Not long ago, I took a writerly side trip. You know how it goes. You’re getting back to your novel after a few too many days away for celebrations and family and a whole lot of other things that matter a lot, plus a few that only matter a little but still manage to snag your time, and you’re trying to get into the swing of your narrative because you know if you get to a certain spot you’ll be truly engaged and the story will carry you off the way you hope it will carry your future readers, but that spot teases and hides till you reach a little epiphany: it’s time for some research.
I won’t go into how and why I ended up researching prehistoric humanoids with over-sized brains, but it did get me thinking, not only about how to use the information in my story but how much nicer it might be if writers had the generous 25% bonus brain of a Boskop.
I stumbled on the Boskops in an excerpt from the book Big Brain
Lynch and Granger contend that in relation to their large cranial capacity, the Boskops had small, childlike facial features reminiscent of…well, maybe you’ve caught one of those Twilight Zone marathons?
Extrapolating on potential brain capacity, the authors believe these hominids may have boasted IQs averaging 150 and stretching to 180, not to mention an “inconceivably large” frontal cortex.
“While your own prefrontal area might link a sequence of visual material to form an episodic memory,” they write, “the Boskop may have added additional material from sounds, smells, and so on. Where your memory of a walk down a Parisian street may include the mental visual image of the street vendor, the bistro, and the charming little church, the Boskop may also have had the music coming from the bistro, the conversations from other strollers, and the peculiar window over the door of the church.”
The Boskops were a tad pre-Paris, but you get the idea. Higher IQ, heightened sensory memory. If only we writers had Boskop brains. Then there’s this:
“Longer brain pathways lead to larger and deeper memory hierarchies. These confer a greater ability to examine and discard more blind alleys, to see more consequences of a plan before enacting it. In general this enables us to think things through. If Boskops had longer chains of cortical networks—longer mental assembly lines—they would have created longer and more complex classification chains. When they looked down a road as far as they could, before choosing a path, they would have seen farther than we can: more potential outcomes, more possible downstream costs and benefits.”
If writers got three wishes, surely this would one: to imagine more deeply, while knowing the narrative costs of following one thread over another.
But there’s a downside to this super-sized thinking. Lynch and Granger speculate that aside from the difficulty of birthing large-headed babies, the Boskops may have been overwhelmed by their own potential and frustrated by their inability to make good on it. And there is that little extinction problem.
More important than wishing for long-lost genes is doing the best with what you’ve got, the way . pharmaceutical heiress Ruth Lilly did. An aspiring poet, Lilly attempted but never achieved publication in Poetry magazine. Undaunted, she applauded the positive tone of her rejections and, in 2002, donated $100 million to further the magazine’s mission of advancing poetry.
The Boskops may have us beat when it comes to brains, but our hearts – well, that’s another matter altogether. In this season of giving, consider the many ways you can open your hearts to others within the literary community. Recommend books you
love; every author appreciates sincere word-of-mouth praise. Mentor an emerging
writer. Donate your time, talents, and cash to a literary nonprofit like 49 Writers. Attend
readings, signings, and other literary events. Support the innovative efforts
of other writers on crowdsourcing sites, in journals, and on blogs.
your thoughts at online sites like Goodreads and Amazon. You’ll be giving the
gift of social proof while helping readers find books they’ll enjoy. Like,
comment, and share. Email writers to let them know you enjoyed their books. The
few minutes you take to write your email will multiply into days (if not weeks)
of encouragement for the author.
I’m greedy . . . At this point I’m a raging fan!
independent authors cooperative Running Fox Books, Deb
Vanasse has authored more
than a dozen books. Her most recent is Cold
Spell, a novel that “captures the harsh beauty of the terrain as well as
the strain of self-doubt and complicated family bonds,” according to Booklist. Deb lives and works on Hiland Mountain outside of Anchorage, Alaska, and at a cabin near the
Matanuska Glacier. This post also ran at www.selfmadewriter.blogspot.com.
post relevant to Alaska’s literary community? Email 49writers (at) gmail.com or
debvanasse (at) gmail.com.
Great post. I'm currently reading a particularly Boskop brained writer: Matthew Thomas – author of "We Are Not Ourselves". A writing course could probably be taught using this amazing book.
Never expected to read about big-brained prehistoric people and Ruth Lilly in the same blogpost. Thanks for this good read, Deb. (I'm still curious how those Boskops died out if they were so superior–besides the frustration factor!)
We Are Not Ourselves…will look into that. And wondering as you are, Andromeda. Big heads make for difficult birthing, yes, and frustrations. But maybe there's something more?