Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

dementia

Creativity: Using your own experiences to authenticate your writing

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 My last post was about brainstorming with my writer pal Marcy on a novel idea involving dementia and Alzheimer’s.  Much of what is going into the book is based on my experience with my mother and my father-in-law who are both suffering from this kind of memory loss.  Every phone call I have with them or chat with my mother-in-law or my sister, who also keeps contact with our mom, is a source of inspiration and information. But it is also disheartening because it will only get worse.

I tell myself that as painful as it is to watch and keep up with the changes they are going through, it is part of life, part of loving someone and part of the truth that must be in what I write. What we experience is our greatest source of originality and authenticity.

I know this book is going to tax me and pull hard at my heart, for every wall my character must climb will echo a difficulty my mother is going through. I have long since given up having those chats with my mom that always left us laughing. For many years I would unload my disappointments through the receiver of my phone, and my mother would be on the other end listening.  But it was never a sad event for I would find myself giggling over those troubles because she brought that out in me.  They were fodder for humor instead of tears or anger when I shared them with her.

But I cannot do that any more. She cannot hold onto the same conversation for more than a couple of minutes. Sometimes she thinks she is talking to my daughter or worse me back when I was in high school.  It is much harder to make her giggle and much harder for me to find the humor in the troubles that come with the changes she is going through.  Nowadays, she is sharing with me her difficulties, and I am the one hoping to bring humor rather than sorrow to her experience.

What life experiences feed your writing and give you hope that you will find peace in the effort?

#creativity
#Alzheimer’s

Creativity: Research your way to inspired writing

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Sometimes hitting the books (internet, encyclopedia, local expert) is the best way to galvanize creativity. Immerse yourself in something that interests you. The information may not become useful right away, but then an internal click will sound and that knowledge will have a place.

An unplanned immersion for me has been Alzheimer’s and Dementia. My father-in-law and my step-mother are quickly declining as these two age-generated illnesses take over and take from their lives. I wish I didn’t have to know how this is effecting these two lovely and important people in my life.  I wish I wasn’t learning how it will continue to progress, destroying who they are and who is important to them. I wish I was not aware of how my mother-in-law is trying everything she can to slow the loss of what makes her husband unique, even knowing it is snowballing, just infinitesimally slower than it would have had she not made the effort.  I wish that when I call my mom I don’t feel as if some stranger has answered the phone and I am trying to make a good impression. But all this new knowledge is attaching itself to a novel idea which came out of another area of unanticipated knowledge gain.

building creativity

My family is building a house completely by ourselves. And as I write this, my husband is laying Zip System sheeting on the roof rafters.  I have learned about digging a trench for the foundation, setting up concrete forms for that foundation, making everything square, rebar bending and placement, concrete pouring, stem wall bolts, window and door headers, floor and ceiling joists, window framing, and rafter tying. Those are just terms.  But I know how they fit together now, the many different types of nails and screws used, the back-cramping effort of smoothing quickly drying concrete, how to use wall jacks to raise long spans; it is more than I anticipated knowing when I joined my husband’s dream of building our own house for our retirement years (still far in the future).  I have become a champion hole digger, perfectly square, and I think holes can actually be described as beautiful; who’d have thought?

What I didn’t expect from these two forced gains in knowledge, experience and understanding (we might add torture, but I want to keep this positive) is that the two would link up and inspire me to write a contemporary novel.  I write science fiction, folks!

The moral of this story is use the knowledge you have gained in life and extend it through research, conversation and attention to the details around you. It will inspire you and take you to new areas of creativity and written expression. That’s after all what writers are all about, taking today (with all that came before) and turning it into words tomorrow.

What knowledge base has brought inspiration to you and found its way into your writing?  What interest could you pursue greater understanding of and use to provide specificity and inspiration to your writing?

#creativity
#writing
#research

Losing my mother one precious memory at a time.

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Casting light on the darker moments.

The past year has been one of a calculated effort to connect with my mother as she slips into dementia.  Two years ago she was a vibrant business woman, respected and successful.  I left a message on her phone each Wednesday night, my “Wednesday Love Call,” and then I would call on the only day she wasn’t at work, Sunday, and we would chat about our varied experiences that week.

When I was a teenager coming home after a really bad day of teenhood, I would sit down with my mother and spill out my troubles, but they always made us laugh.

  •  “Mom, I dropped a book from my locker today, and it landed on the head of the cutest boy in school. His locker is below mine, which is ridiculous.  I’m 5’2″ and he’s 6’2″.”
  • “Mom, the college prep class I’m taking is weird.  Even the teacher looked at me like I must be lost to be in her class.  It’s been more than a week, and I feel I am trying to break in on a clique of beach girls. I want to be at the beach, but I am not crazy about the company.”  
  • “Mom, that teacher asked me if I had read The Source by Michener.  I want to write my analysis essay on it, and she doesn’t even believe I have read the book I have chosen.”

As an adult, these phone calls always served to make life something I could laugh at.  Together we made the perfect funny bone.

  • Mom, I just spent the morning cleaning up dog vomit which my husband made sure to point out to me just before I stepped in it.  He gets up at least an hour before I do. It was very cold through the paper towels.  Do you know he was very annoyed about the affect of stomach acid on linoleum?
  • Mom, my students were particularly energetic yesterday.  I made them get out of their seats and do jumping jacks, and then we started on the lesson.  Today they wanted to know if we would be exercising again.  Shucks, we do exercises every day: grammar.
  • Mom, your granddaughter asked me if I would still love her when she is a big girl using the potty instead of pullups.  The doctor was right: she definitely was potty trained before four years old.  All it took was telling her I would love her every time she grew bigger.  Instant potty trained child.  Really this is prime information every parent needs and no one shared.

These days she gets caught in loops, repeating herself.  I tell her about the weather over and over like she hasn’t already asked me three times.  I call prepared to tell her a story that will make her laugh, because she knows there is something very wrong with her memory and that unspoken knowledge ensnares her in fits of weeping if I don’t keep her focused on something humorous.

  • Mom, she’s a junior now and wants to be an engineer.  Oh, she’s wanted to do that since she was about twelve.  Her birthday is in June.  But I’ve been telling her she is not allowed to grow any more since she was about seven, and I think this time she is listening to me.
  • No, Mom, even if you moved half way here it would still be a long way to walk.  About four hundred miles, which would leave your feet a bit sore.  And then there’s that long walk back.
  • Well, Mom, occasionally the grading does get me down, but when it’s 11:50 PM and I read an essay in which the student has written, “Marlowe was really confused when he found the book written in cypher, and he thought there was a spy trying to steal the ivory, but it was really a skinny Russian guy wearing patched clothes.  What was Conrad thinking when he wrote that?” Of course, then I have to explain the book to her, and by the time I am done, we’ve had quite a chuckle.

This woman I call my mother is my father’s last wife, so she didn’t give birth to me.  But she and I have always had a favorite “you say, I say” — “I almost remember giving birth to you.”  “Mom, I almost remember it, too.”

This could be me thirty years from now, and if I don’t write these books now, they will never be written.  Whatever the dream, don’t let it die with you.  Don’t let it become lost one day in the thunderous shift of a mind.