Thinking about repetitive phrases.

[valis2]

The ever-interesting iibnf was mentioning in her LJ that she gets absorbed with phrases sometimes.

I have this theory about people. I think there are three categories of thinking.

Pictorial Thinkers

Textual Thinkers

Pictorial/Textual Thinkers

Most people, I think, fall into the last category. However, I think we all have our own balance within that category.

I definitely lean towards textual. When I think, I think narratively, I think in a flow of words. Images are a little trickier. I've never been able to meditate by focusing on a rose (a technique I read about once) because I cannot sustain the image of a rose for long. (In fact, I usually end up thinking about the cover of a Depeche Mode album, and that leads me off on other tangents immediately, and then I have to try to get back into the rose again, and then I think of my grandmother's roses, and...you get the picture.) It's hard for me to remember exactly what people look like. I often know that they are familiar, but can't place them. When I write I have to draw floorplans to remember the layout of rooms, though eventually I do come up with an inner picture of things. I just can't sustain it for more than a few seconds before I dive right into text again.

I also get phrases stuck in my head. I once read an article about people who repeat phrases endlessly in their heads (what is it called? Primary ruminators or something like that), and I thought, wow! I'm so fortunate that they don't repeat like that. I just think them ten to twelve times a day or so, which can be annoying, but is hardly life-altering. For three years I would think "Deep black (x)", where (x) would be nearly anything from pearls to velvet to fish. There were other phrases too. The most recent one is also the longest running one. It's been going on for about six years. "She pulled three pins out of her arm" is what it sounded like...those who have read tLS will understand where it eventually surfaced. That one is really, really stuck. I also had a character's name stuck in my head for ages, too. That still happens, though now it's "Sarah blah blah blah" or "Severus blah blah blah". Usually it's a pretty stupid thought, but once in a great while it's something interesting. It just always starts with a character's name and moves into some sort of action, like Sarah pulls out her wand, or Severus pulls out his wand (mrowr!), or something.

Anyway, I'm always interested in how people think. I think I already did an entry about this, but it's so fascinating that I figured I'd do it again.

Comments

[iibnf.livejournal.com]

I did? I mean, I do, but I didn't know I'd mentioned it. Do you mean that song thing? Yeah, that drove me nuts for a while.

I get bits of conversations that have never happened, like what I would say if someone else said X, and that will stick over and over and over until I force it out. Sort of enforced rehearsing.

[valis2.livejournal.com]

I think of conversations that never existed, too. It's so hard to push it out of your head sometimes.

I feel like you're the secret to my LJ success (er, if you can call it that). I steal all of my LJ entries from you shamelessly somehow.

[iibnf.livejournal.com]

Ha! Amusing, but scary! You're trying to intellectualise my utterly random brain blurts... on the other hand, that kind of sums up my academic career, when I'd intellectualise the most random crap I could come up with, but make it sound all cool with big words and get distinctions! It's so easy to fake it with University professors.

[valis2.livejournal.com]

*focuses on sounding cool with big words*

[aramintasnape.livejournal.com]

That's interesting! I'd never really considered this before, but I think I'd be in the third category. I do have definite images of people and places in my head for my fics and I can see all the action in my mind as I write. The problem is that I have to remember that the readers can't see what I'm seeing and may occasionally need a bit of description! I also have great conversations between the characters in my head. Often in the car going to work, as I have time to think then. Not all of them get written down and used, but it's good for generating new ideas.

[bell-witch.livejournal.com]

That's interesting. I'd like to know where you got these terms and their formal definitions.

I know I learn visually. This is especially true since my ECT's (shock treatments) and my memory got weirded. Especially my short-term memory. But that's something else entirely.

I think in both words and pictures. Oddly, probably more words than pictures. (I say oddly, since I'm an artist and you'd think I'd be more pictorial.)

I hear things in my head. Not just voices (also schizo, and that's yet another thing), but conversations. That's how I do my writing, at least the dialogue. I think that's why I write so quickly. Narrative, I can do perhaps two pages an hour, if that. (Doesn't take into account re-reading and editing.) Dialogue, if I can properly 'hear' the characters, it's more like five pages an hour. That is massively fast, as I'm coming to understand.

My art is much harder. I see things, but I see the descriptions about them, too.

The problem with 'seeing' certain things, especially with my writing, is that I know that others will not see the same thing. I say that something is blue, and most people will get crayon blue. Other people see navy blue, or sky blue. And I don't set all of my stories in the same 'universe', so the situation may not be the same in every story. I try to keep things similar, which is logical. I am still myself and think in the same set of pathways, and so come to similar conclusions most of the time. So, the end result is nearly the same until I get more canon information to work with.

You say 'rose' and I see at first the side view of a rosebud. I can't tell what colour it is, because it's backlit. The vision moves to a view from above the flower, and it's now a yellow rose that turns a deep peach/pink at the ends of the petals. It opens, slowly, like time-lapse photography. There are drops of water on it. It rained last night, and I heard the rain on the roof because I live on the second floor. It will probably rain more today.

That's how it starts. Sometimes, I wonder where I started from when I reach a certain point in the thought process. It starts here and ends up somewhere else entirely, like an episode of "The Simpsons".

Not a particularly deep ending there, but I go from depths to shallows. At least, I'd like to think I have depths. I am a crappy judge of my own character. I have no self-love at all. I wonder if that's why the rose is yellow (friendship, theoretically) instead of red (passion/love) or pink (affections) or white (pure love). I can't even say that I have rosebushes and that's why the rose is the specific colour it is. I'm sure if I had a pink rosebush out front that the rose would have been pink. I'm mostly logical that way.

[valis2.livejournal.com]

I am so text focused that I sometimes forget what the readers are seeing! *grin*

I love doing melodramatic scenes...today I spent a whole hour during my drive doing some horrible high drama scene between Sarah, Severus, & Lucius that will most likely never make it into the story...it was so much fun. And so melodramatic!

[valis2.livejournal.com]

I think in both words and pictures. Oddly, probably more words than pictures. (I say oddly, since I'm an artist and you'd think I'd be more pictorial.)

I always wonder about the ratio of artists - pictorial thinking and writers - textual thinking. I wonder how they would correspond.

I'd like to know where you got these terms and their formal definitions.

Uh...I made them up. ;)