Does Writing Really Help You Remember?

Yes.

That said, I can think of at least three different things this question might mean. Fortunately, the answer to each is the same--at least in the short form. It does, or at least it can.

If you mean, "Will writing something down soon after the fact help you remember it later?" my experience definitely says yes. I was an avid journaler from the age of nine into my twenties, and I definitely find that reading my old journals brings back memories--not just flat stories that I can remember happening, but actual visual, experiential memories. Whether or not the act of recording itself helps afix something in your mind, I'm not certain. But it seems likely, because of the second kind of writing to remember that springs to mind--the kind you do when you're studying or trying to memorize a speech. Recreating your notes or reformatting them into an outline is a great way to help information seep into your brain and take hold.

The third possible meaning is a bit different (and I'm a bit less certain about the answer), but I still think the answer is yes. That's writing to remember something that you've already forgotten. For instance, can journaling help one to recall childhood incidents that have been buried, or just plain slipped away? Can writing down as much detail as you DO recall about a crime or an accident help to recreate the scene in your mind in order to fill in the blanks? I think so. And I think psychologists think so.

Which brings us right back to where we began. Does writing really help you remember? Yes, it can.



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What is the French Word for White?

Blanc or blanche, depending upon whether the noun modified is masculine or feminine. This seems to be a fairly pressing issue out there, since I've gotten about a dozen unique hits to RockStories on variations of this question over the past couple of weeks. The only single question that brings more traffic is "5000 words is how many pages?"

This seems like a good opportunity to once again offer a few tips on effective web searching. You see, it's very unlikely that a web page that offers the answer to this question will contain the text "What is the French word for white?", yet when you enter that text, that's what Google (or Yahoo, or MSN, or whomever you've chosen to use) goes looking for. In fact, it's likely that there are very few web pages anywhere in the world that use the phrase "What is the French word for white?" That may be why the people asking this question keep landing on my writing blog, which does NOT contain the answer to their question (but which does contain a post that uses both the phrase "french word" and the word "white").

I just searched the phrase "is the french word for white" (in quotes) and turned up numerous useful responses. Because, after all, that EXACT PHRASE is part of the sentence, "Blanc is the French word for white," and THAT'S the sentence we were looking for.



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What Does the Catechism of the Catholic Church Say that Dogs Go to Heaven?

The Catholic church (like, I believe, all mainstream Christian religions) teaches that only human beings have immortal souls. The Catechism says "Of all visible creatutes only man is 'able to know and love his creator.' He is 'the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake,' and he alone is called to share, by knowledge and love, in God's own life. It was for this end that he was created and this is the fundamental reason for this dignity." (356)




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Do You Have to Know How to Write Good to Blog?

I found this post over at Wingnut SEO; it's definitely in the spirit of this blog, both in that the question was pulled from search stats and in the tone of the answer, which is both tongue-in-cheek and factual at the same time. Check it out: Do You Have to Know How to Write Good to Blog?

Another adventage to posting this link: Wingnut said s/he wasn't in the top 50 search results for this term, but now that s/he's used that phrase in a post title and I've used it in a text link, that may all change. And you all know how I enjoy random search traffic outcomes.

What's wrong with Cinderella, anyone?



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What's Wrong With My Body?

After getting a dozen or so hits from various search engines on this phrase over a 24-hour period, I toyed with a few responses.

There are, after all, some assumptions we can make--particularly since they were all coming from the United States. I considered simply guessing: You eat too much processed food and you don't get enough exercise.

I actually thought, though, that these searchers were looking for something specific. Maybe there was a book out by that name, or they were looking for a particular website. It seemed too strange that suddenly multiple people were searching EXACTLY that phrase. They clumped up in my search results, too, one right after another.

I'd speculated about this a bit and not quite decided how to respond when I happened to carry some laundry into the living room last night at just the right moment. "Just the right moment", in this case, was the moment during which my daughter was watching television and Drake of Drake & Josh woke up with green hands. Josh ran to look up the condition on the Internet and voila! Drake said incredulously, "WhatsWrongWithMyBody.com?"

"Yeah," Josh said. "I have it bookmarked."

Guys. They made it up. The URL, as you might expect, redirects to nick.com. And when that doesn't work out...well...I guess we go to Google.



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Should You Work for Free?

The answer to this question (like so many others) is a resounding and heartfelt, "It depends." I'm very firm on this.

This question arises frequently in the professional writing world. Established writers, as a rule, want to discourage new writers from writing for free because it might hurt the market rates those established writers command. That's wrong. A new writer's focus needs to be on her career, not the good of the industry; let that burden fall to those of us who are already making a living.

I'm a firm believer that for some writers in some circumstances, there are very good reasons to write for "free". I expect that the same general principles apply in other fields.

That said, I think that most of the people currently writing for free aren't getting much (if any) mileage out of it, because they don't have clear strategies or a clear understanding of how that writing will move them to the next step. Getting "clips" or "exposure" or "links" in a general sense is very unlikely to pay off; if you're writing for "free", make sure you know exactly what you're getting in return and exactly how it will help take you to the next level.

Can Middle Schoolers Get Pregnant?

I know this blog is pretty new for me to be recycling posts, but I think I'm compelled by basic common sense to re-use the answer here that I set forth in my response to "Can You Rape a Prostitute?"

Yes, but you shouldn't.

Of course, any girl who has reached puberty and has a normally functioning reproductive system can get pregnant. The really big news is, if you time it just right you can actually manage to get pregnant BEFORE YOU'VE EVER MENSTRUATED. Yep, it's true. It's pretty rare, but menstruation is something that happens to clear out the unused eggs at the end of a cycle, so it isn't going to start until a couple of weeks AFTER you start being fertile.

Let me back up, though. If this is a question you have to ask, you are NOWHERE NEAR ready to be considering sex.



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