Really Getting Into Your Writing

Have you ever had one of those days when you just wanted to write a story, but had absolutely no experience about how to ‘really’ write it?

Awhile ago, I wanted to write a story about a researcher who was going to use magnets to increase his brain waves to hyperepsilon, but without having first hand experience of that, I needed to find a way to get hold of some kind of magnetic medical system to see which one would work best for the story.

Thankfully, Gumtree regularly features posts by students willing to pay a few dollars to anyone who wants to undergo some of their experiments. For science!

So, I signed myself up for whatever I could get. First, an MRI and MEG scan, followed by a TMS session.

Much to my surprise this enabled me to come up with three different stories.

The MRI

What I learnt from being under this was not only how uncomfortable it was (information easily found online) but WHERE it was uncomfortable. The rigidity of the bed, the inability to stretch for long periods of time. The position of the neck and how that put pressure on the lower back. And the brrzzzz chock chock bang brrzzz chock chock bang as parts whizzed about, recording the responses of my brain.

Each time the equipment moved, I could feel a slight heat through my skin, a mild flicker of my nerves, a burning along the side of my neck tendon, and an aching shudder through my skull. Not to mention the uneasiness of having to squeeze two tiny orange things and push them into my ears to reduce the sound, (still echoingly painful), and the restrictive helmet system that held me in place.

You can see me in the picture above. All that, and I was still freezing in there!

A positive was being able to watch a documentary on the cordyceps fungus, and how it attacked ants. This ended up in the story ExtraForrestrial. Later I was horrified to find this fungus could be bought online in capsules to eat. No thanks!

As I did the MRI experiment three times, I now have that brrzzz chock chock bang permanently engraved in my memory, but I haven’t included this experience in a story yet. Maybe soon!

The MEG

I only had to use the magnetoencephalography machine once, and I can barely remember it. Though, as it was mapping my brain, I’m sure there’s a record of those memories somewhere!

The system made little to no noise, and after the MRI, was quite relaxing. For some of it, I was even in the dark. I felt like I was in a cold plastic egg covered in lots of wires that had to be stuck on and removed. It think the initial coldness of the glue and wires was what surprised me, as well as how long it actually took to get hooked up.

I used this experience to add a bit of realism to the story Cosmic Joke

The TMS

I underwent Transcranial Magentic Stimulation three times too, over a period of several months.

The first stage was to put the skull cap on and glue all the sensors to my head. The gooeyness of the blue-green stuff that was poured into the holes in the skull cap, the scraping of the gel nozzle, as well as the vibration from the top of my skull down to my jaw whenever the scientist clicked the TMS coil, was all a bit disturbing. Imagine having things stuck in your ears, being unable to move, and someone dropping cold dollops of oil into your hair, scratching each dollop with a blunt knife, then hitting you with a tiny hammer!

The first lot of clicks was to locate the exact place in my brain to begin the experiment. To do that, she glued a sensor on the inner part of my thumb, and clicked across my frontal lobe with the TMS coil until my thumb twitched. She knew then that she had found the right spot and could begin the experiment. Sometimes it took awhile to find that exact spot, and the weird part was that I could feel the clicks within my skull. Either that was referred pain, or the vibration resonating within the skull cavity, or it was really stimulating some nerve endings somewhere inside my cerebrum.

Afterwards, she washed my hair, and it took a bit of time to get all the gel out. So, these little things, which aren’t easily found online, were the sorts of things I wanted to include in a story.

From this experience I wrote Still in Beta. 

So, if you get stuck on how to write a story, and can’t find anything on Google to help, maybe you just need to get a bit more involved!