Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

creative writing

Creativity: the routine of it can be inspiring

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Be ready to write

Creativity is such a personal experience.  No matter who we are, we search for it. A kid wants to say something funny to his buddies, a man needs a good line to catch the woman’s attention, a painter dreams of that perfect aesthetic impression on canvas, the computer programmer must revise for simplicity, clarity, reduced expense. Let’s not forget the writer who seeks a killer plot, equally killer characters and amazing killer dialogue, not to mention variety of diction. We are all in search of the creative moment and its reliable, reproducible inspiration.

Routine has long been tauted as the writer’s key to inspiration.  You know the drill:

  • write at the same time every day
  • create a space dedicated to writing
  • set yourself  up for the muse by having little routine steps: sharpen your pencil, restack your paper square, sort through your list of ideas, sit down and make your mind quiet, whatever
  • don’t tell anyone your idea until after it is down on paper
  • always leave your writing with a sense of urgency to write the next scene, or leave notes to pick up with next time you sit down
  • don’t stop until you have 1000 words down (or however many)
  • stop after 1000 words no matter what (That will certainly leave a sense of urgency to get back to the scene, unless of course you have been telling yourself, like a bonking runner, just 167 more words and I get to stop.)

Routine certainly has is good points. You know when, where, for how long, and how you are going to write, so there are no excuses. Bang you’re off and typing, scribbling, recording, etc.

It frees you up for inspiration to fly in or roll on.

When you are in your “place,” everyone knows to leave you alone.  That does not mean they will, just that they know.

And routine has other perks as well.

  • It’s already scheduled into your day, so work, kids, spouse, laundry, Twitter have already been factored in and can be controlled and worked around.  
  • Laundry can be done at the same time, brushing your teeth and showering can be brainstorming time, and you have an excuse not to watch that mind-numbing TV show everybody is talking about.
  • And when you are done, you can tell yourself, “I wrote today,” just as others might say, “I exercised before breakfast.” Be the first to pat yourself on the back.
  • It is scheduled into your “most creative work” time because you have worked out that you write best from 5 AM to 9 AM, or 10 PM to midnight, or etc.
  • And all those inspiring million-words-a-day gurus often provide very specific routines, and it works for them, why not you?

All very well, but this post was imagined just as I was starting up my school laptop to begin lesson planning for the new year. I had to shut the lid, send it into sleep mode and restart my personal laptop and begin this post I had scheduled into my day tomorrow.  Routine, I like it best when I can break it into a million pieces and around 500 words.

What is your routine or non-routine? Do you mix and match?

See me next week when I approach creativity in capture mode.  Don’t know what that is: see me next week, maybe I’ll know then, too.
#writing
#creativity
#routine

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

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

Terraforming a world with shell technology

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Live in a dome; artistic flare w/off-Earth life

I love this idea: terraforming with a shell or dome to hold the atmosphere in and generate heat.  That makes use of local planets like Mars, Venus, and various moons as liveable space very doable.

Miriam Kramer’s article “Incredible Technology: How to Use a ‘Shell’ to Terraform a Planet” on Space.com went into much of the details of the practice.  What I find most intriguing was the independence it gave to expanding off Earth.  If we are limited to earth-like planets, than movement off earth will be quite some ways off.  But if we can terraform the moon, Mars, Titus, we have considerably limited the time spent in space and the amount of preparation or technology needed to make such an expedition and colonization.

As Kramer points out, the need for atmospheric supplies and related resources needed to terraform a planet is considerably reduced when a shell is used.  Certainly, we would have to find ways to generate breathable air on site and soil fit to grow food stock, but waiting for a planet to be modified en mass is both excessively time consuming and considerably demanding of resources that would have to be supplied by Earth.

The plausibility of terraforming through the use of shell technology is a great setting for science fiction stories.  It has been used by Heinlein, Clark, Robinson and others.  I can imagine there would be numerous variables to a story just based on selecting a site followed by beginning the process.  Other issues would crop up if this was the first application of the process.  Of course, there would be mistakes, learning opportunities, sabotage or poor management, etc., the list goes on.  There is certainly plenty of resources online to understand the process thoroughly enough to use it correctly in a story.

I believe Niven used a Dyson Sphere in his Ring World series.  Heinlein used domes in several of his novels and short stories set on the moon (Number of the Beast, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Red Planet), Mars and Venus.

What specific novels and short stories do you remember that made use of this technology?

Learning from the masters: Listen to the voices of Harper Lee’s Scout

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Time links past with present

Harper Lee had quite a task creating the narrative voice of  Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird.  Sure Scout was a six-year-old girl who ages about two years in the course of the book; what’s the challenge?  Seems easy enough — in that short span of years there is not much change.  But Scout is also the narrative voice of an adult, and how does one impart the perspective of a reflective southern woman?  How does it remain evident that young Scout and the reflective adult spring from the same root?

  The following week the knot-hole yielded a tarnished medal.  Jeb showed it to Atticus, who said it was a spelling medal, that before we were born the Maycomb County schools had spelling contests and awarded medals to the winners.  Atticus said someone must have lost it, and had we asked around?  Jem camel-kicked me when I tried to say where we had found it.  Jem asked Atticus if he remembered anybody who ever won one, and Atticus said no.
   Our biggest prize appeared four days later.  It was a pocket watch which wouldn’t run, on a chain with an aluminum knife.
   “You reckon it’s white gold, Jem?”

We have a narrator, the adult Scout (Jean Louise) and the character who supplied remembered dialogue, young Scout.  The two voices are distinctly different ,yet they maintain a connection with the story.  The narrator introduces the event just to where we can imagine the moment, and the young Scout takes over, supplying the in-the-moment reactions and character interactions.

It looks easy when you expose the strings underneath, but it is not easy.

Six-year-old Scout had a pretty good vocabulary, but she also uses country dialect “reckon” and frequently her sentences will be missing the subject and have an abruptness to them as though she is in a hurry to express herself before Jem can shut her down or steal her thunder.  “You reckon it’s white gold, Jem?”  The older narrator Jean Louise takes her time, drawing out the moment.  “The following week the knot-hole yielded a tarnished medal.”  There is an easy, relaxed feel to her sentences, an ownership and a patience the younger Scout had not mastered, but near the end of the book, the reader can see she is beginning to learn that such patience exists and has value and place.

The flow between the two is seamless because the adult narrator’s viewpoint drops off when Scout speaks and picks up after, as though they were twins finishing each one’s sentences, although those sentences are separated by a distance of thirty years or more. 

That is one of the beauties of reading To Kill a Mockingbird:  enjoying the flow and the grace of the connection between the two Scouts.  We see the meaning behind events when Jean Louise speaks and the confusion, fear, surprise and revelation those same events bring out in Scout.  There is no ledge, no separation felt, yet the reader steps back and forth between them.

#narrative voice
#writing

Learning from the masters series: Steinbeck’s common man

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John Steinbeck wrote for and about the guy next door, the man that works to pay the bills at the end of the month, for the poor cuss who hopes and hopes even when hope is lost, and loses and loses,  even when he wins.

Tortilla Flat
   He moved slowly and cautiously.  Now and then the chicken tried to double back, but always there was Pilon in the place it chose to go.  At last it disappeared into the pine forest, and Pilon sauntered after it.
   To the glory of his soul be it said that no cry of pain came from that thicket.  That chicken, which Pilon has prophesied might live painfully, died peacefully, or at least quietly.

Okay, so that was not Pilon’s chicken and when he exited that thicket, he had already drawn and quartered that rooster, pocketed the parts and left all evidence of its identification behind.  He had a good day, a good meal and a good rule: chickens just wandering about homeless are best eaten fresh.

The Pearl
   His people had once been great makers of songs so that everything they saw or thought or did or heard became a song.  That was very long ago. The songs remained; Kino knew them, but no new songs were added.  That does not mean that there were no personal songs.  In Kino’s head, there was a song now, clear and soft, and if he had been able to speak of it, he would have called it the song of the family.

Kino was in tune with the flow of his community, the sea nearby and the sleepy contentment of his family in the breaking morning.  And song was his element and his barometer.

Of Mice and Men
   “No. . . you tell it.  It ain’t the same if I tell it. Go on . . . George.  How I get to tend the rabbits.”
   “Well,” said George, “we’ll have a big vegetable patch and a rabbit hutch and chickens.  And when it rains in the winter, we’ll just say hell with goin’ to work, and we’ll build up a fire in the stove and set around it an’ listen to the rain comin’ down on the roof–Nuts!”  He took out his pocket knife.  “I ain’t got time for no more.”  He drove his knife through the top of one of the bean cans, sawed out the top and passed the can to Lennie.

These two migrant workers were keeping the dream of a farm in the future, their own place where they could decide to work or not, stuffed deep in their empty pockets next to dead mice and nicked pocket knives.

And that was Steinbeck, the writer that lived first in the life then wrote the life of those who lived it.  His characters are drawn from people who live in and through hardship, but not the hardship that visits, leaves and sometime later after happy times have worn out their welcome is replaced with another difficult situation to manage through.  His characters are imbued in hardship; that is what life is.  It giveth and it taketh away, and mostly it taketh.

I was driving over a bridge in Bend, Oregon, and a man, layered in several shirts and jackets stepped blithely along the concrete margin that left a tight walkway along the fencing of the bridge.  I looked back (I wasn’t the driver) and watched him until we were out of sight.  He wore a grin on his face, was obviously singing loud and joyfully and looked to have taken his last bath some weeks earlier.  He’s a Steinbeck man, I remember thinking.  You know them when you see them.  It is hard not to be drawn in by their look of hope, their obvious plight, the sorrow you see coming which they don’t seem to.  Steinbeck made me sensitive to them, made me hope and work not to be one, and surprised me when after researching my family tree, I found I was but one generation from them and at times only a paycheck or two ahead of them.

If you want to write about the common man in his glory, in his misery, read Steinbeck first.  Research your family tree.  Look around.  Then sit down and write about the fears that wake you up at night, only let them loose and see what damp place they will land it, dry up, flit about and land in the wet again.

#Steinbeck
#learningfromthemasters
#writing