Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

marriage

Characters that grow while I write

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Growing together.

I love building characters that I wish I could visit.  These days I am working with Mick and Emily.  I like them because they like each other.  Emily understands Mick whether he is pacing up and down with excessive energy, moping around about some thing that is bothering him or just grinning at her.
But Emily will not put up with the moping and she tells him so.  He’s a good guy.  He thinks about things and though he won’t pull himself together all at once, he will think about what she said and try to be better.

Mick had a bad heart and it sidelined him, kept him out of enjoying doing activities he wanted to do.  It stuck him on a mountain in a house looking at the paper trail of his company but unable to manage it himself.  It left him growing Christmas trees, but it never left him bitter.  He had Emily and that made all the difference.  But having Emily, for a man of the 70’s era meant he had to accept that he would probably not be able to protect her if he ever had to fend off an attacker.  So they lived in a small mountain town where everybody knew everybody, and he didn’t have to fear not being able to protect her.  I suppose it’s his man thing because there was never any sign of danger to make him worry.

In this third book in the Student of Jump series, Mick finds himself no longer held back by his heart.  But fear is much harder to replace with confidence.  He is a knight with armor, sword and shield, a fair lady by his side.  But he has never jousted before.

As I work through this redraft, Mick and Emily grow.  They don’t become steady in the clinches.  They don’t have all the answers.  They don’t find themselves in situations that bear easy answers.  But they have each other, I think.  I am not sure how it is all going to end.  Sure the book has an ending, but these two keep growing with experience.  Emily didn’t have anything holding her back.  She stayed back for Mick.  She gets as frightened as he does, just about different things.  But together they manage; they support each other even when both are trembling.  That’s why I like these two characters.

If you are a writer, who are your favorite characters at this time?  If you’re not a writer, what character and from what book do you wish you could visit.  Why?

Married for 30 years: How did that happen?

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Keep as much as you can in common

When I look back at all my husband and I have done in our lives together, it is not so hard to understand how we could be married for more than 30 years.  Rather than go into the specifics of all those adventures, I  am going to supply a list of general rules that we follow that I feel are the reasons we are together and are planning on staying that way.

  • We recognize that we have many dissimilar interests, so while we respect those differences we encourage those interests we have in common.  We both love to waterski.
  • When we have disagreements, we work on the premise that everything we say should be geared towards working it out. 
  • I cannot read his mind nor he mine, but we have had plenty of time to learn to read the body language we use.  Given that, we make every effort to keep the lines of communication open.  Sometimes that means taking some time to figure out what it is we want the other person to know, whether he/she “should have figured” it out or not.
  • We don’t say anything negative about each other to other people.  We don’t argue in public.  We do say positive things about each other to other people.
  • When it comes to spending a large sum of money on something, we both have to agree.
  • We have a designated bill payer, designated lawn care person, designated kitchen cleaner, etc., but the other person is welcome to help anytime and does. 
  • One of us is always better at something than the other, so we always help each other.
  • We don’t make the other person feel uncomfortable.
  • We happen to have the same occupation, but we go about our jobs differently.  So we know there is more than one way to do something and still do it right.  That means we can learn from each other, even when we are already experts.
  • We don’t love each other despite or in spite of our flaws.  We love each other because of all we are: flaws and finer qualities together.
  • There are some things neither of us like to do, but they have to be done.  So we make sure we do them together.
  • Most importantly: We like each other.

We do mess up on occasion, but we always come back to one thing:  underneath the problem is the promise that we love each other.