Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

Writing habits

Seeking simplicity in writing

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Simplicity of a flower

I have been reading Steve Jobs a biography by Walter Isaacson and have become enthralled with Jobs’ pursuit of simplicity.  His idea that as one simplifies there is a point when the object you seek to reduce to simplest terms becomes complicated again.  So one must search deeper for the release of a greater simplicity. And he did this by constant pursuit of epiphany, the moment of recognition that he had found “it.”  So as I am reading this book, I am thinking about how this applies to writing.  Simplicity and the reader reaching an epiphany together in the form of story.  Ezra Pound did this.  His production of the poem “In a Station at the Metro” is all about simplicity.  He started out with many images, and 30 lines of poetry.  Pound whittled down and streamlined his poem until only two lines remained of one intense image and all that the image carried to his reader. This is what I think of:  How to write with simplicity in mind?  How to come to that moment of epiphany, when the writer knows the story has been told.

Running out of ideas?

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Every writer needs a little help some time. So here is a book that might just help. A Writer’s Book of Days.  I purchased this from Writer’s Digest years ago, but it is still available, paperback and eBook format.  It offers so much to a writer. Besides supplying daily writing prompts, it offers insight into the minds of productive, imaginative authors along with the opportunity to gain a little insight about oneself as a writer.

It offers the following:

  • exercises to improve writing
  • 365 days of writing prompts
  • questions to consider about writing habits and desires
  • short quotes that encourage and motivate the writer
  • other writers’ experiences

It’s a handy little book that I have used privately and as a textbook for my creative writing students.  Each student knows to just turn to the page for the day’s date if a class day is missed, and the prompt is the same as his/her peers responded to that day.  I don’t use the other features daily in class, but some days, they are the perfect supplement to the day’s instruction.