Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

Reading

My internal critic knows no bounderies

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I have only been writing to publish for about a year and a half.  But in that time, I have noticed an interesting phenomenon:  My internal critic is after everybody.  In the past, when I was just thinking about writing but not really giving it much of my time, I could just sit back and enjoy reading a book. Sure some books disappointed me, but they were few and far between, and the writer really had to falter in some way.  But now that I am writing my books and putting them out there for others to read, it seems I have become a lot more alert to slipping plots, weak dialogue or dropped details that seemed important but never grew into anything.  I wonder if those same books would have been a fun reading experience if I wasn’t so often editing my own work and developing my internal critic to pick up my own slipping plots, weak dialogue, dropped details or undeveloped characters and scenes. 

Have I grown an eye that cannot discern between my own work and others?  It is an interesting dilemma because I don’t want to be less alert in my own work, yet I do want to enjoy what I read.  I imagine being an English teacher isn’t giving this attentive critic any rest either or training it to take a temporary vacation.  I am reviewing some form of writing pretty much daily.  My colleagues are known to come up to me and ask if I would look over their aunt’s autobiography that she has been working on for years. Truly, I say, “No, thank you.  I have more than enough on my plate to go through.”  And I am talking about student work and have not said a single word about my own efforts to publish.   I really haven’t put out any signs saying, “Feed my obsession for editing.”  Is this a common ailment of writers?  Am I doomed to examine the bones of every book I read?

It’s one thing when I am reading A Tale of Two Cities; that one demands a deep read, but I read books just as often for entertainment at the skin deep level. In fact, I know my books are not for x-ray examination, just a sit back and take a break from reality read is what I am going for.

Writers out there, have you run into this same issue?  Is there a cure that won’t wipe out that needed critic when my own work is before me?

Writers need to be readers: suggested read

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You’ve Got To Read This is an anthology supplying short stories that are the favorite reads of some of the finest writers of the 20th century.  Every writer should be reading, especially the most exemplary works of well-written prose.  “Goodbye, My Brother” by John Cheever is one of my favorites due to the family dynamics it portrays with simple, straightforward narration, and it is introduced by Allan Gurganus.

This book, though not a recent publication, is a great start for the writers looking to learn by reading.  The short introductions given by the author that selected each piece adds to the reading of each work.  Not only do I get to read a great short story, but I also get to understood what drew the accomplished writer to be moved by the work and name it as one of his or her favorites.

So track down this text and sit down for that occasional short read that you can examine both for the writing skill itself as well as for what  an establish writer might find worthwhile in it.

As said in Lu Chi’s Wen Fu, “When cutting an axe handle with an axe,
surely the model is at hand.”

I turn yet again to Lu Chi’s Wen Fu

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There is a reason why writers must read from the genre that they wish to write in.  They must know what others are producing and most importantly how they are going about it.  It is necessary to examine the art to grow into the artist, to watch the masters to learn to master the craft.

Lu Chi said it best.

When cutting an axe handle with an axe,
   surely the model is at hand.
      (Lu Chi’s Wen Fu:  The Art of Writing, Translated by Sam Hill)

These words are so apropos.  It is not the plot, the setting or the characters used.  It is how the plot is imbedded in the story and how the characters are designed and put into motion.  It is the choice of the right word and the reason why it is right.  It is the reader crying even when the character’s eyes are dry. 

Writers must apprentice themselves to the masters.  We must look closely in the same manner that the jeweler puts on his magnifying lens so he can evaluate the emerald and its unique setting.  Do the same as the farmer who runs the soil through her hands, or the wine maker sniffs the wine.  We must understand the process and product of the art of writing.  We must read closely the models at hand.

Ray Bradbury: a fire in the belly

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I have read a few of Ray Bradbury’s books.  They offer more than enjoyment and an easy way to pass the time.  He had such a way with metaphor (was it a real snake or a stomach pump tube, a jet overhead or a scream?) and was one of the most literary of the major science fiction writers.  I have read Fahrenheit 451 numerous times, as well as The October Country, Something Wicked This Way Comes and The Martian Chronicles.  He was a writer that made the reader think, and think deep.  I was not so much captured by his characters as by his ideas.  I have taught, like many English teachers, Fahrenheit 451.  It has always made my students look at their education in a new way, a privilege they don’t ever want to lose.  For that alone I could thank him profusely.  But he has also taught them tolerance, the beauty of a well-turned phrase and how people can be manipulated into not trusting what they know.  Most importantly, he showed that the human being must question, must seek greater understanding and failing that will surrender to madness.

It’s not the words, but the interplay of them

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I have read A Tale of Two Cities numerous times and have made notations up and down the margins north, south, east and west.  The reading of it always mesmerizes me with the detail and development of character, setting and connection, of what has gone and what is to come.

“Do you particularly like the man?” he muttered, at his own image. “Why should you particularly like a man who resembles you?  There is nothing in you to like; you know that.  Ah, confound you! What a change you have made in yourself!  A good reason for taking a man, that he shows you what you have fallen away from, and what you might have been? Change places with him and would you have been looked at by those blue eyes as he was, and commiserated by that agitated face as he was?  Come on, and have it out in plain words!  You hate the fellow.”

Oh, poor Carton, who loves Lucie but not himself enough to push aside his determined fate.

Or Monsieur the Marquis as he travels home from Paris, just late from his most recent evil:

The Monsieur the Marquis in red

The sunset struck so brilliantly into the travelling (sic) carriage when it gained the hill-top, (sic) that its occupant was steeped in crimson.  “It will die out,” said Monsieur the Marquis, glancing at his hands, “directly.”

Blood not just on his hands but all over him, “steeped in crimson” and “will die out.”  And so his bloodline nearly does; he certainly does and almost “directly.”

I love to get lost in Dicken’s flow of words, so deeply knitted together as though the whole cloth of the story was life as he moves characters in and out of the spotlight until the reader is entirely uncertain who should be followed, main character and supporting shifting places constantly, just as life works, each of us moving in and out of the limelight with the people we most care about.

Books that connect us to life

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Tennyson and my mother

While I was on Goodreads last week, a thread title intrigued me: Stories about books.  I had to check it out and I am glad I did. It was about how books become a part of our lives, imbedded in them and forever part of memories we take along with us through our lives.  I posted a quick story about a book and how it connected me to my mother.  Mike asked me if I would be willing to add my story to his website Stories About Books.  I checked out the site and decided I would very much like to do that.  Go post your story about a book that has become a part of your life.  Click on the link below to read my story.

My book story