Ask the Author: Cornelius N. Grove
Answered Questions (6)
Cornelius N. Grove
Honestly, I have very rarely experienced this malady. Yes, sometimes I am undecided for a while about how to begin a chapter or discuss a complex point. But that's different from what I understand writer's block to be. My GUESS is that it probably plagues writers of fiction more than writers such as myself, who are researching and then writing about a real-life topic. So unfortunately, I must come up empty-handed to the question of how to deal with writer's block.
Cornelius N. Grove
Well, I definitely can say that it's a great profession to have when you must stay at home in lockdown! Even before Covid-19, I did my writing right here in my home office. Back when I was working on my doctoral dissertation, to do research I had to travel to libraries, use the card-files, and find books and journals in the stacks. (I think I'm giving away my age!) Nowadays, pretty much everything can be done right here, thanks to Google Scholar, Google Books, and BarnesAndNoble.com. It's amazingly easy to do my work!
Cornelius N. Grove
From my perspective, successful writing - at least of expository prose about non-fiction topics - boils down to two essentials. The first is deep curiosity about a topic, curiosity that keeps spurring you on to discover more and more fully what it's all about. The second essential is fluid command of the mechanics of clear writing. It really helps to have learned these mechanics in middle school and high school. Back in my day, these mechanics were taught; not only was I drilled in grammar, punctuation, and paragraph structure, I even learned to diagram sentences! Nowadays the mechanics of good writing usually are glossed over in the effort to get children to express themselves by writing something creative. So much potential goes down the drain when kids try to write creatively before they know how to write!
Cornelius N. Grove
From researching and writing "The Drive to Learn" and "A Mirror for Americans," I learned that the Number One reason why East Asian children become superior students is how they were raised at home. (The Number Two reason is how they are taught at school.) This realization deepened my interest in parenting in cross-cultural perspective. So I've been consulting the anthropological research on child-rearing (and there's plenty of it!). I'm now beginning to write a book that compares parenting in six very different cultures: Japanese, Indian, Arabic, Navajo, Quechua (Peru), and Aka (Kenya). My publisher, Rowman & Littlefield, already has expressed interest.
Cornelius N. Grove
Since middle childhood, I've loved to write expository prose concerning non-fiction topics about which I'd like to learn more. I got the writing bug back in junior high school when I was assigned my first term paper; I chose to write about the Lockheed F-80 jet fighter. (In those days I was gah-gah over jet fighters.) I even wrote a letter to Lockheed, asking for information, and they responded with lots of stuff including 8x10 glossy photos! Even now, I recall that first writing assignment very fondly. And ever since then, the prospect of researching a fascinating topic thoroughly, then writing about it, is pretty much all the inspiration I need to get started.
Cornelius N. Grove
My most recent book, "A Mirror for Americans," followed naturally from my immediately preceding book, "The Drive to Learn." For years, I had been pursuing the question of why East Asian students always have superior scores on the international comparative tests, while American students always have middling scores. Over 50 years, a huge amount of research has been carried in East Asia by anthropologists and others to figure out why East Asian students are superior. After I began digging into their research reports, I realized that the answer has two parts: (1) How East Asian children are raised at home, and (2) how East Asian children are taught in primary schools. In "The Drive to Learn," I explained how they are raised at home. In "A Mirror for Americans," I explained how they are taught in primary schools. I think of the two books as "sister volumes."
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