Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

Teaching

Where the crossroads of writing and teaching meet

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Why one brown chair? And there’s an escape route.

Sometimes teaching is like writing and other days, not even close.

I stand before my students and do all that I can to hold their attention. I don’t know how to tap dance or tell good jokes, but sometimes I feel they would be good skills to have, so I can get a tight grip on my audience (yup, it is exactly like being a comic trying to make a cold room laugh) because sometimes writing is like teaching to a sleepy class of students.  Wait, usually they are a sleepy class of students. One will occasionally, actually nod off, but they are always apologetic and make an effort to remain awake. I am that soft spoken teacher who gently lays a hand on the student’s arm and says, “You need to stay awake or else you are going to miss something important, and I hate to repeat myself which means you will have to depend on your friends, and you know what that will get you.” I really need to learn how to tell jokes.

When I am trying to write the novel that is what the paying customer is out there searching the book shelves for, it gets like that disinterested class of students.  So a writer might get caught up in looking for the current flash in the pan idea that is getting all the cash flow. It’s been werewolves and vampires, and dystopian warriors (my students now know what a dystopia is. I used to have to teach this, several times each year, but now they ask me if I read dystopian novels. I teach 1984 and Fahrenheit 451, but neither of these novels have beautiful girls jumping off tall buildings or fighting in coliseums.) Flash in the pan.  Wizards, remember those years? How about the scary (not scary) books of R. L. Stein or Little House on the Prairie or the juvenile detective series?

Teaching is like that. What is the current philosophy? Podcasts (never went that route, but teachers I know did), and interactive sensory experience to match the subject matter: burning hair to go with Wiesel’s Night. I didn’t do that one either, but a teacher I knew did. Now its the YouTube video. Okay, I do use that one now and then. My new mantra is if you don’t know how, search for a video on YouTube; however, as a gambit for reaching the nodding off student, it is losing its bright shiny finish as well.  Rote memorization, group work, project-based assessments (one of my favorites), crossword puzzles, word searches (hated both of those and I wasn’t even using them, but my daughter’s teacher was. Can’t tell you how many times I had to promise my daughter that the word was in fact in the torturous maze of letters she had searched for the last hour (after I had searched to frustration to find the word and finally did). I don’t know what word searches teach, patience perhaps, determination, stress management.

Recently, my teaching cadre was told that we need to be more like what is holding the students’  attention according to a YouTube video: two minutes of intense trivia, challenging group competition and ringing bells, chasing gummies across a screen. I’m still not sold because colleges are not doing this and neither are companies that make widgets nor window and door plants or Virgin Galactic and SpaceX. They expect their employees to come to work, get busy, follow directions, produce what is requested, think it through and be respectful.

So this is about writing and how teaching is sometimes the same and sometimes not. Here’s my big point: Teach what works and gets the results that will be useful to students who need to go out into the world prepared. And write, write what comes out of you naturally. If it’s currently a dystopia, well bless your heart, you stand a chance. Or be like me and write time travel because that is what you like to write and what you like to read whether or not anybody else is reading it or writing it and selling it. But if you believe in it, they will listen (yes, back to students for a moment). There is someone out there whose arm you will touch and startle awake, who will apologize for not paying attention and will turn the page and by gosh learn something.

PS (Okay, so that the metaphor worked in this discussion of writing and teaching, I did fudge a bit. My students never fall asleep. Hmm. Okay, about once a month a student was up late and will want to nod off but won’t. Hmm. Well, I do have one student who I regularly wake up, but they are the exception, not the norm. It was the metaphor that was important, so I had students falling asleep to make it work. And I do not “protest too much.”)

#writing
#teaching

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: #53 2012

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Write about a Christmas moment.  Keep it tightly focused:  green and red sparks twinkle on a round blue ornament, drizzled in gold glitter.  On the lower half of the roundness, where less of the glitter crusted, reflect the curved images of two children in red pajamas pulling aside bright wrapping paper.  The background soft chimes of Christmas music take back stage to the delighted “thank you’s” as some are shouted out in inattentive abandon while others are whispered in glorious wonder.

Or write about a birthday, if you are commercial Christmassed out.

Tuesday Prompt: #41 2012

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Go find a hat, either one you have not worn for a very long time or one that belongs to someone else.  This is a magic hat.  Put it on and sit until you feel the magic vibrate around and through you.  Give it color, sensation, dimension; imagine that magic flowing into you, inspiring you.  Sit until you can feel the flow.  Then hold on to your bootstraps (figuratively, of course) and write.

Tuesday prompt: #40 2012

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Today you will write about discomfort.  What does it feel like?  Get real descriptive.  Most importantly, get uncomfortable.  Sit on your seat awkwardly, twist your body around and hold it in place until you are uncomfortable.  Don’t eat if your hungry. Hold your arm straight up from your shoulder until it cramps, and then write about how it feels.  Don’t imagine; use your own experience to get into the details.  If you already have a cold, flu, arthritis, backache, then you are ahead of the game (for once it brings you benefits). Go for the sensation, the imagery of pain, stuffy headedness, tight muscles, stiffness, a sinus headache.