraft.

Then, on Saturday afternoon, I'm going to be attending a comedy writing workshop given by the writer Mary Essinger. That, I am much looking forward to.

And then on Saturday and Sunday evenings there is CAN - the Leicester International Short Film Festival when all the people who took part in making Pixacillus will have a chance to see it on the big screen.

Learning to read

Last night was the second of our 2 launch events for the Crime Express books. I arrived at Waterstones in Nottingham half an hour before the event was due to kick off. "I'm here for the book launch," I told the man at the desk. He pointed to the ceiling. "It's right up at the top," he said. So I started climbing. Floor after floor. Certainly the tallest Waterstones I've ever visited. And right up under the roof - I love attics - a delightful meeting room.

It takes time, I find, to learn how to read a piece of writing out loud to an audience. Writing that works off the page is not necessarily the same as writing that works when read out, in performance, as it were. First I choose the passage - something that takes no explanation and leaves the reader wanting more. Then I edit with a highlighting pen, choosing which sentences to read and which can be left out. Then I wait till the house is empty and I practice. Reading it aloud. Trying to find the pace and pauses that I think will make it work. That might get me close. But it is only when you read it in front of an audience that you find out.

Last night was my third time reading the opening of The Mentalist. I think I am starting to get it right. Hugely enjoyable.

All of which seems particularly ironic. One of my greatest nightmares as a child was being asked to read in front of the class at school.

The Mentalist

I have a new book coming out this month. Fiction. But not a novel. Too short for that. It is published as part of a new series of one-sitting crime reads by Five Leaves Press, along with books by John Harvey and Stephen Booth.

My story is about a struggling stage psychic called Harry Gysel. Things aren't going well for Harry. His career as a performer may be about to founder before ever really getting going. Then one night he appears to predict the death of a member of one of his audiences. When she is found murdered the next day, he achieves instant celebrity status, but his troubles are just about to begin.

If you are near Leicester on the 18th October 07, do come along to the Adult Education College on Wellington Street and join John Harvey, Stephen Booth and myself for the launch of our books. The event starts at 7.00pm. There will be a second launch event the following Tuesday evening at Waterstones in Nottingham.

(And if you are in Derby on October 20th, do come along to my writing workshop at the museum).

Yarns

If you've followed this blog over the last couple of years, you'll probably have figured by now that I am fascinated by stories and what they mean to people. I've long wanted to spend some time on a creative project to do with narrative itself - as a subject.

The question people often ask when they have just been told a story is - 'is it true?'. Important though that question is, a simple answer, yes or no could well be misleading. Made up stories can contain truths. Apparently true stories often contain fiction - 'errors' we might call them. Especially the stories we tell about our own lives, which are hugely subjective. But these subjective stories still feel true. They are part of our identity, telling us who we are and where we came from.

Where am I going with this? To cut a long story short (so to speak) I am about to start on a journey around the East Midlands, speaking to people in libraries and other places, trying to find out about the stories they love and why they love them. As a record of my journey, I've started up another blog here

More of this in future postings.

Constitutionally Incapable of Tidiness

I seem to be constitutionally incapable of tidiness. I get papers out, focus on them for a time and then, perhaps distracted by some other more interesting task, I move on. The little detail of putting them away gets forgotten.

This need not be a problem because, like many dyslexics, I have a well developed spatial memory. Six months later when I realise I need those papers again, I can usually go back to the spot where I left them and pull them right out of the pile.

All is well, you might think. The problem comes when someone else tidies up. Six minutes, six days or six months later, I go back to look for my papers on that corner of the desk where I left them. But they are not there. They are there in my memory, but my hand finds only an empty space. I walk away to look somewhere else. But the memory of putting them on that corner of the desk is so tangible that I find myself going back to look in the same spot again. And, although I know it is illogical, again and again.

I have heard that many dyslexics tend towards untidiness. Whether this comes from being easily distracted, or from trusting our spatial memories, or from some other facet of the condition, I do not know.

Speech recognition and creative writing

Having a bad back (temporarily, I hope) that won't let me sit down for long periods, I have been unable to type as much on my computer as I would normally like. This has driven me to try out the speech recognition software built in to Windows Vista.

My first impression was amazement. I spoke, it wrote. The tutorial system had me reading out a text which said how great speech recognition was - how it is the future of computing. Perhaps I was being brainwashed. But it seemed to work. Anything I said on the subject of speech recognition software it had a good go at transcribing. At the end of day one I was hugely impressed.

Day two wasn't so good. By this time I was starting to stray off the subject of speech recognition software and it was having a hard time interpreting my words. The system needed training. That was what the tutorial system told me. I must persevere.

But the things I wanted it to type, it decided to interpret as commands. And my commands, it decided to type. I tried to go back and edit my mistakes - as this should train the system better to understand me. But my attempts to edit were also misinterpreted. Perhaps it was the edge of stress in my voice, but eventually it stopped understanding me at all. Even when I shouted at it - which I am ashamed to say I did.

Persevere. Yes. That is what I will do. Tomorrow perhaps. Or the day after. As for this blog entry - I'm going about it in the old fashioned way. Keyboard.

But if you are a writers with experience of using speech recognition software in creative work, I'd be glad to hear of your experiences. Should I press on?

Edit Edit Edit

They say that a novel is never finished, only abandon. There are always more improvements that can be made by editing. Always more mistakes to be found. At last you reach the point where you don’t have enough emotional energy to continue and anyway you’ve reached your deadline, so you send the damn thing off. The same it seems it’s true for films.

Having written a short comedy screenplay entitled Pixicillus, gone through pre-production then actually filmed the thing this summer, it was time to start sticking it together. My good friend Gav Irons of BRAG Films set about editing it into shape.
The first edit was a rough cut. He called us together to see the result. We sat around the television watching, thinking ‘that’s not too bad’ and chuckling from time to time. Of course there were things to change. By the end of the session we’d given Gav a list of corrections about a mile long.

When we came together to see the result of the second edit, we found ourselves laughing at most of the jokes. Cutting a quarter of a second here. Adding half a second there. It had made all the difference. But by the end of the evening we’d found half a page of new edits – things we hadn’t spotted the first time.
The long suffering Gav worked away on our list so that when we came together the third time and watched our short film we found ourselves laughing out loud all the way through. But would other people find it funny?

The deadline was upon us. The last couple of edits - they had to be the last as we’d run out of time - were done. The film was sent in. And on Monday we went down to the Firebug bar in Leicester and saw, for the first time, our film projected on a big screen in front of the real audience.

The film began. I held my breath. Would they get jokes?

Then they started laughing and they didn't stop till the end. At moments like that, writing gives you its rewards – when you see people enjoying your work. Perhaps the editing is worth it after all.

Making a Short Movie

In a summer of almost constant rain, there have been just a couple of dry, bright spots.

First, a family trip to Waterford, Ireland, to attend the Baha'i Summer School there. How come Ireland has a reputation for rain? I almost got sunstroke.

I can't speak about that trip without mentioning the attitude of the people there towards the arts. It seemed as if everyone I spoke to could play an instrument, paint, write poetry, or engage in some other form of creative expression. I find it hugely inspiring that people aren't prepared to leave creativity to an elite class of professional artists. Long may it continue.

The second dry and bright spot was the weekend when director Gav Irons set out to turn one of my short screenplays into a movie. It had been raining more-or-less solidly for months. But on the first day of the shoot the sun came out and shone down on us with such intensity that we had to apply plenty of the factor twenty to stay the same colour through the shoot.

Due to a last-minute cancellation by one of the actors, I had to step in and play the part of a somewhat unpleasant news reporter. Thus, suited and sweating, I found myself saying lines I'd written months before and imagined coming out of another person's mouth. It felt very strange.

The best thing about the weekend was working with such an excellent group of people. There were fourteen of us all-told. Behind the camera and in front of it, everyone did their bit with great skill and good humour. The contrast between novel writing and movie making seems sharpest in this - that novel writing is solitary whilst movie making is superbly collaborative.

The movie is called PIXECILLUS. When there is more news in that, I'll post it here.