Can Someone With Low EQ Write?
EQ is Emotional Quotient, or Emotional Intelligence: “the ability to monitor one’s own and other people’s emotions, to discriminate between different emotions and label them appropriately and to use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior.”
That’s a definition meant for me. Women are supposed to have lots of EQ – but not all of us do.
I like to think of myself as a goal oriented team player, but not everyone sees me that way. I can be startled when someone is upset with me – I wasn’t feeling upset or angry. My college room mate once didn’t speak to me for two weeks and I never did understand why.
Low EQ hasn’t stopped me from having a good life. I became an engineer and found friends just as pitiful in the EQ department as I am. I married an engineer. I was lured into writing fiction by a friend – I love to read, so it should be fun to write, right?
I find a lot of entertainment to be overwrought, which probably is part of why science fiction attracts me. It tends to require that I “integrate emotion to facilitate thought” less.
Bernadette on “The Big Bang Theory.” Somebody loves a nerd.
That doesn’t mean I’m a robot. I “feel” my characters, and I want to share that feeling. But the engineer in me believes in learning, in analysis. So I like this post at http://critters.org/rel/rel.ht:
“Better” SF stories pay more attention to characters’ inter-personal relationships [than ordinary science fiction].”
The post scores large numbers of books on the “interpersonal relationships” of the characters. Out of a possible 100 perfect score that makes Oprah fans cry:
Science fiction/fantasy overall scores an average of 22.5.
Award winning/famous science fiction scores 30
Ordinary science fiction scores 15
For comparison, non-genre mainstream fiction scores 55
The scoring is explained, there’s a link to all the book titles and scores, and even a discussion of statistics. Hot damn!
(I scored my first novel and it was a bit above average. But maybe scoring my own book is circular.)
What do you think? What’s a low EQ author to do?
Oh, wait – hang on – let me add…
(That’s supposed to be ironic. Did I get it? Did I?)
