Left Brain/Write Brain by Lois Greiman

The writer’s brain…yikes!

I can’t tell you how many times people have asked me where I get my ideas. To which I always reply ‘Ideas are the least of my problems.’ Ideas are everywhere. It’s culling and honing and nurturing those ideas that’s problematic. In fact, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that a large percentage of writers have ADHD. I know that my own little mind is spinning off in a hundred directions at any given moment…considering ideas, imagining other lives, mulling over random facts.

Random facts…we collect a lot of them (especially when we’re simultaneously working on several different projects, which many of us usually are.) For instance, here are a few of the little factoids I learned while doing research this week:

If the carotid arteries are disabled, an adult human being will pass out in approximately 8 seconds if she’s standing up, 10 seconds if she’s seated, and 12 if she’s lying down. If those same vessels are severed she will bleed out in 2-6 minutes. Valuable information…if you plan to kill someone…or write a murder mystery.

Temu-miwok means ‘deer thinking of eating wild onions’ in one of the Native American dialects. Valuable information if you’re…well, I can’t really think of an instance where this particular tidbit would be valuable.

Despite popular belief, prostitution is not actually legal in the cities of Reno and Las Vegas.

Donkeys have noticeably longer ears than most of their equine brothers because they, unlike horses, tend to spread out to graze so as to utilize the sparse forage in desert climates.

Lead, South Dakota gets an average of 192 inches of snowfall per year.

More than 41 million people visited Las Vegas last year. The average person spends about $1000 per visit.

He is a Chinese name meaning Yellow River. How confusing would it be if I named my current hero He?

Mutton bustin’ is a sport first documented in the 1980s. Or as one rodeo announcer described it, “This is where we put kids on farm animals and call it entertainment.” (And by the by, if you’ve never seen it done you should run right out to your nearest rodeo. Cuz it’s crazy.)

So how about you? Learned any weird stuff lately?

Lois Greiman is the award-winner author of more than forty books. Romantic Times called her latest novel, Hearth Stone, “…a great book with a wonderful message.”

www.loisgreiman.com