Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

What I’m (th)Inkingabout

Advice: A Writer Needs Feedback

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Every writer knows that the only way to get that book, story, poem, etc., done is to write. We also know that the only way to improve is to get feedback, honest, no holds barred feedback.  I teach creative writing, and I tell my new students every year that I will be considerate but honest.  They will know what the strengths were in the piece as much as where growth is occurring and where it is needed.  Every writer needs this and for some, like myself, it is hard to come by.

I am a teacher, and since I want my students focusing on what I am teaching them and not on me, I don’t advertise that I am a indie writer.  I have told only a couple people in my family and just one friend.  I know they’ll keep my writing activities secret.  But where does that leave me for feedback: well in a very limited space.  I have become friends with several writers, and those connections has been helpful because they know what I mean when I say tell me everything so I can get better.  They want honest feedback from me, and I want the same from them.  And it has been worth any uncomfortable feeling I might get from seeing the flaws pointed out in what I thought was a pretty thorough job (repeated numerous times)at line and context editing.  I grow as a writer each time they supply feedback and each time I give feedback.  It would have taken me years of personal distance to be able to give that kind of critique myself.  I don’t want to imagine waiting five years to be able to look at my own work with the necessary distance and increased knowledge in editing, drafting, plotting, etc. needed to actually see what needs to be improved.  That’s five years of embarrassment of having my work out there that I would get all in one fell swoop that could have been avoided by getting straight feedback from another writer or a professional editor when the work was “finished.”

So sure a writer writes, but a WRITER GETS FEEDBACK is even more important.  I published my first book with minimal feedback (those two family members).  It wasn’t long before I had a nagging feeling that perhaps I had overlooked aspects of the story or not edited as well as I thought (even an English teacher needs an editor, nobody can look at their own work without bias, certainly not after reading it one hundred times).  So I took it off publication, sent it to a writer friend (she sent me hers as well) and we traded feedback.  I am still working on it and hope by Christmas to have it back published again.

All this post really is saying is writers need feedback.

Tuesday prompt: #47 2012

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Write about appreciation.  Not just appreciating any old thing, but about appreciating the people in your life. Imagine what it would be like to go through tomorrow without them.

This evening I was driving into town along dark roads, tightened by a serious case of forever road construction, to pick up my daughter at school.  We hadn’t been sure when she would be done with her practice, so we had waited for her call telling us she would be hanging out in the parking lot of the school. So as I drove I thought for just a moment what I would do if I arrived and she wasn’t there.  I wasn’t really worried as I knew she was waiting with friends who lived close by the school, but all the same, for a moment I thought about her and how much I do appreciate her giggly hello, the way she jumps into the passenger seat as though we were off to some wild, long-awaited adventure, and the habitual slamming of the door, eliciting my usual rebuke about killing our old car.  My daughter has a habit of starting off her tales of the day with, “Guess what?”  I can never guess, but I usually supply her with some sort of outrageous, impossible event:  giant ants carried off Coach Fisher or Mindy has dyed her hair florescent pink, again, by accident.  She gives me her usual rolled eye glance, slowly shaking head of exasperation, followed by the true life events that colored her evening.  Yes, I want tomorrow to contain the giggle, the bounce, slam, “Guess what?, rolling eyes, shaking head and a new set of teenage angst stories, and the day after, too.  I would appreciate that.

Quick list of the books I have recommended on my blog

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I have posted about many of the books I consider useful.  So this post is sort of a gathering of those posts in one place.  Now you don’t have to search about for them.

Grammar and revision:
Eats, Shoots and Leaves

A Writer’s Reference
Spell Friendly Dictionaries

Creative inspiration:
A Writer’s Book of Days
Lu Chi’s Wen Fu
Lu Chi’s Wen Fu 2
The Worst Case Scenario 

Good books to read:
The Catcher in the Rye
Tale of Two Cities
You’ve Got to Read This

Tuesday prompt: #46 2012

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What’s upstairs?  Take your reader up those stairs, barefoot.  Let them feel every creak, rough edge, small nail poking up.  Make each step an adventure in itself.  Then show them what is on the second floor (or third floor, or in the attic).  But make is a slow trip where every word is ultimately connected to the object or place you will take them to. 

Sometimes the liars reveal the most truth: Holden Caulfield, Salinger’s Monster

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I recently started rereading Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye.  Even though I know where Holden Caulfield is in his journey of self-deception and punishment, I still get caught up with the slow reveal of his anger.  Salinger in the first three sentences tells the reader exactly where Caulfield is and how he has yet to find balance. Still, I find myself walking along beside this struggling character, listening to what he hates in his effort to avoid what he loves.  That ongoing chatter the first person narrative provides that begins so truly as teenage angst before it begins its slow, slick slide into, well read and see for yourself.

Every writer should read it for the lesson alone of how to create a character that tells all while he thinks he has hidden all his best secrets, the quintessential unreliable narrator.  Every reader over the age of 15 should read this book.  It’s makes one grin at first hearing him say all the things every polite individual wishes he could belt out so unconsciously and honestly.  Somewhere along the line, the reader comes to a realization: Holden is not chatting at length for every teenager who wishes he could speak his mind so easily, but for his own salvation, his own need to divorce himself from his shortcomings, his desire for forgiveness, presumably from the reader, but in reality from himself.  Reader or writer, read it, read it more than once.

Writers need to be readers: suggested read

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You’ve Got To Read This is an anthology supplying short stories that are the favorite reads of some of the finest writers of the 20th century.  Every writer should be reading, especially the most exemplary works of well-written prose.  “Goodbye, My Brother” by John Cheever is one of my favorites due to the family dynamics it portrays with simple, straightforward narration, and it is introduced by Allan Gurganus.

This book, though not a recent publication, is a great start for the writers looking to learn by reading.  The short introductions given by the author that selected each piece adds to the reading of each work.  Not only do I get to read a great short story, but I also get to understood what drew the accomplished writer to be moved by the work and name it as one of his or her favorites.

So track down this text and sit down for that occasional short read that you can examine both for the writing skill itself as well as for what  an establish writer might find worthwhile in it.

As said in Lu Chi’s Wen Fu, “When cutting an axe handle with an axe,
surely the model is at hand.”