Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

Writing Meditations

When the writer inside them says, “I am here.”

by

As a teacher of creative writing, I at this time of the year always enjoy the moment when my students suddenly look to each other and say, “Your writing has changed.”  They mention detailed images, strong word choice, developed characters, etc.

This is what they have been working towards all year and most of them didn’t realize it.  They thought they were just getting to write all the time about any idea that came into their heads.  They have grumbled about the redrafts, scrambled for reasons to miss deadlines, gotten excited about a prompt or a day they could just dedicate to writing whatever fell into their heads.  They reminisce about the walks around campus we have taken looking for interesting images skulking about the place in unexpected corners, inside the book room or under the mats by the doors.

wild about writing

At the start of the year, they did not expect they needed to improve or that anyone would notice if they did.  But here it is. That moment when someone finishes reading what he or she wrote in response to the prompt, and then epiphany:  “Your writing has changed — and mine too.”  When this happens, I do not say, “Ah, here is a teaching moment.”  I remain silent and listen to the writers inside them say, “I am here.”

Comfortable on either end of the reading see-saw

by

I have become quite technology heavy.  I use quite a bit of technology in the classroom just in the process of my teaching (i.e., two computers, one projector, one Mimeo, one iPad, scanner, digital cameras [still and video], and loads of advanced software. Don’t even ask what I have my students working on).  At home, well, minus the projector and add one e-reader, and a couple of more computers, and that will be close to how technology bound I am.  Of course, some of it is not new tech (I take real good care of my stuff), but it’s in active use.  Oops, forgot the phones.

My point is this. I have owned an e-reader for more than a year now and my mother-in-law wished to get one. We talked about mine and the ones she was considering (I took more than a year to make my decision, she took about the same).  Now we both have e-readers, different brands, and find we quite like reading e-books.  It doesn’t really matter which one you get as long as you can read the way you want to.  I have checked out quite a number of blogs on e-readers, and really if you want it to reduce the amount of books you have in your house (this was the main selling point that got my husband onto pushing me to buy an e-reader) than any crisp-screened reader will meet your needs.  The rest is just bells and whistles with attendant price tags.

This week my mother-in-law gave me her copy of The Help in paperback. She enjoyed it and thought I might like it. She bought it before she purchased her e-reader.  I felt much at home leaning back on the daybed in our computer room holding that book in my hands.  It felt good, so maybe holding a hardback or paperback has some pull yet with me, and it is an entertaining book, but she has never given away a book to me before. The Help is a big book, and it is going to take up space, which may be what prompted her to share.  I know she won’t be handing me her Kindle anytime soon, and I am not lending out my Sony either.  But I think I can shift back and forth between my pencil, pen, keyboard, tablet, paperbacks, e-books, transparencies, and projectors with comfort for some time to come, and there is probably a little space yet left on my bookcase in the hallway.

see-saw

When your character is in trouble, or you need them to be

by

Mad Scientist

There is a lovely little book called The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook.  This book is great if you are looking for a problem for your character to handle or your character is in a predicament you are uncertain how to bring to a proper conclusion.  Chances are this book or its travel version, will have the perfect get out, get in, get them before they get him/her idea that will fit your plot handily.  Comedy or serious trouble, this book will provide.  Is your character being followed, lost in the woods, dealing with a volcanic eruption?  Check out this book.  Scam artist, runaway horse, mad scientist…..

Seeking simplicity in writing

by

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?

by

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.

Writing is like driving a truck a little too big for me

by

My husband and I used to own an old red, full-size Dodge truck. I drove it quite a bit, and being a small woman, it always made me feel as though I was doing something unusual.

I would see my petite hands wrapped around the over-sized steering wheel, surprisingly slender, the flat bench seat seeming to push back at my hundred pounds of weight.  The steering had a constant jiggle from side to side in my hands.

At first I tried to hold it steady but overtime I got comfortable enough to trust the truck to steer straight even if the wheel I held seemed to be shifting back and forth; it had play in it.  My arms would just relax into the movement.

Writing is like that.  It has wiggle room in a story when I am drafting, and I will feel at first that the story is drifting in and out of the center it should be in.  I slow down, hold tighter, end up over correcting, and the driving of the story is not enjoyable.

As I become more involved with its inhabitants, my grip loosens. I begin to trust the story to keep the road on its own, and the tremendous view out the window gets much more of my attention, not those quick glances that are punctuated by far more intense visuals of the speedometer, gas gauge and temperature indicator.

When I have gained trust in the story, it doesn’t get easier to write, any more than that truck got easier for me to push the pedal down or steer around corners, but the writing does feel more like it has a good reason to be coming into existence; there is purpose to it, place, time, people and growth.  So every story seems a little too big for me, a little unwieldy, but in time, I gain the finesse and ease of moving along the track of the story’s way.