Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

Writing Meditations

SF genres: where do I fit in?

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mixing it up in SF genres

One of the really difficult things I have found about
writing SF is that there are so many subgenres. I have been doing research so I can be certain which one(s) I fall into.

After reviewing the various sites that explain SF subgenres, I sat down to list the qualities that exist in my Students of Jump series: 

  • time travel 
  • crisis of character 
  • interpersonal relationships 
  • alternate history 
  • family dynasty 
  • Retro Futurism: I write in a style I remember from my days of
    reading science fiction as a preteen and teenager, and apparently they have a
    name for that. 
  • strong female characters 
  • light romance 
  • genetic engineering
  • artificial intelligence 
  • soft science

I found a pretty good list at SciFi Lists.  The explanations were brief but adequate enough to help me decide if my work fit in the category.  
My intention for looking into the subgenres was to make sure I was tagging mine correctly. 
After all, I don’t want to have people searching for novels in the style
I write and have mine slipping by them because I have used tags that don’t
describe my work well.
I found three that seemed to cover my series: time travel,
alternate history and artificial intelligence under the umbrella of Retro
Futurism.  Three of these tags I need to add to my books.
Now I am not certain I fit under Retro Futurism, but I do
know I was heavily influenced by the writers that it is named for: Heinlein,
Asimov, Bradbury, Anderson, Savage, the list goes on. I’ve read plenty of Crichton,
Pohl, Niven, Pournelle, and Norton, but I don’t feel they influenced me as
much.

How did you decide what genre best described you?  Did you look at what authors influenced you, what you read, make a list like I did or some other means to select what best covered your work?

#genre
#SF
#Heinlein

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Regional word choice: would you rather a frappe or a cabinet?

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Not just plants are regional: words, too.

I moved all over the place when I was a kid, and I collected words and differences in pronunciation of words like most kids collected bubble gum trading cards.

Milkshake, cabinet, frappe

Even though these words reference the same thing, each brings a different feel to the image. When I think of a frappe being served at my table, the imagined tall glass of white is full of lumpy froth at the top with condensation on the glass so thick it is opaque, and the only places where I can see the milky fluid is where the fingertips of the waitress touched.  And the container is cold, and I cannot view it as any color other than white, with the smell of vanilla beans thick in the breath I take before slurping in the first taste of half air half tantalizing sponginess that sounds like distant firecrackers as the tiny bubbles pop against my lips. 

Tennis shoe, sneaker

I wore sneakers into my teens.  When I first heard there were shoes called tennis shoes, I thought I had to play tennis to wear them.

route: route (root) or route (rout)

Don’t ask me for directions unless you are prepared to hear me switch back and forth in my pronunciation of this word and not even know I am doing it.

aunt: aunt (ant) or aunt (awnt) or aunt (tante)

I only used the first two of this one.  I had two aunts, one on each coast.  I met them when I was a child.  I thought saying Aunt (ant) Sue and Aunt (awnt) Peg was just a case of that being their names, similar to Sally Ann or Jim Bob. Later I understood that they resided on different coasts and geography made all the difference.

submarine sandwich, hoagie, grinder, sub, Italian, hero, wedge

I can still remember when my family was moving from Massachusetts to New Jersey.  We had been traveling for what seemed like all day, and we went into one shop to get something to eat.  I looked at the menu and had no idea what they were offering.  I wanted a submarine sandwich, but there were none listed.  Would a hoagie taste good?  I was about 12 years old and thought this was probably the only place in the US silly enough to call them hoagies.

purse, pocketbook, bag, handbag

This one still gets me in trouble.  I say pocketbook and my students give me blank looks. They trust that I know what I am talking about, but they don’t know what I am talking about.

toilet, john, head, loo, porcelain pony, commode

I only came across the first three of these in my travels.  Toilet is my word of choice, but recently my husband was explaining what a room in the house we are building was and said “commode.”  My daughter looked at me unsure of what we were putting in the house. So I had to explain.

The second one I am very familiar with, but “john” is one I just can’t use.  Both my grandfathers were named John, my brother and my father.  But my mom thought it was quite funny to say things like, “John is in the john” or “We have several johns, are you looking to talk or use?”  My dad was a Navy man, and when out on the ocean fishing, he always said “head” but never in the house.  And he never referred to a toilet as a john.

What makes word choice so important? It adds characterization and settings if you are picking a specific region for your story. What regional words have you noted?  Do you know the reason behind their use?

Seeking the perfect junction: crossing the gap between what is written & what is read

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Readers need to connect the content to their own lives.

Recently I was reading Jane
Eyre.  The narrator and main
character Jane was describing a view of Rochester seated alone in a darkened
room, and suddenly I was transported back about ten years and the memory of
walking into my father’s office to see him seated at his desk, quiet, lost in
thought, came quickly to mind. 

My father
had lost much of his vision, which for a man who loved to read and tinker with
electronics in his retirement was tragic. 
He did not know I had entered, so for just that brief moment I saw how
disappointed he was in his situation.   One of his hands reached to run fingers over his watch and prompt it to tell him the time. A magnifying glass mounted on an articulating arm was close to his face, and just inches beneath the glass a second magnifying glass hung. 

Of
course, as soon as he was aware I was there, his whole countenance changed to
one of pleasure and good cheer.  He
joked, worked hard to track my movements with his eyes, told me how much I
looked like his father, but I knew I was mostly blur for him.  His once lovely penmanship was a broken
scrawl, and the confidence at which he moved about the house or located things
was because he had memorized where everything was and was precise in keeping
each to its proper place.

Moved by this memory of my father, I could not but be moved by poor Rochester’s fate.  This is how writers connect their work to their readers.  They strike a chord that links to some piece
of our lives, one we have or one we wish we had, as well as those we wish we didn’t. 


My beta reader, Marcy Peska, read the first book in my series Students of Jump (In Times Passed).  In her notes on my draft, she would comment on what a scene triggered in her or how a piece of dialogue caught her attention.  At one point halfway through the novel, she had written in a note “Nooo, I did not see this coming. I have to break away.”  Then the note continued explaining that she had needed to stop for a “mini-meltdown.”  Marcy had been immersed in the scene and what occurred had caught her up so emotionally, she could not go on reading without some distance to recover her equilibrium.  She loved the scene and hated it at the same time because it had bridged the gap between the text and the imagination.  Goal achieved.  It was a tough scene to write and tough to read, which was precisely what I was going for.

Rochester’s injuries had that effect on me.  I hated seeing my father that way, but because of the quality of Bronte’s writing, I could imagine what Rochester must look like and what Jane must be feeling. The scene was real to me. I had sympathy for both characters, and the scene was authentic because it bridged the two events: fiction and reality.

This is the challenge of every writer and the need that every reader wants filled.  We want to connect, to find some essence of our own experience that draws us into the scene.  The writer must still supply well-written dialogue, description, imagery, finely drawn characters, etc., but what is most vital is that the reader have a way to travel the created moment with a sense of familiarity and originality combined.

What work of fiction or biography caught you, the reader, in such a moment?  Please share that moment of connectiveness, the author, text scene.

#writing
#readers
#connection

Reading the Heinlein Biography, part 2: the writer’s personhood

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My previous post on William H. Patterson, Jr.’s, Heinlein biography focused on what I learned about the writing business.  But that wasn’t all I gained from the reading.  In many ways, Heinlein’s life provided general rules to live by as a writer and a person.

  • Take care of your mortality: physical health, mental health, diet and process of aging.  Heinlein had numerous health problems. And he was immediate about making change to improve his chances of continuing doing what he loved: writing.  So he changed his diet to deal with his many allergies, changed his diet again to deal with his heart health. He studied a variety of mental viewpoints to find a strong way to approach life positively and honestly (self-honesty in particular). He wanted to live a whole lot longer than he did, but considering what he had to battle, he lived a whole lot longer than expected.
  • Maintain and foster friendships inside and outside the field of writing.  Heinlein kept his Navy friends, childhood friends, and writer friends as part of his life no matter what changes were going on.  He moved every few years for various reasons and made close friendships with neighbors and maintained those from his previous residences.  I noticed that Heinlein was also slow to let go of a troubling friendship.  He wanted to be certain that he was taking the friendship as it came, not molding it into some prerequisite construct.  He seemed to dislike a great deal having to cut off a friendship and was willing to reassess if it appeared the person had changed.
  • Travel: He was interested in other cultures and enjoyed experiencing new viewpoints and lifestyles. I got the impression he did not want to get his information from books.  He wanted to see it for himself, talk to people, see the worst and the best in their countries.  I haven’t been too many places: Mexico, Canada and Sweden, but each offered me different outlooks on life that I came to embrace.  I have been all over the US, which has offered quite a bit of
    difference in diet, interpersonal communication between sexes and
    personal philosophy. Travel and exposure to variety is a growing experience as a person and a writer.
  • Stand up for yourself.  Heinlein had to deal with plagiarism in writing, TV and movie production.  There were times he had to fight for his rights (The Puppet Masters) and times he had to clarify a point, less the legal applications (The Rolling Stones vs. Star Trek’s “Trouble with Tribbles”).
  • Work to aid humanity. Aside from his political endeavors and his efforts to encourage education in the sciences in his juvenile (YA) books, I think Heinlein was most pleased with the work he did in blood drives, especially as it related to rare bloods.  I had not been aware of all his work in this area and was much impressed with his effort to improve participation and increase availability of rare blood. There is a platform for each of us, small or large that can bring positive change.
  • Make friends with your agent, editors, etc.  Much of his communications in the biography came from his interactions and friendships with those involved in the publication of his novels, stories and essays.  I think often we think of the publishing world as a necessary enemy.  Heinlein built lifelong friendships with many of his contacts.
  • Keep family close and value them.  Heinlein was not a “I remember you when” kind of writer.  His friends prior to writing and his family were important to him.  Sometimes it seems that the writer is assumed to separate him or herself from the family as if such contact will ruin the muse.  Stay close.  It is from family that we grow into who we are and gain our greatest strengths.
  • Be responsible for your self and your family.  When Heinlein’s mother needed to go into a nursing home, it occurred when he had the money to maintain her care.  His sister had been the main caretaker for many years, and he was ready when the responsibility needed to be moved. He volunteered to be the main provider taking the financial burden off his siblings when it was a struggle for them, and he was able to carry it.
  • Recognize your own belief system and be tolerant of others. Heinlein had strong beliefs, , but he seemed to be willing to accept a variety of differences as a natural right. He did draw the line at love of country,  patriotism.
  • Use your medium to teach and challenge your readers.  Heinlein advocated patriotism, blood drives, right to bear arms, education, sexual equality (but give him some latitude, he was born in 1907), racial equality, and a variety of political viewpoints.  As with everyone, as he aged, his beliefs evolved, some growing stronger, others altering based on society, new experiences, research and personal evaluation.  He had an agenda, two main ones: make his readers think and entertain them.

What author has helped your grow as a person?  What about them strengthens your resolve, provides focus or motivation?

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#Heinlein
#Writers

Reading the Heinlein biography, part 1: an immersion in the writing process

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I have been a fan of Heinlein’s for more than forty
years.  When he was alive, I watched
constantly for his next publication, and I have read nearly everything he has
written and a great deal of what has been written about his work.  Learning only recently that there was an
official biography about him leaves me rather late in following up my past
diligence, but I am glad I didn’t find these two volumes by William H. Patterson, Jr.,
until this month.  Now was the time for
me to read about Heinlein’s writing experience and process. 
I learned so much more about writing and my favorite author
reading these texts. I found numerous levels of understanding about the
process, organization and publication of writing, working with agents and
editors and publishing in general (though, of course, there have been changes,
the human element should not have altered much).  There was also the personal element of being
a writer, champion of ideas and role model that was just as provocative and
informative, but that will be for another post.
Below is a list of what I found important to Heinlein’s
process, important to any writer’s effort to write well.

  • Use index cards to organize and maintain ideas. Sure there are numerous electronic
    organizers, but I like the inspiration that comes from being able to shuffle, redistribute and overlap
    ideas on a 3×5.      I am definitely going to work with this
    approach. Heinlein used index cards to jot down ideas and even carried them around with him when working on a story. When enough ideas started to
    come together, they were kept in a group, and he would refer back or add to them
    as his story grew.  The system gained
    structure as his ideas and completed writing grew.  So they (his wife Virginia Heinlein came up with his indexing
    structure) set up a filing system that
    categorized the ideas and identified each published or work in progress.  Each book or WIP acquired its own indexing
    number. I am going to use his system to
    build one that will work for me.
  • Gather research: he was constantly researching
    science, technology, engineering, etc., to ensure accuracy in his writing.  I do
    research, but I think I need to develop this process more and in a less
    isolated manner – both broad and deep so there is more overlap and more
    connections built and therefore more material for writing.     
  • Read up on a lot of topics: Heinlein was not
    afraid to read a tome far above his level of understanding. He was known to
    seek out specialists in his field of interest and have them teach him what he
    needed to know so he could understand in-depth writing in the field he was
    curious about. This is an area I need to
    work on.     
  • Gather a cadre of authorities to tap. No explanation needed here. 
  •  Let ideas stew, even for years.  Some books half written sat around waiting
    for the right idea, the new understanding or experience before they were ready
    to be completed.  He fought for every
    piece he wrote to get to its end, but he also was ready to recognize when
    something just was not ready for prime time. 
  •  Have an overall plan for a book.  For some writers this is not a useful tidbit.
    But for me it is. I realize more and more
    that I am playing catchup with my stories about two thirds through.  I knew where I wanted to start and where I
    thought it would end.  I often have a set
    of events I expect to fill the middle with on the way to start and finish, but
    I realize at that 2/3rds point that I failed to consider the reader interaction
    that goes with the connecting of these two points.  I think that is what that overall plan means
    to me.  I need to have the bones
    organized earlier for my books.  Even if
    I deviate in the process of writing, I will have still worked out much of what
    the intercourse will be between the story and the reader that is essential.     
  •  Use mythologies and connecting images or
    principals in a work.  The underlying
    pieces are so essential.  
    Heinlein would work out what mythology or images he wanted to imbed in his
    stories to link events and ideas together within a work.
  •  Making use of personal experience. I suppose
    this falls under “write about what you know,” but I think it is
    deeper than this, and I think writers naturally incorporate their own
    accumulated bundle of tragedy, comedy and drama. We all can take an experience
    and pick out the magic pieces that add depth and authenticity to our work. 
  •  The benefit of a participating spouse: providing
    ideas and feedback and being a resource of information.  Heinlein was fortunate that both ex-wife
    Leslyn Heinlein and his wife Virginia Heinlein were willing to be a part of his
    writing process and business. Not all writers have a spouse who is willing to
    provide this deep of a commitment. Mine
    hits at about the 5 percent when it comes to involvement, but he is
    tremendously supportive. He uses the word “work” when he asks what I
    am doing as I am typing on the computer. 
    He’ll say, “Is that for school or are you working?”  I love that. And he’s growing in this
    area.  After all, he is the one that made
    sure the plans for our house included an office for me.     
  •  Reading inside and outside your genre.  Heinlein kept up on both scientific writings
    as well as contemporary fiction.  He believed it
    advanced his writing quite a bit and resulted in his hybrid Science Fiction
    style which ultimately changed the scope of the genre. I write also contemporary short story and poetry, read for pleasure and
    read for study, but I could still enlarge on this. (I read three biographies in
    the last month, and that is more of that genre than I normally read in a year.)     
  •  Don’t be afraid and even seek to write something
    different, challenging or disruptive. 
    Several of Heinlein’s works, according to his bio, he did not expect to be
    accepted for publication. They were just too different:  Stranger
    in a Strange Land, Time Enough for Love,     and Number of the Beast. But they were accepted and each were met with near instant success. 
  •  Don’t be afraid to create your own genre. Heinlein
    moved away from the strict confines of what constituted Science Fiction. (What
    was new and different in his time is very much the norm of our own.) 
  •  Submit to small presses and lower-end magazines
    to begin with. Submit?! Okay, I am
    working up to this. There is a time commitment here because of the research,
    selection process and keeping track of what is out and where it has been. I am
    going to squeeze it in. I promised myself and I am going to do it.     So
    Submit! 
  •  Submit repeatedly and continuously. Since we’re
    on the subject, Heinlein just kept things heading out the door until it found a
    buyer. Just keep flinging them off the
    merry-go-round until they land on their feet.     
  •  Take all criticism under consideration and
    follow what feels right.  I like this
    especially about Heinlein.  His stories
    had to meet his internal critic and his external (spouse).  Once it passed those two road blocks, he
    fought for it.  He took criticism that
    would make a work better but routinely refused to castrate or turn a work into
    weak milk. None of my current work is a
    challenge to society being largely written for entertainment, so this mandate does not apply too heavily to my work.
    But should I write something that pulls hair, I won’t let myself be forced to
    back down in order to keep a segment of society from having to take off their
    rose-colored glasses.     
  •  Join groups that augment or support your
    genre/subject/intentions.  Heinlein
    wasn’t much for writing groups, but he did form his own quasi-feedback
    groups.  Lucky stiff, he had Pohl,
    Azimov, Savage, the Smiths, Bova, the Sturgeons etc. They talked shop, shared ideas, helped develop
    plots, kept each other informed of new technology and writing aids.  Heinlein once bought another writer a
    typewriter because he felt it had been such an aid to lightening up his work
    load and time spent in production. 
  •  Keep organized files and sift through them.  This is much related to an earlier point, but
    the reason why it is separate is that one must do more than just organize the
    works and ideas.  You must review them,
    add and combine.  If they sit in a drawer
    than all they will ever do is sit in a drawer.
#writing
#Heinlein
#writingprocess

Even standing in the crawl space of what will be my office is enough to inspire me

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foundations for a writing office

I’ve been tweeting about the lovely little getaway house my husband and I have been building for the last three months. I am pleased it’s coming along, but what I really care about and am excited about is my office.  Sure the house is going to have bedrooms, a living room, kitchen, two baths, but I am going to have my own office, and that is what’s important.  The room is about 10×9 at the back of the house off the kitchen and dining room, but it’s an open floor plan, so I can look into the living room if I want or close the door.

I wouldn’t care if it was 6×6.  It is my space and will contain my things and has a door.  It is the only room in the house I will not have to consult or agree with my husband about if I don’t want to.  I have a few ideas.

  • A desk ~ probably my current old oak desk, though my husband talks of replacing it.  I don’t mind it.  The desk doesn’t write, I do.
  • My desk will be right in front of the window with the amazing view of the lake through the trees.
  • One whole wall will be blank, though in the plans it shows a window.  My room ~ no window needed on that wall.  We’re talking 10×9 here.  What do I need with three windows?  Two are fine.  That wall is my story organizer whether I use sticky notes or a white board or printed sheets of paper taped together.  It will make it possible for me to see and alter the arc of each of my stories.
  • Behind me is a storage cabinet running wall to wall, hopefully built in with a counter for the printer, shelving above and cabinet doors below.  
  • To the right is the wall with the door as tight to the cabinet wall as I can make it.  So there will be a small wall immediately to my right when I am at the desk.  Pictures, plagues and such will go there.  I can start with all those diplomas I have so it does not begin blank.  I’ll shift them out as I go.  Somewhere in this lot will sit a file cabinet.  We actually own three cabinets but only one is dedicated to my writing.  The other two can go begging for space elsewhere.  Files not writing related will not be welcome.

So we have been building.  My husband is a do-it-yourselfer, and this includes my having very little to do with the placement of building materials in the form of a house.  I hold a nail in place, and he carefully avoids hitting my fingers with the hammer.  I locate the hammer when he misplaces it.  And a lot of the time I sit in a chair with my Kindle reading.  But I sit in my office, okay, for precision here, I sit beneath my office in the crawl space as the decking for the floor is not in yet.  Still, I cannot explain the absolute peace and satisfaction I feel sitting in the space, my space, my office-to-be.

When I am not sitting and reading or holding a nail, I stare off at that view, my elbows balanced on the ledgerboard mounted on the stem wall.  I am usually standing rather precariously on some concrete overflow from the stem wall pour as I am not quite tall enough to look out without the added inches it gives me.  But as I stand there, the book I am writing comes to me in splashes of scenes and dialogue.  I keep running them through my mind adding imagery, direction, character details. 

My office is already useful, already generating ideas.  Just standing in it is enough to make me want to write.  What will a floor bring?  Walls, a door, my chair at my desk?  So much to imagine and look forward to.

If you can design your office, what would it be like.  Is it just a little space of your own or a full blown library?  Does that desk need to be something special or is any flat space your computer or writing pad can lay enough? Will a window add or detract from your island muse?
#writing
#imagination
#inspiration
#officespace