BRAIN-storming with Betty Webb

HALLIE EPHRON: Meet Betty Webb. She writes delightful cozy mystery series. She’s been a folk singer, go-go-dancer, horse farmer, and along the way founded a literary magazine. She also worked in a zoo, so it was natural for her to write a series set in a zoo. Her protagonist is a zookeeper who's married to the local sheriff. Betty's sixth cozy Gunn Zoo mystery, THE PANDA OF DEATH, features a rare red panda. (Scroll down for the fantastic cover! Red pandas are cutey-pies.) What aa unique idea!

Are ideas like that a bolt from the blue? Betty's take on that surprised me.

BETTY WEBB: At some point during a book tour, every writer I know gets asked the same question: “Where do you get your ideas?”

       

Depending on the writer, the answers can be flippant, such as “I buy them at Walmart,” or more serious (and perhaps even truthful), “I just write about my horrific childhood,” or more hesitant: “Well, it kind of depends on which of my 35 books you’re asking about.”

      

The truth is, most of us writers don’t really know where our ideas come from. Sometimes we do, sure, but not always, and it’s the not always part which baffles even scientists. The only thing anyone knows for sure is that creativity begins in the brain.

      

So let’s talk brain scans.

      

In the past few years, researchers at Harvard and Yale have used MRIs to determine what parts of the brain are active, and when. An article in Psychology Today, written by Grant Hilary Brenner, MD, FAPA, and referenced by web content writer Hillary Grigonis, describes the brain as having three different networks. “A default network is the brain’s inactive mode; the executive network is the decision and emotion center, and the salience network determines what things you will always notice and what things you don’t,” Brenner explains.

       

Brenner posits the idea that creativity happens when all three networks decide to work together. Oddly enough, a study at the University of Central Lancaster found that this happens most commonly when a person is bored. Another strange study -- this one by University of Minnesota researchers Kathleen D. Vohs, Joseph P. Redden, and Ryan Rahinel – suggests that messy workspaces tend to increase creativity. In other words, the brain bigwigs believe that if we are bored and surrounded by a mess, our brains are much more likely to light up with an “Eureka!” moment.

       

When I first read about those studies, I thought they were hogwash, merely the ramblings of over-educated scientists who’d been locked up in their laboratories too long. But amidst my scoffing, I remembered something that once happened to me while my husband and I were unloading groceries from his car.

       

The big Isuzu SUV was a mess, littered with papers, camera tripods, gym clothes, and fast food wrappers (same as my car). I’m not in the least domestic, and I’d found the trip to Trader Joe’s excruciatingly boring, and the prospect of putting all those groceries away, looked even more boring. As we carried our haul across the rear patio towards the kitchen door, my husband, who is domestic, was saying something about cheese…

       

When suddenly, my brain caught fire.

       

Yep, caught fire. That’s the most accurate way I can explain it. My brain seemed to be aflame with a fire-fueled light, something akin to being struck in the head by lightning. For a moment, I was paralyzed, and almost dropped the big bag of groceries I was carrying. As the sensation of fire and light increased, my knees began to shake. I must have made some sort of noise, because my husband yelled, “What’s wrong?”

       

“Uhn!” was all I could respond.

      

I remember wondering if I was having a stroke. Why else would a veritable slide-show of a European city (one in which I’d never lived) be flashing through my internal “eye,” street after street, café by café? Then came the sounds: cars honking, horses neighing, people talking in a language I’d never spoken but recognized. And then came the smells: turpentine, flowers, freshly baked bread…

      

When my husband took the groceries from me, I staggered to a chaise lounge and collapsed into it.

      

“I’m calling 9-1-1?” he said, setting his own groceries on the ground.

       

Finally finding my voice, I snatching at his arm and stammered, “No! I… I think I’m getting an idea!”

      

That was two years ago. I am now on the third draft of that fire-lit “idea,” fiddling around with a few edits to page 321.

       

So there’s my personal experience with the lit-up, three-part-brain, explanation for creativity. For some artists, the experience is different. Yesterday, while I was listening to an old (1988) CD by Tom Scott and the Waterboys, I came across “Brakeman’s Blues,” in which Scott sings about wanting to be a fisherman or a train brakeman. Towards the end of that hair-raising song (you have to hear it to know what I’m talking about), he sings that one day, “I will be that fisherman! I will be that brakeman! With light in my head, and you in my arms! Woo hoo!”

      

Woo hoo, indeed. 

HALLIE: Has an idea ever come to you like this, a bolt from the blue? Does an UNTIDY work space inspire you??   

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Betty Webb’s newest book is “The Panda of Death,” and she is currently working on “Lost   in Paris.” Before beginning to write mysteries, she was a journalist, interviewing everyone from U.S. presidents, astronauts who walked on the moon, Nobel Prize-winners, and polygamy runaways. A nationally-syndicated literary critic for 30 years, she is a member of the National Federation of Press Women, Mystery Writers of America, and Sisters in Crime.