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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/newsletters/action/archives/id/7788-Handy-Handedness.html
Action/Adventure: August 03, 2016 Issue [#7788]

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Action/Adventure


 This week: Handy Handedness
  Edited by: Legerdemain
                             More Newsletters By This Editor  

Table of Contents

1. About this Newsletter
2. A Word from our Sponsor
3. Letter from the Editor
4. Editor's Picks
5. A Word from Writing.Com
6. Ask & Answer
7. Removal instructions

About This Newsletter

The purpose of this newsletter is to help the Writing.com author hone their craft and improve their skills. Along with that I would like to inform, advocate, and create new, fresh ideas for the author. Write to me if you have an idea you would like presented.

This week's Action / Adventure Editor
Legerdemain


Word from our sponsor

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Letter from the editor


Handy Handedness


If you've ever hurt your hand, you know how this is; you suddenly feel so uncoordinated trying to accomplish the most simple tasks. Where is this topic coming from? It's because Saturday August 13th is Left Handed Day. So those right handed people reading this newsletter, raise your left hand and use it!

So for a fun tongue twister...try to read this newsletter aloud and quickly, hahahaha. There are four types of handedness: left-handedness, right-handedness, mixed-handedness, and ambidexterity.

Right handed is the most common dominant hand. In baseball, coaches often decide pitching and batting by the handedness of the team player coming up to bat. Many tools and musical instruments are designed for right handedness.

Left handed is more common among men than women. I also read that lower-birth-weight and complications at birth are positively correlated with left-handness. An excess of non-right-handedness in schizophrenia is demonstrated as an empirical effect. One systematic review concluded: "Left-handers showed no systematic tendency to suffer from disorders of the immune system". (Love that Wikipedia, there's a story in there somewhere.) Fourteen of the top twenty career batting averages in Major League Baseball history have been posted by left-handed batters. Black magic is sometimes referred to as the "left-hand path". Kangaroos and other macropod marsupials have a left-hand preference for everyday tasks in the wild.

Cross-dominance or mixed-handedness is the change of hand preference between tasks. In other words, a person could write with a pen in their right hand but bat baseball lefty. A person who is cross-dominant can also be stronger on the opposite side of the body that they favor; for example, a right-handed person can be stronger on the left side. Cross-dominance can often be a problem when shooting or in activities that require aim, although athletes can still achieve success in sports that require accuracy, like passing in American football and shooting in basketball.

Ambidexterity is exceptionally rare, although it can be learned. A truly ambidextrous person is able to do any task equally well with either hand. Those who learn it still tend to favor their originally dominant hand. Some days I dearly wish I had this talent.

So with your dominant or non-dominant hand, Write On!


This month's question: Have you ever been forced to use your non-dominant hand for a length of time? How did it make you feel? How do you use that in your writing?
Answer below *Down* Editors love feedback! *Heart*



Editor's Picks

 Left Hand  (18+)
The self-destruction of a writer.
#1336271 by T.J. Dobbin

Excerpt: There is only one thing I can do. I move my head in closer and sink my teeth into the back of the possessed hand.

 The Left Hand Of God  (E)
A left handed child, forced to write with his right hand, develops Graphobia.
#1117540 by super sleuth

Excerpt: This note is from Mrs. Kenny, she said you insist on using your left hand in school and she wants me to do something about it. Well, I guess I WILL do something about it. Don't you understand it's not natural to write that way. If God wanted you to write with your left hand He would have made everyone write with their left hand. The devil is inside you making you do it and there is only one way to exorcise him."

 Ambidextrous  (13+)
Will Paul be able to cope with the new baby, or does it need to go?
#1347151 by Alex Pucher

Excerpt: They were the same, and always had been. Paul and Virginia met in college during an astronomy field trip. He looked through the telescope, then she. Their hands met under a Van Gogh sky and the rest was stone. Music, movies, art, food – everything had some common ground. Paul was instantly Virginia's hero, because no one had ever met her needs so completely. One came to always rely on the other's ability to pick up the pieces. Two peas in a pod. Two sides of a coin. Yin and Yang. All of it. That was them.

 The Brothers Penn  (13+)
Why Lefty can't sing the blues...
#1479421 by Joseph Logan

Excerpt: The year was 1876, the middle of a hot June. I was punching cattle across the panhandle and across New Mexico. The Indians were putting up a fair fight, the South was getting some of its pride back and carpetbaggers were green with money. The West was as quiet as it was going to get for a long time.

I happened to be settin’ in El Paso, laying down after a long cattle drive back from Kansas, and a bit hung over when he walked through the swinging doors of Jack Doyle’s place, all haggard and dusty.


SURVEY
Journey Through Genres: Official Contest  (E)
Write a short story in the given genre to win big prizes!
#1803133 by Writing.Com Support

Excerpt: Genre of the Month: Inspirational The task is simple: use the genre above as inspiration for a short story!

 Invalid Item 
This item number is not valid.
#1960472 by Not Available.

Excerpt:
I do like poetry, but this contest is not the place for it. Show off your other wares. Post the BEST you've got, the work you're proudest of, the work that people simply have to see *Smile*


FORUM
Project Write World  (13+)
A celebration of writers and their distinct cultures to bring us all together.
#1254279 by iKïyå§ama-BacktoWonderland!

Excerpt: It's simple! This will be a bi-monthly contest where writers will be required to submit a poem, a short story, and an essay or article with a given theme that BEST represents a country/nation.

FORUM
WEIRD TALES CONTEST   (18+)
A Contest Inspired by the Old Pulp Fiction Covers of Weird Tales Magazine
#2083492 by Beacon - Night's Watch

Excerpt: This will be an on-going monthly contest. Every month I will post the 'cover art' from one of those great, old pulp magazines, and you will write a short story, of say, no more than a 1000 words, that best describes that cover.

 Invalid Item 
This item number is not valid.
#559910 by Not Available.

Excerpt: You got here because you're serious about writing, you want to be published, and you know the value of peer review groups. This is where you can get your chapters reviewed, and you'll find lots of exciting things to read and critique. But there's more than just reviewing going on here. There are discussions on how to write a query letter, links to trends in publishing, and discussions of craft. We're a chatty bunch, so you'll also find encouraging words on submissions, commiserations on rejections, and congratulations on getting that final acceptance letter.

 
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Word from Writing.Com

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Ask & Answer

This month's question: Have you ever been forced to use your non-dominant hand for a length of time? How did it make you feel? How do you use that in your writing?
Answer below *Down* Editors love feedback! *Heart*

Last month's question: Do you ever find yourself researching something odd? How do you use that information in your writing?

StephBee responded: I'll usually research something if I find it odd. I'm always game to learn something new. Interesting tidbit: My cub scout pack built a trebuchet in the summer of 2015 for our family camp. The boys had a great time launching watermelons from it.

A*Monaing*Faith replied: I was wondering where you were going with that...like how can medieval war machines be funny...good job.
I can't begin to tell about all the randomness I've come across, can we say StumbleUpon?
I don't believe I've ever gone down a wormhole with the implicit purpose of writing though, great idea.

Quick-Quill answered: In my book I chose TB to be the disease that killed my MC grandfather. Not only did I have to find out all the treatments and protocols I had to find a sanitarium near W. Virgina. Once I had that I could make my setting over a 4-5 hour drive away. Somthing they couldn't make given they didn't have a car and it was too far for any friend to drive them there.

scooter sent: i was writing something the other day where i was trying to describe what we now call a dry sink. see, my confusion was if whether people at that time would call it a dry sink - certainly not - or just a sink or something else entirely. this sent me down a rabbit hole of researching antique sinks, which led me to antique plumbing, then ancient bathhouses. it was enlightening!


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