Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

Tools for writing

The incredible disappearing Q W E R T Y

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The incredible disappearing QWERTY.

What is the most important tool for me as a writer?  That is easy: a keyboard.  I mention this as I have noticed that over the years of owning various computers that the keyboard letters are fading more quickly with each new purchase as I upgrade. In essence, as I upgrade the computer, technology seems to be downgrading the durability of the lettering.  I am fairly proficient at keyboarding, but I do use certain letters as landmarks for where other keys are when I am not sitting at my desk.

You know the routine.  There are several things to get done, so I turn on the computer, run to move laundry to the dryer, come back and enter my login, but I am not sitting down, so I have to hunt and peck to locate the keys.  Only, E, R, T, I, S, D, H, L, C, and N are completely gone, and several are in the process of disappearing.  So this simple entering of a login turns into a frustrating moment of trying to visualize a keyboard my fingers know well, but my eyes do not.

Each time I sit down at my computer and note this particular annoyance, I
think of a new way I can replace these keys markers:  paint (the
obvious: would nail polish work?  I have a really nice opalescent.), etch them in with a hot needle (somewhat raised as the
original keyboards were), replace the keys, buy replacement stickers,
buy a new keyboard (really?!), etc.

Sure keyboards are a throw away item, so excess durability is useless. 
But I want to be the one to decide when my keyboard is ready to go the
will-a-the-wisp, and I’ll make the decision based on letters showing or
not showing on my screen not disappearing off my keyboard.

Maybe I just need to use my P’s and Q’s a lot more and my R’s and E’s a lot less.

Update:  I purchased replacement letters to stick on the blank keys.  Then my husband bought me a new computer a month later. So the keyboard letter wear is great on the old keyboard. My new one: well less than a year later the lovely backlit letters began to not fade, but disappear in a whole new fashion.

The keys are cut into the layer of “paint” so the light can glow the letter. But that “paint” is getting scratched off so my keyboard letters are now taking on this sort of smudged effect, rather like a ultra modernist painter swished a vaguely alphabetic impression on the board. The culprit letters are: E, S, D, T, N and M.  No surprise there. Except that I had the previous keyboard near ten years, and this one lasted a mere year.

I am still not using those P’s and Q’s all that much.

Any suggestions?  Should we strike, demand keyboards with raised letters, argue functionality over bells and whistles?  Maybe I’ll just nail polish this time.

The best can come out of the bits and pieces

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I have always been a believer in the idea that there are things that are specifically made to fit a situation or need, but one can always come up with a bypass if that item is just not available. This is how I manage to deal with computers that don’t want to work or when an overhead projector at school decides to go on the fritz. Being a teacher, I need to be ready for every contingency.  I remind my students of this outlook when one tells me the computer died just as she was about to type a homework assignment (pull out a pencil and write) or his printer broke (email it). (Computers crashing far outnumber dogs eating homework these days).  I think I learned this make-do style from my father.

My mom always did the cooking, but there were rare times when she was too sick and my father had to take over.  He never minded, she always did.  He would look in the refrigerator and start pulling things out.  A pot on the stove was the destination for everything he found.  In the end, the bubbling mass would look like a poor quality of concrete ready for pouring.  We would make burritos with it, adding cheddar cheese and taco sauce.  Though it looked disgusting, it was delicious.

When my mom was well enough to return to the kitchen, we would all make her “sick” with our rapturous descriptions of Dad’s “Slab” recipe.

I look at writing this way, too.  Need a name for a character to be common but memorable:  I pick an average name, Fred for instance, and add/delete a letter.  Fned Carson is one of the characters in my short story tentatively titled “Scrapper.”  He’s an average guy whose life has been flowing downhill for awhile (something that happened to my father for a time, too). My main character Moekaff, an eight-year-old boy, is left at Carson’s Rest, a transport rest stop and restaurant. There the two suffer separately as they try to deal with rough times.  I needed Fned to be both an addition to Moe’s troubles but also a man with a right to be angry and depressed, ready to take out his frustrations on this kid who is himself in mourning.  They don’t save each other, but they do share their misery and somehow walk away with possibilities.  But that is only a part of the journey Moekaff takes before he finds a place to call home again.  I am still finishing this story and hope to make it part of an anthology of science fiction stories I have written.  As soon as it’s done, I’ll finish my redraft on my second novel of my Students of Jumps series, No Time Like the Present.

How I made my book trailer

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I thought that since I just finished  the improved version of my book trailer,
that I should talk about what I used to put it together.  The main
programs (Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Premiere) should be no surprise.  The
pictures were standard digital images I took with a simple digital
camera.  I opened them up in Photoshop and worked them into what I
wanted for the video.  My nerg box is actually a picture I modified of a
large safe.  There are no real nerg box prototypes for me to take
pictures of, so the safe was a great replacement.  Another picture I
took, which was of a wooded area with a path, was also easy to modify in
Photoshop.  The path actually led up to a lake shore, but that is not an
image needed for my book. I erased the unnecessary water feature which
worked out nicely in the video.

I then used Adobe’s
Premiere Pro video software to set up my video.  I uploaded it to my list
of media the pictures I had modified, and some animated backdrops and
royalty free music (I’ll mention those sources later in this blog). 
From that point on it was just a matter of entering titling, video and
audio transitions, though I did have to modify one of my animated
backdrops. It was actually blue, but I wanted to have a  pale white,
rather murky movement going on in the background because my character
travels in time, and the process takes him through a place between
future and past that is rather like a bright foggy day where nothing is
clearly visible.  This modification was not hard to do. Using a feature
called fast color corrector under video effects, I was able to remove the blue tint
and raise the intensity of the brightness.  Dropping in my media by
layers and resizing a few pictures was the last of the easy parts. 
Preparing the titling was the most challenging.  I had to come up with
what I wanted my viewer to read, but also select text size, placement,
font, animation and color.  I worked on titling the most because I wasn’t sure
what sizes and fonts would support my story, and I didn’t want them to
upstage it either.  My most important tool ended up being my daughter.  
After awhile I would get too immersed in the process and just couldn’t
step back far enough to get it an unbiased look.  I would have her
watch and tell me what she thought needed more visual work, and then I
would go at it again.

My source for the music and animated backdrops was
Digital Juice. A person can find all sorts of useful items at their
site, from backdrops to motion design elements, such as snow falling, frames,
and revealers. They are priced reasonably and well done. They also have music useful for every genre imaginable.  The packages include some with variety and well as music under a single genre. So you could order music that is space age
in style, country, jazz or inspiring, etc.   What makes the music
selections so great is that they are provided in various lengths that
usually run in 15 seconds, 30 seconds, one minute and full length (anywhere from three minutes to a bit over four). Having the different lengths already cut to fit make selecting music easier, though selecting the piece for the mood I wanted definitely took time. 
I ended up choosing four or five, dropping them into my media list and
trying each one out with the visuals I had laid out out on the timeline in
Premiere.

Now I had all this available to me because my husband and I had been involved in videography for a few years, and we kept our equipment and software after we got out of the business.  I won’t say that authors need to purchase all these items to make a good trailer, but if you think you are going to be making several trailers over time, these particular software programs and animations do offer advantages.

Those darn book trailers

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I have been working on making a book trailer for my novel In Times Passed. This has not been an easy process. I have pretty much everything I need to produce one except a clear idea of how to put across just the right amount of information to create interest in buying the book and understanding of what the novel is about. I have received some feedback from other writers/readers/trailer viewers/etc. at Goodreads, and this has been helpful.  But again it comes down to me making the necessary changes. I posted my first version on YouTube, at Smashwords on my book page, at Goodreads on my author page and for a short time on this blog.

After considering editing my trailer, I sat down and wrote out the book’s plot in the simplest terms. I thought that this would help me get an idea of what is essential and what I need to leave out. Definitely helped to use the most basic of tools: the plot line.


So I ended up with this brief draft:  
It’s the year 2275 and Brent Garrett has been living off privilege for more than 24 years; however, recently it’s been leaving him dissatisfied.  But it is hard to complain.  

Raised at Meredith Complex, he knows he is expected to add to his orderly and secluded society.  He has yet to contribute anything.  Then he receives a prototype Nerg box and modifies it on a whim with startling results.  Now he has a time machine.  With a means to leave his frustrations behind (or is it ahead of him?), he travels back in time to 1979, part impulse and part destiny.  He meets Miranda Jenkins who offers him a new life, one he’ll have to work for. And it’s satisfying.  

Living the life of the common man has its benefits and its flaws.  Some flaws can shred a heart. For a man with time at his fingertips, running away is a tempting option.  

So that is where I am now. I think I have the text.  Next I have to work on the video.

Nifty little mind mapping program

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As promised, this post is about a mind mapping program I downloaded onto my iPhone.  It is called Simplemind and is user-friendly and versatile.  I wanted something like Freemind, but for my phone for when I am away from my computer but want to map out an idea for a story, lesson plan or even organize my directory of teacher files which has gotten a bit cumbersome over the years.  I upgraded it from the free version and gained nice features, such as making folders for separate categories of maps. So my Student of Jump series maps are separate from my school stuff and my daughter stuff.

Because it is set up for the iPhone, it responds to finger action in a way I wish Freemind did, closing up sections and easy sliding whole sections about, or moving a set of ideas from one topic bubble to another if I decide I want a plot event to occur later or earlier than I originally planned.  (There are a lot of features it doesn’t have that Freemind does, which is why it won’t be replacing Freemind.) Of course, if the map is big, then it gets difficult to see on a small screen; however, the real point was to have access to this type of program when away from a large screen, which is why I like a second important feature it has: I can email myself a pdf version of the map.  I can also save it to an online web holding site for retrieval.

Since I just started the app to make sure I had my info correct, I have learned that it does come in a desktop version that apparently is governed by the phone app.  A link is created through a password and then one can exchange maps and edit in either location via a wifi connection.  Hmmm, that sounds promising, but appears to be a little more complicated on the purchase than I am ready to go, especially since Freemind meets my needs.   As for use on the phone, while away from a handy computer, it is great.  I sat in a field watching my husband mow down weeds, and I was able to outline a book.  Very handy.

Developing a foil character in yWriter5

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One of the bonuses that came out of finding yWriter5 (link in the Favorite Sites column to the top right) and then using it to develop my book, In Times Passed, was that as I entered some information into the program about the various characters present in my book, I got to know them better and developed them further. One character I had given little thought to but was using as one of the main reasons that my protagonist, Brent Garrett, was so unable to find direction and thus was the type to leap without looking began to take shape.  Much of what I learned about her, Vivian (maiden name still undecided) his mother, would not be used in the book, but I realized she was not a character to look over at all.  A new scene developed that showed at least a portion of the relationship she has with her son and how she has effected him directly and indirectly whether intentionally or not.

The second book in the series, No-time Like the Present, when roughed out had no mention of her at all. But after a stint in yWriter5, and my understanding of Vivian’s motivations, possible intentions (she has yet to reveal to me how much of what she does is intentional, good fortunate busybodying and the effects of someone else’s possible instigation) growing with the first book’s finish, she now plays a role in the second book and her underlying machinations become more interesting.  As I work through the series, I suspect that Vivian will call for a book of her own, perhaps to defend herself and all that seems to get laid at her door.   

So my point is, yWriter5 or anything that makes you have to supply detail or defend traits and motivations, can lead to a foil character getting unexpected dimension and even the opportunity to rise as a main character in a later work.

Now that I think about it, it was in having to write down the motivations, obvious and underlying, that caused Brent to make the choices he did, that forced me to look into Vivian’s involvement more and then develop her further.

Sorry about this not going in on Wednesday, my weekly blog day.  I promised myself and my nonexistent readers I would blog weekly and apparently failed in my third week.  I love teaching, but it is time consuming.  But I plan to work this habit into my life, come what may.