Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

Writing

Reading the Heinlein Biography, part 2: the writer’s personhood

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My previous post on William H. Patterson, Jr.’s, Heinlein biography focused on what I learned about the writing business.  But that wasn’t all I gained from the reading.  In many ways, Heinlein’s life provided general rules to live by as a writer and a person.

  • Take care of your mortality: physical health, mental health, diet and process of aging.  Heinlein had numerous health problems. And he was immediate about making change to improve his chances of continuing doing what he loved: writing.  So he changed his diet to deal with his many allergies, changed his diet again to deal with his heart health. He studied a variety of mental viewpoints to find a strong way to approach life positively and honestly (self-honesty in particular). He wanted to live a whole lot longer than he did, but considering what he had to battle, he lived a whole lot longer than expected.
  • Maintain and foster friendships inside and outside the field of writing.  Heinlein kept his Navy friends, childhood friends, and writer friends as part of his life no matter what changes were going on.  He moved every few years for various reasons and made close friendships with neighbors and maintained those from his previous residences.  I noticed that Heinlein was also slow to let go of a troubling friendship.  He wanted to be certain that he was taking the friendship as it came, not molding it into some prerequisite construct.  He seemed to dislike a great deal having to cut off a friendship and was willing to reassess if it appeared the person had changed.
  • Travel: He was interested in other cultures and enjoyed experiencing new viewpoints and lifestyles. I got the impression he did not want to get his information from books.  He wanted to see it for himself, talk to people, see the worst and the best in their countries.  I haven’t been too many places: Mexico, Canada and Sweden, but each offered me different outlooks on life that I came to embrace.  I have been all over the US, which has offered quite a bit of
    difference in diet, interpersonal communication between sexes and
    personal philosophy. Travel and exposure to variety is a growing experience as a person and a writer.
  • Stand up for yourself.  Heinlein had to deal with plagiarism in writing, TV and movie production.  There were times he had to fight for his rights (The Puppet Masters) and times he had to clarify a point, less the legal applications (The Rolling Stones vs. Star Trek’s “Trouble with Tribbles”).
  • Work to aid humanity. Aside from his political endeavors and his efforts to encourage education in the sciences in his juvenile (YA) books, I think Heinlein was most pleased with the work he did in blood drives, especially as it related to rare bloods.  I had not been aware of all his work in this area and was much impressed with his effort to improve participation and increase availability of rare blood. There is a platform for each of us, small or large that can bring positive change.
  • Make friends with your agent, editors, etc.  Much of his communications in the biography came from his interactions and friendships with those involved in the publication of his novels, stories and essays.  I think often we think of the publishing world as a necessary enemy.  Heinlein built lifelong friendships with many of his contacts.
  • Keep family close and value them.  Heinlein was not a “I remember you when” kind of writer.  His friends prior to writing and his family were important to him.  Sometimes it seems that the writer is assumed to separate him or herself from the family as if such contact will ruin the muse.  Stay close.  It is from family that we grow into who we are and gain our greatest strengths.
  • Be responsible for your self and your family.  When Heinlein’s mother needed to go into a nursing home, it occurred when he had the money to maintain her care.  His sister had been the main caretaker for many years, and he was ready when the responsibility needed to be moved. He volunteered to be the main provider taking the financial burden off his siblings when it was a struggle for them, and he was able to carry it.
  • Recognize your own belief system and be tolerant of others. Heinlein had strong beliefs, , but he seemed to be willing to accept a variety of differences as a natural right. He did draw the line at love of country,  patriotism.
  • Use your medium to teach and challenge your readers.  Heinlein advocated patriotism, blood drives, right to bear arms, education, sexual equality (but give him some latitude, he was born in 1907), racial equality, and a variety of political viewpoints.  As with everyone, as he aged, his beliefs evolved, some growing stronger, others altering based on society, new experiences, research and personal evaluation.  He had an agenda, two main ones: make his readers think and entertain them.

What author has helped your grow as a person?  What about them strengthens your resolve, provides focus or motivation?

If you would like to follow or subscribe to my blog, I have provided a variety of ways.

#Heinlein
#Writers

Reading the Heinlein biography, part 1: an immersion in the writing process

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I have been a fan of Heinlein’s for more than forty
years.  When he was alive, I watched
constantly for his next publication, and I have read nearly everything he has
written and a great deal of what has been written about his work.  Learning only recently that there was an
official biography about him leaves me rather late in following up my past
diligence, but I am glad I didn’t find these two volumes by William H. Patterson, Jr.,
until this month.  Now was the time for
me to read about Heinlein’s writing experience and process. 
I learned so much more about writing and my favorite author
reading these texts. I found numerous levels of understanding about the
process, organization and publication of writing, working with agents and
editors and publishing in general (though, of course, there have been changes,
the human element should not have altered much).  There was also the personal element of being
a writer, champion of ideas and role model that was just as provocative and
informative, but that will be for another post.
Below is a list of what I found important to Heinlein’s
process, important to any writer’s effort to write well.

  • Use index cards to organize and maintain ideas. Sure there are numerous electronic
    organizers, but I like the inspiration that comes from being able to shuffle, redistribute and overlap
    ideas on a 3×5.      I am definitely going to work with this
    approach. Heinlein used index cards to jot down ideas and even carried them around with him when working on a story. When enough ideas started to
    come together, they were kept in a group, and he would refer back or add to them
    as his story grew.  The system gained
    structure as his ideas and completed writing grew.  So they (his wife Virginia Heinlein came up with his indexing
    structure) set up a filing system that
    categorized the ideas and identified each published or work in progress.  Each book or WIP acquired its own indexing
    number. I am going to use his system to
    build one that will work for me.
  • Gather research: he was constantly researching
    science, technology, engineering, etc., to ensure accuracy in his writing.  I do
    research, but I think I need to develop this process more and in a less
    isolated manner – both broad and deep so there is more overlap and more
    connections built and therefore more material for writing.     
  • Read up on a lot of topics: Heinlein was not
    afraid to read a tome far above his level of understanding. He was known to
    seek out specialists in his field of interest and have them teach him what he
    needed to know so he could understand in-depth writing in the field he was
    curious about. This is an area I need to
    work on.     
  • Gather a cadre of authorities to tap. No explanation needed here. 
  •  Let ideas stew, even for years.  Some books half written sat around waiting
    for the right idea, the new understanding or experience before they were ready
    to be completed.  He fought for every
    piece he wrote to get to its end, but he also was ready to recognize when
    something just was not ready for prime time. 
  •  Have an overall plan for a book.  For some writers this is not a useful tidbit.
    But for me it is. I realize more and more
    that I am playing catchup with my stories about two thirds through.  I knew where I wanted to start and where I
    thought it would end.  I often have a set
    of events I expect to fill the middle with on the way to start and finish, but
    I realize at that 2/3rds point that I failed to consider the reader interaction
    that goes with the connecting of these two points.  I think that is what that overall plan means
    to me.  I need to have the bones
    organized earlier for my books.  Even if
    I deviate in the process of writing, I will have still worked out much of what
    the intercourse will be between the story and the reader that is essential.     
  •  Use mythologies and connecting images or
    principals in a work.  The underlying
    pieces are so essential.  
    Heinlein would work out what mythology or images he wanted to imbed in his
    stories to link events and ideas together within a work.
  •  Making use of personal experience. I suppose
    this falls under “write about what you know,” but I think it is
    deeper than this, and I think writers naturally incorporate their own
    accumulated bundle of tragedy, comedy and drama. We all can take an experience
    and pick out the magic pieces that add depth and authenticity to our work. 
  •  The benefit of a participating spouse: providing
    ideas and feedback and being a resource of information.  Heinlein was fortunate that both ex-wife
    Leslyn Heinlein and his wife Virginia Heinlein were willing to be a part of his
    writing process and business. Not all writers have a spouse who is willing to
    provide this deep of a commitment. Mine
    hits at about the 5 percent when it comes to involvement, but he is
    tremendously supportive. He uses the word “work” when he asks what I
    am doing as I am typing on the computer. 
    He’ll say, “Is that for school or are you working?”  I love that. And he’s growing in this
    area.  After all, he is the one that made
    sure the plans for our house included an office for me.     
  •  Reading inside and outside your genre.  Heinlein kept up on both scientific writings
    as well as contemporary fiction.  He believed it
    advanced his writing quite a bit and resulted in his hybrid Science Fiction
    style which ultimately changed the scope of the genre. I write also contemporary short story and poetry, read for pleasure and
    read for study, but I could still enlarge on this. (I read three biographies in
    the last month, and that is more of that genre than I normally read in a year.)     
  •  Don’t be afraid and even seek to write something
    different, challenging or disruptive. 
    Several of Heinlein’s works, according to his bio, he did not expect to be
    accepted for publication. They were just too different:  Stranger
    in a Strange Land, Time Enough for Love,     and Number of the Beast. But they were accepted and each were met with near instant success. 
  •  Don’t be afraid to create your own genre. Heinlein
    moved away from the strict confines of what constituted Science Fiction. (What
    was new and different in his time is very much the norm of our own.) 
  •  Submit to small presses and lower-end magazines
    to begin with. Submit?! Okay, I am
    working up to this. There is a time commitment here because of the research,
    selection process and keeping track of what is out and where it has been. I am
    going to squeeze it in. I promised myself and I am going to do it.     So
    Submit! 
  •  Submit repeatedly and continuously. Since we’re
    on the subject, Heinlein just kept things heading out the door until it found a
    buyer. Just keep flinging them off the
    merry-go-round until they land on their feet.     
  •  Take all criticism under consideration and
    follow what feels right.  I like this
    especially about Heinlein.  His stories
    had to meet his internal critic and his external (spouse).  Once it passed those two road blocks, he
    fought for it.  He took criticism that
    would make a work better but routinely refused to castrate or turn a work into
    weak milk. None of my current work is a
    challenge to society being largely written for entertainment, so this mandate does not apply too heavily to my work.
    But should I write something that pulls hair, I won’t let myself be forced to
    back down in order to keep a segment of society from having to take off their
    rose-colored glasses.     
  •  Join groups that augment or support your
    genre/subject/intentions.  Heinlein
    wasn’t much for writing groups, but he did form his own quasi-feedback
    groups.  Lucky stiff, he had Pohl,
    Azimov, Savage, the Smiths, Bova, the Sturgeons etc. They talked shop, shared ideas, helped develop
    plots, kept each other informed of new technology and writing aids.  Heinlein once bought another writer a
    typewriter because he felt it had been such an aid to lightening up his work
    load and time spent in production. 
  •  Keep organized files and sift through them.  This is much related to an earlier point, but
    the reason why it is separate is that one must do more than just organize the
    works and ideas.  You must review them,
    add and combine.  If they sit in a drawer
    than all they will ever do is sit in a drawer.
#writing
#Heinlein
#writingprocess

Even standing in the crawl space of what will be my office is enough to inspire me

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foundations for a writing office

I’ve been tweeting about the lovely little getaway house my husband and I have been building for the last three months. I am pleased it’s coming along, but what I really care about and am excited about is my office.  Sure the house is going to have bedrooms, a living room, kitchen, two baths, but I am going to have my own office, and that is what’s important.  The room is about 10×9 at the back of the house off the kitchen and dining room, but it’s an open floor plan, so I can look into the living room if I want or close the door.

I wouldn’t care if it was 6×6.  It is my space and will contain my things and has a door.  It is the only room in the house I will not have to consult or agree with my husband about if I don’t want to.  I have a few ideas.

  • A desk ~ probably my current old oak desk, though my husband talks of replacing it.  I don’t mind it.  The desk doesn’t write, I do.
  • My desk will be right in front of the window with the amazing view of the lake through the trees.
  • One whole wall will be blank, though in the plans it shows a window.  My room ~ no window needed on that wall.  We’re talking 10×9 here.  What do I need with three windows?  Two are fine.  That wall is my story organizer whether I use sticky notes or a white board or printed sheets of paper taped together.  It will make it possible for me to see and alter the arc of each of my stories.
  • Behind me is a storage cabinet running wall to wall, hopefully built in with a counter for the printer, shelving above and cabinet doors below.  
  • To the right is the wall with the door as tight to the cabinet wall as I can make it.  So there will be a small wall immediately to my right when I am at the desk.  Pictures, plagues and such will go there.  I can start with all those diplomas I have so it does not begin blank.  I’ll shift them out as I go.  Somewhere in this lot will sit a file cabinet.  We actually own three cabinets but only one is dedicated to my writing.  The other two can go begging for space elsewhere.  Files not writing related will not be welcome.

So we have been building.  My husband is a do-it-yourselfer, and this includes my having very little to do with the placement of building materials in the form of a house.  I hold a nail in place, and he carefully avoids hitting my fingers with the hammer.  I locate the hammer when he misplaces it.  And a lot of the time I sit in a chair with my Kindle reading.  But I sit in my office, okay, for precision here, I sit beneath my office in the crawl space as the decking for the floor is not in yet.  Still, I cannot explain the absolute peace and satisfaction I feel sitting in the space, my space, my office-to-be.

When I am not sitting and reading or holding a nail, I stare off at that view, my elbows balanced on the ledgerboard mounted on the stem wall.  I am usually standing rather precariously on some concrete overflow from the stem wall pour as I am not quite tall enough to look out without the added inches it gives me.  But as I stand there, the book I am writing comes to me in splashes of scenes and dialogue.  I keep running them through my mind adding imagery, direction, character details. 

My office is already useful, already generating ideas.  Just standing in it is enough to make me want to write.  What will a floor bring?  Walls, a door, my chair at my desk?  So much to imagine and look forward to.

If you can design your office, what would it be like.  Is it just a little space of your own or a full blown library?  Does that desk need to be something special or is any flat space your computer or writing pad can lay enough? Will a window add or detract from your island muse?
#writing
#imagination
#inspiration
#officespace

Twitter Blog Hopping with some fine friends

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The writer says

E.M. Wynter has invited me to take part in another blog hop.  We met on Twitter when our voids collided one day.  I have invited my Twitter/Google+/Facebook friends L.A. Hilden and Madeleine Masterson to join us.  E.M. has supplied us with another set of questions.  They were a bit tougher to answer this time.
1) If you could achieve anything with your writing in 2014,
what would it be?
Anything?!  That is
easy:  find more readers who love Brent,
Miranda, Misty, Mick, Emily, Qui, Jove, Ondine, Victory, Vivian, Braden, Ismar
and Lumin as much as I do. 
2) What are the top 3 demons you must slay to achieve your
goals in 2014?
The demon of disorganized action:   

  • I must reorganize my time so my husband
    knows how much I love and appreciate him. 
     
  • I must reorganize my time so these last years I have with my daughter at
    home will be remember and cherished by us both.  
  • I must reorganize my time so I am the best teacher I can possibly be for
    my students.  
  • I must reorganize my time
    so I can publish book 3 in the Students of Jump series by June 2014 and fully draft book 4 by mid-August 2014. 
     
  • I must love, be present, teach and write more.

The demon of uncertainty: I must believe in myself.  I must plan for success and encourage myself
to always take the next step forward so I can continue to grow as a writer and promote
my books to new readers.  One thing is
certain: Time will pass whether I am doing what I love or not.
The demon of the full-time job:  This is the one there is little I can do to change.  So I must do my job in all the best ways I can.  Then for this other side of me, the writer, I will draft, redraft, tweet, post, edit, re-edit, edit again, publish, post, tweet, repeat as often as I can.
3) Name 3 things that inspire you to write.  
Activity or inactivity: Either I jog for 20 minutes on the treadmill or meditate for 20 minutes. One or the other will generate ideas to expand scenes, work out a plot glitch or meet a new character. 
Showers: I do my best thinking in the shower.  I can put all my thought toward a scene that is not meshing well. 
Internet research: I will type into the search field in Dogpile
a topic of interest and keep reading article after article.  At some point, I must stop taking in and
start writing it out.
4) What advice do you have for a new writer who is
considering writing fiction? 
I
agree with so much of what is already said by those with more experience than I
have.  But here are my recommendations:  Read a variety of genres, though focus in the
area you plan to write in, and read a lot. 
Think about and analyze form, style, diction, characterization, etc., in
what you read.  Get feedback on
everything you write and consider all comments (positive and negative) as an
opportunity for growth and development as a writer.  Be a lifelong learner and an observer of
people. Those two things will promote strong writing, especially in character
development, and round out the knowledge base you are working from.  Of course, the most important is simply to write.

#bloghop2014
#writing

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Learning from the masters: Listen to the voices of Harper Lee’s Scout

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Time links past with present

Harper Lee had quite a task creating the narrative voice of  Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird.  Sure Scout was a six-year-old girl who ages about two years in the course of the book; what’s the challenge?  Seems easy enough — in that short span of years there is not much change.  But Scout is also the narrative voice of an adult, and how does one impart the perspective of a reflective southern woman?  How does it remain evident that young Scout and the reflective adult spring from the same root?

  The following week the knot-hole yielded a tarnished medal.  Jeb showed it to Atticus, who said it was a spelling medal, that before we were born the Maycomb County schools had spelling contests and awarded medals to the winners.  Atticus said someone must have lost it, and had we asked around?  Jem camel-kicked me when I tried to say where we had found it.  Jem asked Atticus if he remembered anybody who ever won one, and Atticus said no.
   Our biggest prize appeared four days later.  It was a pocket watch which wouldn’t run, on a chain with an aluminum knife.
   “You reckon it’s white gold, Jem?”

We have a narrator, the adult Scout (Jean Louise) and the character who supplied remembered dialogue, young Scout.  The two voices are distinctly different ,yet they maintain a connection with the story.  The narrator introduces the event just to where we can imagine the moment, and the young Scout takes over, supplying the in-the-moment reactions and character interactions.

It looks easy when you expose the strings underneath, but it is not easy.

Six-year-old Scout had a pretty good vocabulary, but she also uses country dialect “reckon” and frequently her sentences will be missing the subject and have an abruptness to them as though she is in a hurry to express herself before Jem can shut her down or steal her thunder.  “You reckon it’s white gold, Jem?”  The older narrator Jean Louise takes her time, drawing out the moment.  “The following week the knot-hole yielded a tarnished medal.”  There is an easy, relaxed feel to her sentences, an ownership and a patience the younger Scout had not mastered, but near the end of the book, the reader can see she is beginning to learn that such patience exists and has value and place.

The flow between the two is seamless because the adult narrator’s viewpoint drops off when Scout speaks and picks up after, as though they were twins finishing each one’s sentences, although those sentences are separated by a distance of thirty years or more. 

That is one of the beauties of reading To Kill a Mockingbird:  enjoying the flow and the grace of the connection between the two Scouts.  We see the meaning behind events when Jean Louise speaks and the confusion, fear, surprise and revelation those same events bring out in Scout.  There is no ledge, no separation felt, yet the reader steps back and forth between them.

#narrative voice
#writing

Learning from the Masters: Orson Scott Card and character perception

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building character from within
The variety of ways one can convey a character’s viewpoint are many and challenging.  Dialogue, other character’s  viewpoint, narrator, info dump and internal thought as a type of dialogue and first person speaker and then imbedded thinking stuck right inside the  narration. I find such character reveals, when done well, a form of magic. The reader makes the shift from impersonal narrator to internal character thought and impressions as easy as changing lanes in light traffic. It is a process I continually work at, a type of writing that lies at the level of mastery I wish to attain. 
Orson Scott Card does this as easy as breathing, nearly all fine writers do.  In Ender’s Shadow, Card gives the reader insight into Bean’s fears, process of decision making and guilt.  As a writer, I sit back both impressed and fully involved with the story and character.  I love Bean because I understand him so well.  And you don’t have to like Card’s work to appreciate the skill. 
And as Bean stood there, looking down into the water, he realized: I either have to tell what happened, right now, this minute, to everybody, or I have to decide never to tell anybody, because if Achilles gets any hint that I saw what I saw tonight, he’ll kill me and not give it a second thought.  Achilles would simply say: Ulysses strikes again.  Then he can pretend to be avenging two deaths, not one, when he kills Ulysses. 

No, all Bean could do was keep silence. Pretend that he hadn’t seen Poke’s body floating in the river, her upturned face clearly recognizable in the moonlight. 

She was stupid. Stupid not to see through Achilles plans, stupid to trust him in any way, stupid not to listen to me.  As stupid as I was to walk away instead of calling out a warning, maybe saving her life by giving her a witness that Achilles could not hope to catch and therefore could not silence. 
Card opens this moment of reflection by Bean with a narrative description followed by a simple word realized. The reader is immediately hearing Bean’s thoughts. They throughout the rest of the paragraph. A paragraph break brings the narrator back. And a second paragraph break brings Bean in full throttle, deep in his guilt and misery realizing he could have stopped Poke’s death, given her a chance at survival. We also hear his anger at her trusting Achilles and not following Bean’s advice to kill him in the first place. 
It moves swiftly and smoothly from narrator to character sadness to narrator to full on guilt and rationalization. 
When taken apart, it almost looks clunky, not so amazing after all. But that is how all standout things are. Automotive repair is simple when you know how the carburetor works, but it is astonishing that a little metal shape turned in a slot can cause an engine to rumble and a heap of organized steel to rush forward. 
#writing
#characterization
#OrsonScottCard