Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

Writing

Semicolons and colons: easier than you think

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Write down these simple rules.

Colons and semicolons are probably the most misused punctuation there is, and it is not because they are complicated.  The rules for the semicolon and the colon are both few and easy.

To make things simple, let’s establish some terminology.  Sentences are words placed in sequence with a capital letter at the start, end punctuation at the end and a complete thought in the middle.
Examples:  
I cried.
I cried buckets of tears that flowed down my face, dropping off my chin in rhythmic pats on my slacks.
Before I cried buckets of tears that flowed down my face, dropping off my chin in rhythmic pats on my slacks, I visited my father’s grave.

All of these are sentences.  Each one of them contains an independent clause which can stand alone.  I have underlined the part of the sentence which is the independent clause.

So when I refer to a sentence, I mean the whole kit and caboodle.   When I say independent clause, I mean the part that has a complete thought and can stand alone.  Now let’s talk about these rules.

SEMICOLON:

Rule #1
Use semicolons to combine independent clauses that are highly related.
Examples:
Dogs are the ideal companion; they will forgive their owner just about anything.

Mondays I remind myself the week will be over before I know it; I don’t always believe myself.

Rule #2
Use semicolons in lists of items that have internal punctuation.

First I will show you a list with the standard “items in a series” comma in use.
Example: I dropped by my neighbor to ask for two cups of sugar, two cups of flour and a pat of butter.

Look what happens when I add some details to my list.

Example with internal punctuation: I dropped by my neighbor to ask for two cups of sugar, one brown, one white; two cups of flour; and a pat of butter.
I needed the semicolons because I added information regarding the sugar that needed to be separated from the flour.  The information added would have become part of a list of items, and a rather unclear list at that.  It only takes one addition of internal punctuation to require the semicolons to be present, and they follow through the entire list.

Rule #3
Use semicolons when combining clauses with conjunctive adverbs and transitional expressions.
Examples:
Conjunctive adverb – I intended to get home before my husband to organize his birthday party; however, he left work early.
Transitional expression – My husband thought I was planning a surprise birthday party; on the contrary, I was much too exhausted to contemplate the endeavor.

COLON:


Rule #1
Use a colon after independent clauses when what follows is an appositive, a list or a quotation.
Examples
Appositive – There are days of the week when I can’t wait for the weekend: Monday thru Friday.
List style #1 – There are three things I must remember to buy: potatoes, red food coloring, and a bandana.
List style #2 – You must bring the following to the senior parade float party: potatoes, red food coloring and a bandana.  (The word “following” is a clear hint.)
Quotation – Who hasn’t heard of Hamlet’s famous quote: “To be or not to be, that is the question”?

Rule #2
Use a colon after independent clauses when what follows is an explanation or summary.
Examples
My brother can be such a ninny: he told my new boyfriend I was allergic to flowers when I am actually only allergic to carnations, and he brought me roses.

Rule #3
Use a colon after the salutation in a formal letter.
So not for the following:
Dear Aunt Sally,

But after the following:
Dear Mayor Sindsey:
How bad is that?  Three simple rules each.  The key is knowing when you are dealing with independent clauses, which I underlined in each sentence.

What has reading done for me?

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I read a post by Neil Gaiman recently about the power of reading. And he covered a lot of ground, largely about how reading could  improve society and reduce society’s ills.  What he had to say about the benefits of reading resonated with me not just because I am a teacher and a writer but because I have been a reader since I was about eight years old.  I was behind in reading skill as a first and second grader due to all the moving around my family did.  I seemed to keep missing important aspects of reading and math.  I was enrolled in a school in Massachusetts and had the good fortune of having an alert teacher who requested I be given a reading evaluation.

Soon I was receiving reading assistance.  Over the course of a year, I moved from a non-reader to a third grade reader.  When I advanced to third grade, I was already reading above my grade level.  I have two wonderful ladies to thank for my love of reading and for the benefits that came with their efforts.

  • Reading became my safety zone.  Parents argue, and kids don’t like to witness what can appear to be the end of family.  For me, it was especially worrisome as I had already seen my father go through one divorce, and it wasn’t his first.  I could open a book, and whatever was going on around me faded out of my awareness while what was in the book became all I could see, hear, feel.  
  • Reading increased my vocabulary.  Words I didn’t know I learned by context.  It was a challenge to me to stop in the middle of my reading and reread a passage until I felt certain I had a good guess about a word’s meaning.  I was a vocabulary Sherlock, digging through all the clues in preceding and following sentences, reviewing the personality of the character speaking, the events around the usage, the tone of the narrator.  Reading made me alert to body language, to the tones of my parents when they spoke to me, the tricks my sister tried to play on me thinking because she was older, I could be fooled.  I learned to look closely at and listen to the people around me.
  • Reading introduced me to figurative language.  I began a personal career of explaining everything with metaphor and simile.  Reading made me a better communicator because I was always looking for a more interesting and clearer way of saying things.
  • Reading made me more tolerant of difference.  I started out reading animals stories.  I loved to read about leopards, otters and beavers.  When I was eleven I entered a wonderful library in the town we had moved to.  I decided to start at the letter A in the juvenile section and read to the end.  It turned out I was in the science fiction shelves of that section.  By the time I had hit Poul Anderson, I was hooked.  A person can’t read about aliens without gaining a strong sense of appreciation for the unique, unusual, adventurous.  Burroughs, Bradbury, Carter and Heinlein could drown out anything:  a scary movie, my brother’s annoying yelling, parents arguing, anything.
  • Reading gave me a love for science.  For several years I wanted to be an astronaut.  I took high level math, physics, biology, chemistry, and tons of English classes, whether the classes were required or not (when I was in school, few were required.  I could have graduated my junior year).
  • Reading gave me a strong bladder.  “What?” you say.  Well, I never wanted to stop reading.  I would stay until I was going to have an accident then run to the bathroom.  Fortunately, I was one of several children and my father had a good  job.  There were always three bathrooms in the house.  One was bound to be empty when I could stand to wait no more.  Hunger was no different.  I sat reading until I was weak or my mother came looking for me.
  • Reading made me imaginative.  I could plan out a blueberry picking adventure complete with back story requiring we (we being my friends who were not in the least imaginary) locate the requisite amount to save the town from certain death due to a disease cured by a handful of blueberries.  And if they were not to be found, well acorns, strawberries, gooseberries, maple tree seeds that spin like helicopters would make an acceptable substitute cure requiring different procedures but not to worry, there was a reason for everything.
  • Reading helped me decompress (still does): stress, difficult decisions, upcoming events, a bad day, and expected bad day to come, cramps, etc.  Reading helped me relax.  A good book will redirect my brain so I can stop thinking a million things and go to sleep.  And reading can wake me up, too.
  • Reading helps me be a better teacher because of all the things above.  I get excited about the written word.  There are days when my students get excited about it, too.  I can come up with a variety of ways to explain things, I get along with anybody, I can discuss most topics at least generally, some to great detail which helps when I have students not in the least bit interested in grammar and writing, and having a strong bladder can be especially helpful when teaching five periods in a row and the restroom is way down at the other end of the hall.
  • It hasn’t hurt my writing none either.

What has reading done for you?  I am sure there are many benefits I have left out.

Inspiration comes in many forms, mine required a cabinet

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cream in pink and royal blue

So I am sitting at my kitchen table wondering what I am going to write this post about and feeling very uninspired.  I looked around, and well, inspiration was sitting right before my eyes. Maybe I had to look a little to the left, but it was right there.

A couple of years after my father passed away, my step-mother (essentially the only mother I have had) decided it was time to distribute the family china.  I sat there and realized I had been married nearly thirty years and not only did I not have a china cabinet, but I also owned just one piece of china, a nested tea set given to me by my Swedish grandmother for a wedding gift. 

My parents had two china cabinets and four sets of china from having both been married previously.  Additionally, they had each received sets from their own parents.  Suddenly I had a tea set and a 10-piece place setting plus various accouterments; the place settings were my mother’s (she died when I was a baby), and the other was my grandmother’s which had been given to my father when she was scaling down her quite sizable china collection. I had gone a long time without china and wasn’t sure what I would do with them, perhaps leave them wrapped in tissue inside sturdy boxes.

My husband’s solution was to take me looking for an appropriate display cabinet.  Nothing seemed to fit our taste nor our pocketbook which was not willing to stretch far for something we on our own would not have purchased.  We went to used furniture shops and then finally an antique shop where we found the right cabinet.  Once it and the china were brought together and placed in my kitchen, I learned what my unexpected possession was for.

pink ribbons and roses

Each day I have sat at the table drafting my second, third and now fourth book.  When I get stumped, I glance over at that piece of furniture, then through the curved glass doors of the hutch.  Those delicate cups, soup bowls and teapots always have something to share with me.  They provide glimpses of my mother and father as they selected the roses and ribbon pattern in cream and pink.  I imagine my father nodding at the one that made my mother’s eyes fill with light.

Japanese tea

Or the tea set of Japanese porcelain glints beneath the shadow of the wood lattice. My grandmother was a solid Swedish lady who loved to make braided rugs, crochet, and knit.  Maybe it was the hand-painted cherry blossoms and ladies in kimonos which held her appreciation.  My grandfather died the year my husband and I married, and when she came to visit, she had her first opportunity to meet him.  She had suffered a stroke many years earlier and still struggled to speak.  I remember her puzzling out the means to say, “Good man,” and she squeezed my hand.   Then from a box she pulled out that nested tea set and showed me how to properly display it.

My books don’t have any tea sets in them, but they are filled with family love that is as delicate as china teacups bearing beautiful ladies in green kimonos and sweet bud roses on pink ribbons.

And that’s my post.  Inspiration comes in many forms, and it is amazingly personal and can take up considerable room in one’s life or kitchen.  What inspires you?  What gives you glimpses of the muse that feeds your writing.

In search of the ideal timeline program

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I have posted in the past about my search for my holy grail of keeping track of time travel in my novels, especially when the movement forward and back happens repeatedly.  My third book in the series is proving to be more complicated in movements than the second.  Mick and Em not only go back in time, but they find themselves making repeated jumps into the consecutive moments. And to make it more complicated, another character is moving back and forth as well as remaining stationary in No-time, yet still time is passing.  That does not sound clear in this simple writing, and it is more complicated when actually writing the story.

So I have selected and tried three different applications to keep track of time travel.  In this post I am going to evaluate these three based on the criteria of my ideal platform.

Criteria:

  1. A horizontal line on which I can
    assign dates (and create dates that don’t yet exist) 
  2. Attach key
    points to them 
  3. Add little bubbles or boxes that
    connect to those points for summary or notes 
  4. Be able to close them
    up as I move along the timeline 
  5. Open them all up and see how it lays
    out.  
  6. Able to click on them and move them if I wish.  
  7. Have the program on my computer
  8. Print out the timeline
  9. Be capable of showing overlap of other novels, written and planned.

The three programs I have been working with are OneNote by Microsoft,  Timeline by The Timeline Authors available from SourceForge, and Padlet (formerly known as WallWisher) at Padlet.com.

Using OneNote for keeping track of time travel events
OneNote as timeline

OneNote
I have been using OneNote the longest and found it to have numerous qualities that have nothing to do with keeping track of a timeline.  It has proved extremely useful to me in other areas, namely keeping track of my research and publication information.  It has proved a fairly good “time” organizer though still not my ideal. Its proximity to all my other support materials is an important point though.  But that is not on my list of ideal qualities for a timeline. 

  • It does not provide a horizontal line or any line for that matter. But I can create a series of vertical boxes with time, setting and key plot points. (However, this is something any word processing program could do.)  
  • I can attach key points
  • I can add additional text boxes
  • These cannot be “closed”
  • Nor can they be “opened” at will
  • I can shuffle them about to reflect changes in the text
  • The program is on my computer and, in fact, came with the loaded programming.
  • I can print out my “timeline” easily without any format changes.  It looks the same on the computer desktop as it does in printed form.
  • It cannot overlap other timelines easily.  I could muscle it in, but it would be awfully awkward.

So out of the 9 ideals, it provides 5.  Score: 5/9

Timeline program for keeping track of past, current and future time
Timeline as timeline

Timeline
The next timeline program I tried out was appropriately named Timeline.  I have only used it for about a week.

  • It does provide a horizontal line on which I can place time markers with my choice of dates, and it is not limited to history already lived. 
  • What is shown in the note is a title or short summary at best. 
  • It does provide secondary bubbles for additional information which can be fairly detailed.  A window pops up with several features, including attaching files and links.
  • The timeline itself can be stretched and squeezed, but the bubbles only appear when the cursor hovers over them. The timeline adjusts as the time is stretched or squeezed into a short time view.
  • The bubbles open as needed.
  • Movement of the events has proved problematic.   They can be easily adjusted along the line, but the notations also move unexpectedly to locations not intended.  Probably time and learned finesse will correct this, but the instructions are so limited that I spent a lot of time just trying everything to return a notation back to the spot I had it originally before it almost (clearly I had done something) spontaneously  moved.  Without clear instructions, trial and error rules the learning curve.
  • This is a freeware program, and I downloaded onto my computer without trouble.
  • The timeline can be printed out, but legibility was dependent upon how tightly they were scrunched or stretched out.  Could be a problem when scenes cover short amounts of time and the novel extends over a longer period of time.
  • Overlap of novel timelines is difficult.  I had to color code individuals to tell them apart and would have to do something similar for different books.  There are two features: categories and periods.  The descriptions of these was quite limited, so I am uncertain if it would be possible to designate categories as individual novels or if periods would be better.  When I tried using them, they appeared below the horizontal timeline and overlapped each other which interfered with the purpose I had determined I wanted to use them for.

Out of 9 ideals, it met  6 1/2.  Score: 6.5/9

Padlet as timetravel timeline
Padlet as timeline

Padlet
I have made use of Padlet most recently and have spent about three days on it entering just the opening of book 1, the entirety of book 2 and the first five chapters of book 3.  Visually, it is the prettiest of the three with some interesting additions.  It feels the most like a wall of sticky notes, which is the manual ideal I wish I could do, but my husband has a sense of decor and sticky notes aren’t fittin’.

  • Though it does not provide a built-in horizontal line, putting the little “stickies” in place just as I would on a wall created one easily.  I put my dates on the label of the sticky, but I could just as easily provide stickies as tiny markers at whatever interval I want.  I have added the option of several horizontals.  So book one as shown in the picture is furthest to the left with only two stickies at this time.  I plan to raise it up higher as the “wall’ appears limitless in all directions.  Book two is next and is dropped lower.  Book three is two more steps down and because it has two plot lines occurring at the same time, it has two horizontal flow lines which will meet up later in the novel.
  • I can add additional information beneath the heading on the note. It has a red label at the top of the sticky and a secondary notes
    section beneath on the same sticky. The stickies can be lengthened
    horizontally or vertically.  I kept them fairly uniform in width and
    created a short hand summary format that covered the main points.
  • Rather than secondary bubbles, it does provide for inserted pictures (see my book covers), inserted internet media of any type (video, photo, doc, etc.) or use my computer camera to take a picture, bonuses not on my wish list.
  • You might say the sticky is the closed version.
  • A click on the note does bring up a full screen display of the note and attachments as well as means to post to Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, Google+, email and others.  Additionally, the wall itself can be stretched and shrunk with ease (especially so if you have a touch sensitive screen.)  Arrow keys move the view from note to note in the screen-sized view.
  • The stickies can be moved easily about the “wall.”  If I could make a suggestion here, it would be to be able to move the notes in large groups rather than one at a time.  I have not found a means to do this, but perhaps that will come up.   The instructions do include sending requests for additional features.  So I will be asking for that one or instructions how to do it if it is already a feature.  The traditional drag and highlight has not worked.
  • This is not a downloadable program but is accessed and free at padlet.com with login and password.   However, privacy settings are available making it public or completely private.
  • The file can be printed in pdf, csv or excel.  The printout does not look like the wall, but it has all the info that I have inserted.  Since I only added pictures of my covers, I cannot say what it does with other media links.
  • Overlapping of book is definitely practical and possible. I did it with three books and intend to do it with all seven.

How did this program fit my criteria?  Pretty well.  Of the 9 desired features, it had some version of 8.  Score: 8/9.

At this point, I prefer Padlet which to my knowledge is marketed more as an educational tool for students than for timeline creation, but it is highly adaptable, pretty, fun to use and it is so much like having a wall of sticky notes that I am looking forward to seeing how it continues to make keeping track of time travel plot points easy.

Let me know if you have found the perfect timeline program or if you see a criteria you would like me to apply to any one or more of these programs.

OneNote will continue to be my research and publications notes filing goto program.  It has been great with holding my notes for clothing over the centuries, cobbles stones, Boston Common, epidemics, etc. Keeping track of timeslines, …. nah.

Characterization, Star Trek and life challenges

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Star Trek, Next Generation is one of my favorite shows, and my husband and I have been watching an episode every night while we eat dinner as we work our way through the seasons the show aired.  The early ones were still working on depth, characterization and purpose, but after the third year, the show got its legs under it.  I can view the same episode again and again and enjoy the interactions of characters that are distinctly different, driven by motivations individual and evolving.  What captures my attention most are the shows which focus on particular characters and their growth facing distressing or challenging situations.

Tonight we are watching the episode which has Captain Picard trying to understand why he left the ship.  As a second Picard arrives in a shuttle craft that is from six hours in the future, the original Picard wonders what would cause him to choose leaving the Enterprise when the result was the total destruction of the ship.  He is angry at the second Picard for leaving and surviving.  It causes him to question his integrity as a captain and his responsibility to his crew.

In the life of any individual, events take place which force one to evaluate, re-evaluate and respond to situations.  We question our choices based on our desires and attempt to see ourselves as truly as we can.  How we answer ourselves, how we evaluate our choices forces us to grow as people.  Characters we create must grow as well, question their choices based on their understanding of the reasons which caused them to select those choices.

This is the challenge I love to work on when I write.  It is also what causes me the most doubt.  It generates questions that I must answer if I want to understand what sort of growth is potentially possible in my characters.  Looking at characterization forces me to stay aware of the process of growth in my characters.

In the first book of my series, the main character Brent Garrett from the start was driven by his perception of his mother’s expectations.  A part of me was always uncomfortable with this fact about him.  Why so driven by his mother’s attempts to control and inspire his life choices?  He’s a grown adult and should be past any dependency on what his mother wishes him to accomplish.  But that is only one part of his story just as our own lives are replete with challenges.  We don’t get them one at a a time.  He doesn’t either.  Still I had to examine my discomfort with his difficulties in order to understand his.

So when I look at my own life and consider the things that have driven my actions, I must confess that the loss of my mother when I was an infant played a strong factor in my wanting to emulate her.  And it had an even stronger influence on my efforts to make sure my father was proud of me.  At one point in my teenage life, I became aware that he gained me shortly before he lost his wife, my mother.  I did not stand a chance of replacing her.  I could only hope he would find my efforts to be the best I could adequate.

When I reached adulthood, I found that every time I visited my father, he attempted to place me back in a childhood role.  It wasn’t until I had been married several years, spent numerous phone calls learning about his experience watching my mother die over a six month period while playing both father and mother to two small children that we grew beyond the loss together.  I hadn’t seen him in four years, though we had talked on the phone regularly.  When I came to visit, it was to find he had suffered a heart attack while I was traveling the 1200 miles to get to my parents’ home (he had remarried).  He was in the hospital and his perspective had gone through a tremendous change. 

The challenges I had gone through entering and growing in adulthood and his own brush with death had caused us both to change, to make new choices and to see ourselves and others in new ways.  So Brent had a perception of himself governed by his mother’s expectations and desires for his “success.”  Through book 1 and book 2 of my series Students of Jump, Brent reached adulthood and whether his mother was ready for him to grow beyond her wishes or not, he did.  Picard worked to understand the choices the second Picard made, and my father and I climbed over the wall that had divided us, interfering with our view of ourselves and our understanding of each other.

Yeah, that is what I like about writing — seeing characters evolve as questions are generated and answered.  And evolving myself along the way.

Survey Results: What did you think when you sent your first book off for epublication?

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Fly away and propagate.

I was curious what other first-time authors thought when they sent off a book for publication.  Mine was about the grammar errors I might have overlooked.  I am an English teacher: what else would cross my mind? So I asked via GoodReads, Twitter and Google+.  These are the results.

  • Marcy Peska, Hashtags and Head Buckets:  “Ooops!”  It
    was when I published Head Buckets & Hashtags, and I accidentally
    pushed the publish button before I’d finished formatting photos. 😉
  • Kevis Hendrickson, The Legend of Witch Bane: I published my first ebook when the Kindle still had fresh paint on it.
    My thoughts at the time were more along the lines of Megatron’s famous
    words: “Their defenses are broken. Let the slaughter begin.”
  • Rinelle Grey, Reckless Rescue:  With the ebook, it was “Well, that doesn’t feel any different”, but the
    print book, which I only hit publish on yesterday, it was “What if I
    missed something?” 
  • Micah R. Sisk, PleshaCore:  But if I were to describe the moment after pushing the button as a
    sound, it sounded like nanometer-sized needle dropping into a
    galactic-sized haystack.
  • Adam Osterkamp, book in process, Minnesota Writer blog:  Having just ordered the “proof” copy for my print version, my first thought was along these lines. “What if it prints terribly?”
  • Jason Letts, Powerless: The Synthesis:  
    It was unbelievably exciting. A lot of times I was checking my
    sales at work, and I was so much more concerned with the dollar or two I
    was making a day from the story and gaining potential fans than
    everything I had to do at my job. 
  • Debra McKnight, Of Dreams and Shadow:  Mine ran along the lines of, “Oh no, I forgot to fix the type-o on page three.”
  • Jennifer Priester, Mortal Realm Witch: Learning about Magic: Sadly my first thought was more money related. I was thinking something
    like this: When will the books be available for purchase online and how
    long until my copies arrive so that I can start selling them? And my second one, although you aren’t asking for it, I just find it
    interesting, was about whether or not they would sell and if people
    would like it as much as I do or not.
  • Philip G. Henley,  To the Survivors: My KDP book launch felt unreal and disconnected, although I enjoyed
    seeing the free downloads happen along with the first reviews. Print
    was a different surreal experience. There was my name on a physical
    book. What followed was even more odd, giving the copies to friends and
    family and then being asked to sign them. All very odd, embarrassing
    even.

 I wish more people had responded.  I enjoyed finding others who remembered that moment of final decision.  It is one of those firsts that will stay with us whether we felt fulfilled, let down, frantic with worry or ready to battle bears. 

Now the second time I sent off a book into the eather of e-publication, I wondered why I felt no elation, no panic, no heart thrusting wildly against my ribs.  I wasn’t blase, but I hadn’t been rocked by an overwhelming run of sales on book 1, so I had less uncertainty about what would happen next: Only I would celebrate by dancing in the kitchen, making my daughter blush and my husband shake his head.  Since I now have four books published and my fifth in R&D&R (research and development and redraft), I do feel rather moved peering at the list when I check on Amazon and Smashwords for updates. I think come this July 2014, I may discover a few thrills running up my spine to see book 3 of the Students of Jump hitting the road.

Anyone want to add to the list of first reactions at the cry of “Engage” catapulting off their coddled canary? Post a comment, and I’ll update the list above (this week) and enjoy hearing from you.