Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

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What’s Strange about Weather?

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Deep blue sky with wind-swept why clouds.

Actually, there isn’t anything strange about weather. We can have rain, snow, clouds, sunny skies, cold and warmth with the option to combine as nature and climate see best.

But we look at weather like it is something strange.

Wow, look at those clouds coming in? Hey, I think it’s raining! Did you see how sunny it is?

Some people turn to weather when they can’t think of anything to say. It is my mother-in-laws go to topic.

When am I interested in weather? When it determines if my husband and I are heading out for a tandem ride or how we think it will affect sailing. We used to discuss it like life depended on it when we were water skiers, but we sold our ski boat a few weeks back. Glassy water is no longer an issue. It’s now about how much wind can we expect in the sails?

It’s relative, right?

Who is effected, to what effect and how long will that effect last?

So I have you thinking about weather. And you’re probably at the “so what” stage.

Weather used to make me feel guilty. How can you sit in the house when it’s so nice outside?

Well, I like to read and weather doesn’t effect how well I can do that, especially if I’m reading on a reader.

I like to write and weather is inside my head (the story, that is) so what’s outside is again not an issue. However, I do a lot of “so what’s it feel like, look like? How does it effect a person’s personality? So it is important that I know weather, not in a shallow sort of way, but deeply, personally.

When I went to Sweden to visit cousins, the first thing I noticed was they were very much concerned about weather and seasons.

My cousin’s windowsills had flower pots, usually with flowering plants, red blooms the most popular, and along side the flower pots were little lamps.

In winter, she said, they lit the lamps so it felt sunny outside even when it wasn’t. And the plants bring nature inside the house even when the ground is knee deep in snow.

So maybe the strangeness of weather and our attention to it even when it seems like it has little to do with or a lot to do with our activities is more about how we feel than what we do with it.

Right now, it is hot and muggy outside and nobody is asking why I’m at my desk on my computer and not outside. When I look out the window, the trees burgeoning with dark green leaves and weaving in and out of my view along with the vibrancy of my neighbor’s red roof above their white house makes me happy. I feel good.

The sound of wet pavement shushing when cars drive over it always makes me think of winter slush which strangely makes me feel good. I can recall stepping into slush with my rubber boots when I was a kid. The soft give of it under my weight combined with a warm coat, cozy mittens and the giggles of my friends gets tugged in with that wet payment sound.

So it isn’t weather that is grabbing our interest. I think it’s how it makes us feel. We connect with others when we talk about weather, a shared touch point attached to memory and contentment (or memory and sadness, what have you).

People remember the weather on important days.

We buried my father-in-law in late December. It was sunny but the wind was biting cold. He was a sunny man and losing him froze us. The weather fit. We’d hung a chime right above his grave, and that cold wind kept it softly ringing in deep tones.

It would be strange if we didn’t remember, comment and argue about weather.

#weather

Simple to complex to simple to complex to simple: that’s how we grow in everything

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ring by ring, we build brevity, depth, complexity, simplicity

Every new skill or bit of knowledge we learn brings with it that usage curve that starts out complex, and as we gain understanding and mastery, we simplify and integrate.  That applies to life and work in general, but it is also the essence of growing as a writer.

My students practice descriptive imagery, and it is such agony for them.  They struggle with words like thing and stuff and painstakingly turn them into “blue-green fabric around stuffed spun polyester, stitched tight, bursting with fishy lushness among the two year old’s many teddy bears” and beam with pride at their accomplishment.  It is indeed worth their excitement and pleasure for creating an image.

They repeat the exercise, draw the lesson into their writing, fill the pithy lines with gaudy images, each clamoring for attention, none greater or lesser than the other.

They learn discernment. They learn to select which images need to stand ahead of others.  They learn the pithy line has a place.  “The child’s toys, a jumbled plethora of giraffes and Teddy bears, were topped with one lone length of glimmering scaled fishiness.  It flopped to one side, scalloped fins lolling over, soft tail aswamp in the white fuzz of a round-faced kitten.”

The struggle begins again to create the perfect effect. The image that sets up place without overpowering.  The symbol that will appear at necessary intervals to carry a theme, support a motif.  It is a battle of controlled inspiration that requires complex planning, the ability to draw back from the precipice of too much and pull in from the wide open range of subtlety.  It is nail-biting, tongue out the side of the mouth, pencil tapping concentration.  It is love and hate of the written word, the designed phrase, the scintillating sentence.

They take another run at it.   This time much has become just part of their writing.  Meaning and clarity hold precedence, the image part of the foundation, not the crowning glory of the effort.

Simplicity gains complexity, complexity turns to simplicity, simplicity participates in the complexity, complexity feels like simplicity.

And this process does not change. We never reach the last summit, but keep climbing to the next.

Tuesday prompt: #20 2013

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Flipping the image.

Think about your best friend and then make a list of all his or her qualities, good and bad.  Make it a nice long list, say twenty items.  Make a second list with the opposite qualities.  Now write about this person who would probably not make the best friend for you, but he or she would be someone’s, so give this character a friend in this writing practice.

Narrative Mode #9: Shakespeare’s HAMLET as a narrative plot

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Following the Hamlet narrative brings a lot of tension and mystery to the piece.  The complex changes in the character make for a dramatic, dark plot line.

  • The main character (we’ll call him Fred) suffers the loss of someone important in his life and learns through unlikely or supernatural means that it was caused by someone close.  
  • Fred is conflicted by his loyalty to those close to him and the fact that he also blames them for the tragedy. This gives you plenty of room for contradictory qualities in the character because there is the constant question of madness.  
  • Fred’s desire for revenge, as well as making it public who is responsible, exacerbates his loss of control over his own life and injures others.  And he drops further into madness or perhaps it is all a ruse to flush out the perpetrator.
  • Anger and jealousy are driving forces. 
  • An innocent person suffers, and Fred is so involved in revenge, he considers the injury (mental anguish and later a possible suicide) just collateral damage, which supports the belief that he is going mad.
  • Death is an important feature: death of those important to Fred or who were the cause of the tragedy.  This could be modified to be death of a relationship, death of faith, or death of hope.  But destruction of Fred’s sense of right and fairness is essential.
  • With Hamlet, his efforts to get revenge ended in the death of his mother, his uncle (who killed his father), his girlfriend, her father and brother and Fred himself. 

 The Little Handbook of Narrative Frameworks available on Smashwords and Amazon.

Tuesday prompt: #13 2013

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What if these jasmine blooms were orange with white tips?

Take an ordinary outdoor scene and start describing it, but add a twist.  Alter shapes, colors and textures to the things you describe.

Rather than a tall oak, give it an awkward crouching trunk with filament-like leaves of puce.  Make the scene both alien and familiar.  Call a tree a tree, but what a tree it is!