Battle of Ideas Festival and Brain-Training

To be away for three days in order to speak on a panel is probably not the best demonstration of time-management skills, but the Battle of Ideas is a bit of a draw. It's very confrontational and free speech is encouraged. Luckily, I'd been before, so I know this and was up for it. My panel was about brain-training - whether it's all it's cracked up to be. The audience was brilliant and we debated all sorts of stuff like dualism - Colin Blakemore and I had thought that "no one was seriously a duallist any more" but we discovered that this wasn't true. The discussion took me right back to being a student. Good stuff!

But I just want to talk about a fundamental disagreement that I had, and will continue to have, with the idea that we should be conned into believing that doing mental maths (for example with the Nintendo DS Lite) makes you cleverer. I'm not going to write an essay about it as this is a blog and I've already spoken on radio about it and will continue to speak against the marketing trick whenever possible. But ...

Let me make a few points.

1. The inventor of the Brain Age programme, Dr Ryuta Kawashima, does not use it himself, because he says that his own work and doing a variety of activities, especially reading, is the best thing for brains. He bans his children from using it or any video games during the week and restricts them to one hour at weekends. Why, if it's so good for their brains?????
2. Doing mental maths may well improve your mental maths skills. Doing sudoku certainly improves your sudoku. There is NO evidence that it makes you cleverer, or delays the mental effects of aging, or makes you better in any other way at all. In fact, no research has yet been done into whether it makes you cleverer. (And don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise.)
   
3. Besides, how would you measure cleverer? Oh no, we're not back to the old IQ tests, are we? They're so 20th century. Personally, I don't much value measurable cleverness - I think real cleverness is much deeper and wider and more interesting than that.
   
4. No, brain-training does not improve thinking skills, creativity and communication. There IS NO EVIDENCE THAT IT DOES. And why would it? There is no research on this so simply don't believe any woolly-thinking evangelist who tries to tell you there is. On what proper scientific basis is that theory even suggested? The idea is based on the absurd fallacy (based on sublime ignorance) that because Brain Age (etc) activates your prefrontal cortex (pfc), and because the pfc is used during thinking/creativity etc, therefore the activities improve thinking/creativity etc. This is illogical, unscientific and misleading. Put it this way: planning a murder would activate your pfc, but does that mean that planning a murder would be a good way to improve thinking skills / creativity etc?
5. There is wishy-washy piece of research going on in Scotland right now, purporting to prove that giving kids a Nintendo DS-lite and getting them to use it for 20 minutes at the beginning of each school day does all sorts of amazing positive things. There are so many reasons why this is a pointless (and possibly even dangerous, if too many people buy into it) piece of research that I hardly know where to start. It appears to ignore psychological tenets such as the Hawthorne effect; not to mention the allied placebo effect, especially when the gadget keeps telling them they are getting better (Dr K's smiling face keeps bouncing around telling you you are getting "smarter"), an obvious psychological boost to learning (no harm in boosts to learning, of course: just that they get in the way of good research); then there's the fact that relevant research would not start with the researcher setting out to prove his existing vehemently-held belief but genuinely and objectively testing the theory from an open starting point; the activities need to be measured against something, not nothing or the status quo; this is not (and could not be) a double-blind study, therefore you have the participants knowing what the intention is, leading to inevitable Hawthorne AND placebo effects. The study purports to show that punctuality improved because the pupils had this as the first activity of the day - I bet if you'd given them a piece of chocolate first thing you'd have had the same effect! I could go on. Trust me though: you will see this reported soon, with a headline such as "brain-training makes kids cleverer" or "maths improves kids school results". And loads of people will fall for it. To understand fully my objections to projects like this, I recommend you read Ben Goldacre's book, Bad Science, and see the chapter about the Durham fish oil trials - in my opinion, the same mistakes are largely being made here. You can judge for yourself whether it's bad science: my view is that it's a very bad use of time. YES, games are fantastic ways of teaching; YES children learn better when they are happy. Well, duh! But I can find you a load of better, cheaper and more practical ideas to boost children's learning (and I do - I go into very many schools, showing pupils of all ages how to use their own brains well; and they have fun doing it - maybe not as much fun as playing a video game, but they carry the messages with them for the rest of their life; it's something to build on, not an transient activity. In doing so, I am also showing the teachers how brains work, so they can use their own knowledge for many more classes.)
6. I wouldn't measure learning by how much fun was had. Yes, it's great when we can have fun learning, but it's not the measurement of success.
   
7. The reason Nintendo developed Brain Age was to turn non-gamers into gamers, not to make the world cleverer. They have made it look as though neuroscientists endorse it but I can't find a genuine neuroscientist to say, "Yes, I recommend you do the Brain Age programme every day because it will make you cleverer and ward off aging." In fact, the ones I've asked have all said that I am right to be sceptical. Sorry, but I believe them and not the marketing guys.
   
8. It's simplistic, unnecessary and not as good for you as leading a varied and active life, with social interaction and genuine thinking and talking.
9. If you want to know some genuinely good (and free) ideas to train your brain, see the brain pages of my website.

For goodness' sake, have we entirely lost our ability to be critical thinkers? Are we going to be taken in by this line from the marketing people? These things are clever toys, no more, no less. But if you think they're going to make you cleverer, think about it very carefully and try not to believe everything you read in the adverts. Ideally, find out something about how brains really work, so that you can see through the guff.

Finally, on this subject, I am really looking forward to receiving my pre-ordered copy of Gary Small's book "iBrain" - it's apparently got some very interesting and possibly worrying ideas about what all this electronic stuff is doing to our brains.

Better get off my computer and out into the real world then, hadn't I? Time for some creative cooking and maybe the opening of a bottle of wine. Yes, ok, alcohol bad for brains, but it's a Friday evening, and I will be honing my thinking skills, creativity and communication by sharing it over a deep and meaningful conversation with an intelligent person. That or the Nintendo - not really a close call, is it?

Chance Encounter of a Pigeon Kind

As my friends will know, I'm easily distracted when I am supposed to be writing. Usually by emails or people challenging me to Scramble on Facebook or suddenly feeling compelled to vacuum behind the fridge. Anything, really, to provide an excuse for not doing that very difficult thing: writing. But yesterday I was actually writing quite well. I'd not checked my emails or the back of the fridge for at least five minutes. Well, maybe three.

So, there I was, sitting on the sofa near the window, laptop on lap, typing away, when there was a huge explosion and the window blew in, as a vast and fierce pigeon smashed through it, showering me with glass and blood. I screamed. A LOT. And rushed from the room, dumping the laptop and slamming the door behind me. I spent some time screaming on the landing and trying to calm down. I was worried that my daughter might have been concerned so I weakly but bravely called upstairs, "Don't worry, I'm fine, honestly." No reply. I tried a bit more strongly. My daughter came out of her room. "What are you talking about?"

Anyway, we couldn't leave the bird in my study, could we? I had visions of it wrecking the place and, more to the point, my NOVEL was in there. Also, since my other daughter only last week had to claim insurance for the cost of repairing her laptop after spilling milk on it, I couldn't really claim for another laptop and expect them to believe that a pigeon had bled to death on it. The insurance compnay know I'm a writer and they'd be bound to think I'd made it up.

So, Hannah stood behind me, holding a big towel as high as she could, with the intention (in case you were wondering) of preventing the bird from flying further into the house if it leapt through the door when I opened it. I carefully opened the door a little, which caused more flapping and squawking (actually, I think the squawking was me) so I slammed it shut again. Deep breaths. Can you call a man to deal with a pigeon in the room? Does this constitute an 999 emergency? What would it be under in Yellow Pages? Bloody Bird-catchers?

But we didn't need a man, oh no. No, we could deal with this ourselves. First, I needed a shield. A large cardboard box would do and this I duly found. So, armed with the box, I opened the door again, with Hannah in towel position. No sign of the bird. Well, it must be dead. Or stunned. Or demoniacally hiding, waiting for me. Or it could come flapping back to consciousness if I wasn't careful. So I was careful. I gingerly poked a stick into every possible hiding-place, averting my eyes from the blood on the wall.

It had gone. Back through the gaping hole in the window. The rest of my day was spent clearing up shattered glass and blood and dealing with the neanderthal glaziers who mumped and grumped their way to £90. And I lost half a day of what would obviously have been quite brilliant novel-writing. The best I've ever done. Really.

Since the novel in progress is about chance/luck/causal determinism/randomness/chaos and how apparently chance events have major effects on our lives, I wonder how this pigeon attack will affect the novel. The point, if you are interested, is that we cannot know how things would have turned out differently - we can't do what ifs. So, we can ask "What if the bird had never flown through your window? How would it have affected what happened next in your novel?" But we can never know the answer. All you can ever know is what actually does happen from that point. (Actually, in the novel, the reader can play round with chance because you get to toss a coin to select the ending, and I get to toss a coin to select between alternative chapters. But I digress.)

You may like to know that by chance (or is anything ever chance? Isn't it all mechanically caused?) the scene I was writing at the time of the pigeon explosion involved a fairground fortune-teller. Fantastic Farantella the Famous Filipino Fortune-Teller. And I needed something to happen that cuts her fortune-telling dramatically short. I think I now have the answer. A pigeon explodes through her window. Will the readers believe it? They'd better.

Chance? Fate? Or causal determinism? Makes you think. If a suicidal pigeon hadn't shot through my window, would I have thought of this as the mechanism in the story? Or would it have been something else entirely? And would that affect everything else? We'll never know.

Highs and Lows in the Highlands

Oh, if only I could tell you everything that happened on the latest round of book touring! The thing is that some of the most annoying or ridiculous things that happen tend to be perpetrated by either lovely people who buy my books or lovely librarians who organise the events, and would I be rude about either of them? Of course not. They are lovely in every way.

And this is before I've been to Wigtown, which is next weekend, and which is designated the "Book Festival Most Difficult To Get To". So, be prepared from some tall tales from Tipperary next week.

Meanwhile, on the subject of my recent events, I will pose some questions. Please keep your answers to yourself.

1. If you were asked to collect someone from Inverness arriving on the "11.47 from Aberdeen", would you go to the airport or the train station?
2. If you were a teacher and your school arrived 15 minutes after an event had started, despite the fact that you were walking distance away, would you apologise to the speaker?
3. If you were a teacher taking your pupils to a book event (at no cost to school or pupils), would you allow them to buy books or whisk them away as soon as possible before they could chat to the author, buy a book or get a card signed?
4. How many different colours of wallpaper is it possible for one B&B to fit into one room?
   
5. If you were supplying two tea-bags for your B&B guest, how many sachets of sugar would you also provide? a) 2-4 or b) 16

But I will say that, apart from the rubbish that tact and fear of litigation prevent me from mentioning, there were some spectacularly excellent things too.

1. Boat of Garten Book Festival - the best small festival there is.
2. Having a very relaxing lasagne supper with Jim Naughtie and his wife Ellie, between mine and Ellie's events and Jim's event with Chris Bonington (at Boat of G). I know Ellie well already because we both write for a similar age group and it's always fun to meet up.
   
3. The scenery and weather of Aberdeenshire, Banffshire and Invernesshire.
4. Seeing a herd of bison. And that was not after a glass of wine.
5. A great Society of Authors event in Crathes Castle, where 13 authors met and talked to (and in some cases almost came to blows with) an excellent feisty audience of readers collected together by the superb Yeadon's Bookshop in Banchory.
   
6. Everything to do with Yeadon's Bookshop and the first-rate and exceptional manager, Vicky Dawson, who ferried me all around NE Scotland in her car, so much so that when she needed to take me to the station the following morning, the car was dead. I don't blame it. But the ensuing taxi was somewhat pricey. And I left my coat in her car, thinking I'd be in it the next day. Yes, I was that person shivering on Inverness station a few hours later, while my lift went to the airport instead ...
7. Sitting in a hotel bar in Perthshire having hysterics while we wondered why a menu described as a "Taste of Tartan" featured tinned grapefruit salad in syrup.

And now I had really better stop before I forget about that very useful fear of litigation thing.

Back from foreign parts

Just back from an exhausting but really interesting trip to Zurich. I was speaking to teenagers in the Zurich International school - 12 hours of brain workshops over two days and then a parent talk to a packed hall on the next day. The school had put a huge amount of effort and resources into the whole trip and I am very grateful to them for making me so welcome. I was really impressed by the youth, energy and commitment of all the teachers too, but special thanks to Marge Schreier, the middle school librarian, and to Laurie Watt who organised the parent talk. And to all the parents who made Brain Cake in advance of my visit! The school also bought every pupil a copy of Know Your Brain and it was fantastic to see all the pupils eagerly reading it during the breaks.

I discovered something extremely unsurprising - teenagers are the same the world over... Something that was given extra truth when I stupidly switched on my phone during my first break and found a voice message from my own teenager (19 tomorrow) saying that she'd had her phone stolen the night before and what should she do? PHONE TO GET IT BLOCKED, you silly girl. So, I had that stress, including worrying whether the thief (who'd already been abusive to her when she tried to phone the phone) would rack up hundred of pounds worth of foreign calls or downloads (something which happened once before, luckily AFTER we'd reported it and so the phone company had to pay £300 for its mistake). Anyway, it was fine, but I didn't know that till I got home 4 days later. ERGHHHHH. I know I wrote a book about them but honestly!


I will calm myself down with this gorgeous view from
hotel window, looking over Lake Zurich.
Marge had especially asked for a lake view room.


Meanwhile, I've just been invited to an international
school in Paris next May. Hold me back!



On the other hand, I am SUPPOSED to be saying no to everything at the moment, to try to make space for writing. But I've just had a rush of lovely invitations for places far and wide and I'm not very good at no. Which could possibly be why I don't have a book coming out till next June. And a whole load of writing deadlines looming ...

Facebook group

Helped by my younger daughter, I have now entered the Facebook age, rather later than most people. If you know any teenagers (anyone from 11 upwards, really) who like my books, do steer them towards the group. It's called, with incredibly creative imagination, Nicola Morgan's Readers.

I am at that embarrassing stage where it sys I have "no friends". Help, please!

Tartan Loony

Well, that's the Edinburgh Book Festival over for another year. Anyone with a snorkel had a distinct advantage.

Now, there are many things I could say about my experiences this year. And some of them are simply not for public airing. (Oh, and can I say first that the festival is fabulous and any negative experiences do not at all imply any lack of wondrousness of the whole thing?) But gosh, the egos that parade around that authors' Yurt (aka large and splendiferous tent) can make you dizzy. Some authors are painfully full of their own importance. Others, of course, are just delightful.

But I would like to share my tartan loony moment. (The tartan loony wears tartan from his tam o'shanter to his shoes). He hadn't heard of the internet, so there's no danger of him reading this, just in case you were wondering. This is the guy who hi-jacked (for the third year in a row) one of my workshops, and spent it asking bizarre and pointless questions and being quite angry with me for actually having had some books published despite being an idiot.

To explain: I run some workshops for unpublished authors. This is a deeply frustrating business, as no one really listens to me. I tell them it's simple: write the right book at the right time and send it to the right publisher at the right time and in the right way. They only listen to the last bits but actually the first bits are way more important. Anyway, the tartan loony has been to these workshops before (so, I'm obviously doing a great job). But this time he chose to come to the one for published authors. Since he is nowhere near being published (having not yet written a book), I asked him why he hadn't come to the one for unpublished authors - "Because it was fully booked." Actually, he wasn't the only one - 24 out of 30 of the participants were also in the wrong one, which was thoroughly discombobulating.

By the way, in each workshop, there were several people who were actually doing all the right things and showed every chance of one day being successful writers. I hope they will tell me when they get their first contract.

Back to the TL. The TL asks many questions. He writes all the answers down, using a tartan shopping trolley as a table. When I say "many" I do mean many. But I will just give you one example:

TL: How long should a book be? (bear in mind, please, that this is the workshop for published authors).
Me: (thinking that the correct answer - "as long as it needs to be" - is not going to satisfy him) What sort of book?
TL: (thinking for a moment) Probably a novel.
Me: (deciding that a simple answer is definitely what he wants) 120,000 words
TL: Thank you. (and writes it down on his tartan clipboard)

Anyway, to the point. After the first workshop, I had told a fellow author (let's call him John) about the experience. So, when I turned up in the Yurt before the next one, I breezily said to John, "So, that's me ready for the tartan loony!" He looked at me, horror writ large on his face. The horror stayed there for several seconds. Then realisation and relief dawned. "Oh, you mean your workshop guy? I thought you meant ..."

Yes, I should have realised too. Sean Connery was about to do his event. And there he was, not a million miles away ... That's me off his party list, then. Shame.

Video killed the author? Let's hope not

Well, my lovely daughter Rebecca has made a video of me "in action", which will go on my website soon. She did a great job and spent hours over a period of many months, off and on. Unfortunately, the high-definition of her film was mostly lost in the transfer to Youtube so it doesn't look as good as she made it. Also, some of the scenes were shot ages ago, before she'd acquired her current technical skills - you'll probably notice which ones they are!

It's here: //www.youtube.com/v/XnhRAZHH2nM&hl=en&color1=0x006699&color2=0x54abd6&border=1">

Yes, I am still alive

Not that anyone probably cares, but I have written nothing on this blog since Feb 11th. But I have not been idle. Oh no. In no particular order, I have:

1. Created a new website, called Talk About Brains. This is not live yet, so not very interesting to you. Or even me. But when it is live it will have a video on it, a film of me being authory (ie not writing very much but talking a lot).

2. Been filmed for that film, by my daughter. It's all very well having your personal film producer in the house but the downside is that she keeps telling me to do things. I thought it would be a good idea to film me making Brain CakeTM, a la Delia. God, it's hard. (Being filmed cooking, not the actual cake). Well, actually the actual cake was hard, too. Partly because I forgot to put the baking powder in and partly because I had to put the eggs in twice - "Cut! I need to do another take of you putting the eggs in."
"But I can't - I'd have to take the eggs out first."
"Mum, this is art - no one's going to taste it."
Yes, but you can actually tell by the look of a cake whether it's got no baking powder and too many eggs in ... Anyway, new respect for Delia. Instead we came up with a video of me doing lots of things like events and going for walks and even occasionally writing (I really had to draw on my acting powers for that one)
PS - note the TM sign after Brain Cake. We (publishers and yours truly) decided that it was such a good idea that I should protect it, hence the Trade Mark sign. You are welcome to make the cake as often as you like, but if you write about it, don't forget the TM!

3. Been away on a book tour. First to Stamford School (very good), then to Leighton Park in Reading (very good) and then to the Cheltenham Science Festival (very difficult). The last one was in a tent so big I couldn't see the end of it. I think there were a few hundreds in the audience but I couldn't see them. I had no idea the venue would be so big, so I had to rethink the talk. Then a boy asked "What does the optical lobe do?" but I misheard him (for quite a long time) so I faffed around trying to work out what he might have meant (with the audience unhelpfully shouting their suggestions), and thinking he probably meant the occipital lobe, which was a shame because a) it was totally irrelevant to what I was talking about and b) to say that I am not an expert on the occipital lobe would be an understatement. Then another boy asked "If you are not a trained scientist, how credible is your work ?" Move over Jeremy Paxman ...

4. I have been writing a novel. Yes, indeedy. And actually enjoying it, which is most unlike me. And this and many other changes in my outlook on life are all down to a remarkable woman called Sam, who in another life was probably a white witch and burned at the stake for her magic powers, but in this life is a simply extremely clever. She got me to understand why I write and to get the joy of writing back at the centre of my working life, instead of something that was fitted round lists and lists and lists of tasks. I am now entirely free of all the angst that used to hold me back and get me down (until the next time someone does something incredibly damned irritating).

5. My daughter came back from Mexico. My other daughter is about to graduate. These things are time-consuming and important. Life's too short to write novels when you have this stuff going on.

6. My dog has smelly ears, which have to be cleaned.

7. Been to Tunisia - lovely place.

8. I've been doing a lot of cooking in my spare time (That's another Sam achievement - "hobbies are not indulgences but necessary to creative thinking ... hobbies are not indulgences but necessary to creative thinking ... hobbies are not indulgences but necessary to creative thinking."

9. I've started Pilates (Thanks a bunch, Sam ...)

That's about it. I'm sure there was some other stuff. Oh yes, gorgeous cover of next book (Deathwatch) - but not final so I can't show you.

Oh yes, there was the rather strange case of life imitating art when one of my new teenage neighbours (at LAST, I have teenage neighbours - you need to see the people who live in my street before you appreciate the novelty of this - and they read my books) fell in the canal, uncannily mirroring what happens to someone in Deathwatch. Trouble is, she did this too LATE - I needed to know how deep the water is WEEKS go, Polly ....

Still, she and her lovely sisters will get copies of the book and an invitation to the launch.

Of conferences and Mexican waves

Ok, so some people think I've been organising a conference. And I have. 94 punters in a great venue in the shadow of Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh, spectacular speakers from all over the UK, and stuff. And other people (like my editor and agent) think I've been writing a novel. My husband thinks I've been cooking his meals and ironing the occasional sock. But actually, folks, I've been dealing with a daughter lost in rural Mexico, a totally non-English-speaking bit, unable to speak any Spanish except what she valiantly taught herself from an ancient CD I found in a drawer, at the mercy of a guy called Ariel (which was hitherto a washing-powder or nippy Shakespearean fairy, as far as I was concerned, which wasn't far) and utterly frustrated at having spent 6 months full-time in Starbucks earning the money for her gap year trip of a life-time (I hope). She's supposed to be somewhere else entirely but somehow got put on a bus for a trip which was supposed, according to "Kevin", to take two hours but which she said was in fact eight hours. (Kevin had a very wonderful explanation for this discrepancy: "Oh, hey, yeah - sorry for the dodgy info - I think I was asleep when I made that journey so time seemed to pass really quickly."

So, anyway, she's more than a tad pissed off. Cos things don't turn out how they're described on t'internet, do they? And she thinks she and another girl are probably literally the only non-Mexicans in a city which seems to hate anyone who's non-Mexican.

Yes, and of course she's going to have a great experience, eventually, once she gets Ariel to understand about today meaning today. And she's going to set herself up nicely creating a website telling the truth about gap year promises, (in a positive caring sharing way) but meanwhile yours truly gets to be a mother with the mother of all stresses - kid on other side of the world and I'm supposed to organise a conference / write a novel /iron socks as though nothing else mattered.

Which of course is fine because the daughter is fab and can deal with this stuff. And she sends me more kisses on her emails than she ever gave me when she was only upstairs. And actually at a few thousand miles what can I do?

Organise another conference? I'm tempted.

But not much.