It has been no secret to anyone who knows me (since college, if not longer) that I have no head for higher mathematics. The computer age has only made this worse. The problem has become obvious to me (using my inside knowledge): the kind of logical, step-by-step reasoning which is math, or using a computer, is–to put it mildly–not my thing. (Oddly enough, I have always been killer at spelling.) I like science; I’m just bad at it.
On the other hand, I have been a storyteller since I was in grade school. It was not until relatively recently, however, that I allowed myself to believe that I’m actually good at it.
Now that I have, however, it occurs to me to wonder: Why am I so good at one and not the other? And why are so many of my friends brilliant scientists who would rather solve a Rubik’s Cube blindfolded than write a ten-page paper? The answer: Country brains versus city brains.
O-o-kay, you’re thinking. What’s that all about?
Relax, this is not a red-state, blue-state kind of thing. It has nothing to do with where you’re from and everything to do with who you are.
Country brains are those that operate without maps. They prefer the open spaces, where they can blaze their own trail.* No clear path? “So what?” asks the country brain. “I’ll find a way to where I’m going, or if not, somewhere equally interesting.” If you put a country brain in the city, it sees the myriad intersecting streets, the hard-marked paths for getting to specified destinations, and throws up its hands. “How am I supposed to remember all these directions?” And it shuffles forward slowly, never taking its eyes from its map, a target for every tourist-hunting pickpocket on the street.
City brains love maps. Maps remind them of instruction sheets, and instruction sheets remind them of numbers. Nice, neat, solvable problems that have only one answer. (Ironically, city brains have to show their work, while country brains only release the final draft.) If you take a city brain out to the country, where country brains range freely and happily, it will refuse to leave its internet-wired cabin.
Obviously, I have a country brain. I will wander through the wilderness of a story (I have to get back to outlining!) until I have arranged seventy or eighty thousand words into a pattern that is not only cohesive, but sufficiently persuasive that a reader will suspend his disbelief and pay for the privilege. Most city brains could not do that any more than I could extract a cube root.
There’s nothing wrong with having either a city brain or a country brain, of course. I don’t know if we’re born that way or if it’s something we develop; it’s just the way we are. Neither is better, just different. Like everything else, it’s a spectrum. There are actually people whose brains can operate in the city as well as in the country.
If there’s an advantage to being a city brain, it’s that the path forward is clearly marked. On the other hand, if you’re a country brain like me, you can flail around for an hour just trying to figure out a clever way to end a blog post. Unlike our city cousins, we don’t have the luxury of knowing there’s a single right answer.
And sometimes, there is no answer at all. But then, I’m a country brain, and we don’t care.
*Country brains are perhaps more properly called “pioneer” brains, but that interferes with the alliteration, so we’ll stick with “country” brains.
#SFWApro
