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Preventing Mental Meltdowns Here is a scientific fact: People can only process small amounts of information at a time before their heads implode (figuratively speaking). This reality was actually quantified in a recent study by cognitive-science researchers at the University of Queensland, who concluded that four is the maximum number of individual variables a person can mentally handle while trying to solve a problem. And that is on a very good day. Add just one more variable and the result is a mental meltdown. The person loses track of the information, his confidence plummets, and the odds of seeing any improvement in performance are no better than chance. This is particularly true in high-stress jobs like air traffic control, where people must juggle multiple factors at once. Of course, air traffic control is a cakewalk compared to writing, where the writer has to keep track of everything from plot points, to the rules of grammar, to which characters cover their roots and take cream in their coffee. Because writers carry the weight of this responsibility around with them all the time, feedback providers need to restrain themselves when offering constructive criticism. It is so easy to get carried away with all the important things we have to say, while failing to notice that the writer has actually fallen off his chair, eyes wobbling in their sockets from information overload. Underscoring this need for restraint is the fact that when we are giving feedback to writers (as opposed to air traffic controllers or other nonwriters), we have to take into account not only cognitive science, but also abnormal psychology. Every writer has a split personality—Creator and Editor—and these two sides of the same person have a habit of sabotaging each other’s efforts. Good writers understand this, so they strive to keep their Creator and Editor sides apart during the writing process. As a feedback provider, you also need to be aware of these temperamental opposites within every writer. Otherwise, when you present your feedback you are bound to overlook the feelings of one or the needs of the other, hence undermining everybody’s efforts. The Creator is an artistic genius prone to agonizing bouts of self-doubt (when he isn’t feeling completely full of himself). His job is to tap the writer’s unconscious, allowing all that rich, unfiltered story material within him to flow onto the page. If the Creator thrusts his impassioned scribbling at you and suggests you peruse it on the spot while he just hangs out in the corner , the smartest thing you can do is to read expressively (here, widen your eyes in breathtaking anticipation; there, shed tears of anguish; here, laugh uproariously).This will get your relationship with the Creator off to a good start. What you don’t want to do at this point is dwell on the Creator’s jarring point-of-view shifts, or impenetrable idiolect, or the fact that he doesn’t always spell the main character’s name the same way. This will only block the Creator’s creative flow and give him the vapors. The Editor, on the other hand, welcomes constructive criticism because it helps him to do his job, which is to clean up the Creator’s mess. (You can see why these two sides of the writer don’t get along.) The Editor is capable of achieving miracles in the revision process, but he may not be able to even start rewriting if you confront him with too many problems at once. The best thing you can do for this side of the writer is to help him focus his attention . Give the Editor and yourself permission to let some of the story’s faults slide until the next draft, or the next, or the next. In other words, don’t worry about dangling participles until the plot hangs together. Now that I’ve made it clear how cognitive science and abnormal psychology relate to writers, I’ll play out an example of how they apply to the feedback process. Let’s say a novelist has asked you to critique what you would call a disaster, but what is more commonly referred to as a typical first draft. Your first impulse might be to say something like, “The main character is cardboard, the plot lags, the flow of thoughts is disorganized, the setting is nondescript, there are too many summaries...

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