Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

What I’m (th)Inkingabout

I started reading about improving my writing, and then I started doing

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I downloaded an ebook this summer called 70 Solutions to Common Writing Mistakes.  As I started reading it, I thought is was far too basic for me. After all, I teach creative writing.  Wouldn’t I know the basics?  But I kept reading it, and then I found myself applying the ideas mentioned in this book to the book I was redrafting for its final version.  And the more I thought about what each short chapter was referring to, the more I realized it didn’t need to give me the examples I was griping about not being there.  If I am a writer, I should be able to apply the advice to my writing and see examples in putting each suggestion into practice.  Really it is a book that gives brief insights in to writing without taking up a lot of my time, which I should be using writing.

Chapter 1 is about not starting, which explains why it is called “Not Starting.”  I remember reading and thinking:  Yeah, exactly, like I don’t know that to be a writer I must at least put pen to page or keyboard to word processing program.  But we all need a kick in the pants, and we all need the rather trite but accurate advice that we must simply sit down and write.  But I also realized there were several other things I wasn’t starting. I wasn’t looking into publishing my book which I told myself I was determined to publish. I had short stories hanging about unfinished, oodles of poetry and four unedited books.  I was not active at all on the internet even Goodreads and I read plenty.  So even Chapter 1, “Not Starting” applied to me.  So the chapters are short, a page, maybe a page and a half, but each offers some simple but essential piece of advice.  In the end, I started.  Not much has happened past my publishing my book, participating in Goodreads, starting this blog and seeing what is going on out there in the reading world.  But I did start and I am continuing as well.

I would say it is the balancing that has me the most overwhelmed.

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Scenes scurry about in my mind.  I am ready to sit down and write, but I cannot.  There is grading to do and house cleaning and time to respond to a child’s needs and a husband’s desire to chat and then of course this blog. So when do I write?  I tell myself that this urge to write that is thwarted continuously will just serve to drive my writing more furiously. Bottling it up will give it plenty of time to ferment.  I remember when I was in grade school, the teacher got us involved in a project on how water moved from the surface during a rain to the water table below.  We were to determine if our region had the right qualities to clean the water of contaminants as it moved down through the soil and thus produce good drinking water. The word “percolation” stuck always with me. And even then I imagined my ideas for stories were busy percolating through the soil and rocks of my mind, purifying and distilling the best of what would ultimately end in a story.  I suppose every little thing that my ideas must stumble through or be delayed by must be improving on the overall result, making it more readable.  That is what keeps me sitting here writing this blog knowing that the next thing I will have to do is grade and then go to bed because it will then be much too late to write if I want to function well at my work in the morning.  Aw, weekend will you give me time to write?

I can hear you breathing…

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magnifying the audience

So here I am writing to an empty theater.  Not certain what I will do when people are actually reading this blog.  Hopefully, this will not be the first post they see.  In any case, I sit here writing and thinking about the ghost audience sitting out there.  I see one lady out front, arms akimbo across her chest, her mind clicking away at my various attributes as a writer, and she is considering if she got up and walked out if anybody would notice. There is another lady further up the aisle and off to the left who is listening impartially and gradually giving me some credit for good spelling and punctuation.  I look further and see the place is fairly full, but most of the members seated are rather blurry. I am tempted to tip my glasses off my nose and see if they come in clearer.  This is only a temptation. If they were clearer, this would mean they are way too close and much too tiny as I wear glasses for distance not reading.  A frightening thought to have an audience that tiny.  Makes not having one at all not such a disappointing thing.

So how does one build up an audience?  I am reading suggestions on this very issue and considering some of them. Some I have already done.  This blog is one example, my Goodreads account another.  I read other blogs, but so far have not participated in any. Well, that is not quite true.  I read one blog on which I felt good about posting a comment of my own.  So I wrote my little comment, checked its spelling and other qualities wanting to be properly dressed for my debut post and then sent it on its way.  I glanced up to the top of the blog wondering if anyone would comment on my comment. That’s when I realized the post I had read and found so intriguing was two years old.  Would the blog owner even notice?  And if he did, would he laugh.  “Silly poster, that conversation is way out of date.”

Well, I just heard someone chuckle way in the back.  Not sure they thought my story was humorous, but at least they felt relaxed enough to enjoy themselves. So my phantom audience, adieu for now.

Developing a foil character in yWriter5

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One of the bonuses that came out of finding yWriter5 (link in the Favorite Sites column to the top right) and then using it to develop my book, In Times Passed, was that as I entered some information into the program about the various characters present in my book, I got to know them better and developed them further. One character I had given little thought to but was using as one of the main reasons that my protagonist, Brent Garrett, was so unable to find direction and thus was the type to leap without looking began to take shape.  Much of what I learned about her, Vivian (maiden name still undecided) his mother, would not be used in the book, but I realized she was not a character to look over at all.  A new scene developed that showed at least a portion of the relationship she has with her son and how she has effected him directly and indirectly whether intentionally or not.

The second book in the series, No-time Like the Present, when roughed out had no mention of her at all. But after a stint in yWriter5, and my understanding of Vivian’s motivations, possible intentions (she has yet to reveal to me how much of what she does is intentional, good fortunate busybodying and the effects of someone else’s possible instigation) growing with the first book’s finish, she now plays a role in the second book and her underlying machinations become more interesting.  As I work through the series, I suspect that Vivian will call for a book of her own, perhaps to defend herself and all that seems to get laid at her door.   

So my point is, yWriter5 or anything that makes you have to supply detail or defend traits and motivations, can lead to a foil character getting unexpected dimension and even the opportunity to rise as a main character in a later work.

Now that I think about it, it was in having to write down the motivations, obvious and underlying, that caused Brent to make the choices he did, that forced me to look into Vivian’s involvement more and then develop her further.

Sorry about this not going in on Wednesday, my weekly blog day.  I promised myself and my nonexistent readers I would blog weekly and apparently failed in my third week.  I love teaching, but it is time consuming.  But I plan to work this habit into my life, come what may.

Exercise and inspiration

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Usually when I am working on a story, I find a quiet place to relax and see what comes to mind.  But lately, since I started jogging on a treadmill, I have found that running along thinking about the story currently at hand will lead to inspiration.  Just yesterday I was running along, and a story I am working on, titled “Scrapper,” came to mind. And though I knew what was happening next, it was the ending that caught my interest. As I worked it out in my mind, watching the scene play out, motives for different character actions developed and other scenes not yet written filled out with details.  By the time I was off the treadmill, a mere twenty-three minutes later, I had three key scenes bubbling over.  I sat and wrote more than 3000 words.  So my story has a well advanced beginning and a near complete ending.  I am looking forward to tomorrow’s run and the middle taking shape, while I am taking shape, too.

So for me, exercise and inspiration seemed to be a well-linked pair.  Writing could be the healthiest thing I do.

For users of WordPerfect who want to publish on Smashwords

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Since this is my first time having a blog, I have decided that Wednesday will be my scheduled blog day.  I still may enter other posts, but once a week I will definitely post.  Since writing is my focus for this blog, my posts on Wednesday will always relate to publishing and improving writing.

Smashwords.com is where I published my book, In Times Passed, and one thing that was very much emphasized in the formatting of a book to ready it for the meatgrinder (the program that turns the uploaded manuscript into several varieties of ebook format) is that it must be in Word, preferably 2003 or 2007 versions.  I have a preference for WordPerfect (WP), though I use Word at work.  All my writing is in wpd format.  So for those writers with the same preference as I, I wanted to share how easy it was to make the final preparation on the document that would be uploaded, while still using WP for the original document.  The writer does have to have Word for the final step, though. 

I completed my book in WP as well as put it through a final content edit.  Then following the Smashwords’ guide for publication formatting, I used the recommended “nuclear method.” The name sounds terrible, but the process truly is the easiest way to strip out WP formatting.  I used the select all menu choice in Edit, copied, and then pasted it into Notepad.  I saved the text in Notepad format.  Since I have the programs on separate computers, I used a flashdrive to transfer the new Notepad document to my laptop which has Word on it.  I then opened Notepad on the laptop, selected, copied and pasted it into a new Word document.  From there on, I followed the Smashwords’ guide on preparing the program to avoid it inserting formatting, and then I followed remaining instructions for fonts, chapter headings, scene breaks, styles, etc.

I put my book through one more final edit using a strategy I always tell my students.  I worked from the end of the document, sentence by sentence back to the beginning. This keeps me from falling into the story and losing track of the fact that I am looking for spelling, grammar and punctuation errors.  Other things catch my attention that way, too.  If I ask myself, “Who said that?”  I recheck the dialogue and make sure it is clear who is speaking as I don’t always use tags.  Ultimately, I did go through the document with a close eye for formatting codes that were not allowed.  The guide is very clear about how to do this and what to look for, so I leave any writers reading this to read it.  My main point here is feel free to use WordPerfect when creating your work, as a quick trip through Notepad clears away any formatting which could have turned the whole endeavor into a nightmare.  As it was, I had no format errors to correct after the upload and made it into the Premium Catalog without issue the first time.