Respondent, Operant, and Cognitive Social Learning

Respondent, Operant, and Cognitive Social Learning

PSY/103

University Of Phoenix

An event called National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo, is held every year in November, sponsored by donors and hundreds of thousands of writers around the world. The challenge posed to amateur writers is to write a 50,000-word novel in one month. In 2010 alone, it counted over 30,000 wins - writers who reached 50,000 words in 30 days, and it steady records more writers and more “wins” each year. A few days into November, a friend convinced me to take on NaNoWriMo’s challenge, though I never suspected that I would reach the goal. Nonetheless, after a week I had written 5,000 words and felt confident that I could produce something worthwhile. I didn’t use the official website very often, which had elements of social networking, forums, and community building, but my friend did. She found out that local groups of writers met a couple of times a week and welcomed anybody, all over the country, and we went to several. The atmosphere there was mostly quiet, usually held at a library, but occasionally did what they called “word sprints.”

The idea was for every writer to keep a steady stream of words going without taking a critical eye to what they were doing; they could write their stream of consciousness, muddle their plot, create a useless character or kill off, so to speak, an important one, as long as they kept typing. The challenge is intended to tap writers into the creative power of spontaneous prose, a term coined by Jack Kerouac. By setting such an intense standard, the writers’ mind becomes focused completely on their writing and they tend to see greater and more possibilities for their story. The winner of the word sprint was arbitrarily assigned, sometimes to the writer of the most words or the least, or the one closest to a pre-decided number. The winner chose from a bag of prizes with their eyes closed.

I found that I am less productive during...