My last post was about brainstorming with my writer pal Marcy on a novel idea involving dementia and Alzheimer’s.  Much of what is going into the book is based on my experience with my mother and my father-in-law who are both suffering from this kind of memory loss.  Every phone call I have with them or chat with my mother-in-law or my sister, who also keeps contact with our mom, is a source of inspiration and information. But it is also disheartening because it will only get worse.

I tell myself that as painful as it is to watch and keep up with the changes they are going through, it is part of life, part of loving someone and part of the truth that must be in what I write. What we experience is our greatest source of originality and authenticity.

I know this book is going to tax me and pull hard at my heart, for every wall my character must climb will echo a difficulty my mother is going through. I have long since given up having those chats with my mom that always left us laughing. For many years I would unload my disappointments through the receiver of my phone, and my mother would be on the other end listening.  But it was never a sad event for I would find myself giggling over those troubles because she brought that out in me.  They were fodder for humor instead of tears or anger when I shared them with her.

But I cannot do that any more. She cannot hold onto the same conversation for more than a couple of minutes. Sometimes she thinks she is talking to my daughter or worse me back when I was in high school.  It is much harder to make her giggle and much harder for me to find the humor in the troubles that come with the changes she is going through.  Nowadays, she is sharing with me her difficulties, and I am the one hoping to bring humor rather than sorrow to her experience.

What life experiences feed your writing and give you hope that you will find peace in the effort?

#creativity
#Alzheimer’s

The post Creativity: Using your own experiences to authenticate your writing first appeared on L. Darby Gibbs ~ Author.

Often when I read science fiction, the main characters and certainly the supporting and stock characters rarely have family.  I don’t mean they don’t ever have family, but family is not the cause of change or action in them.  Family is window decoration in most novels.  Yet family is a basic component of my fiction writing.

Family can drive my characters to do things they have been avoiding or things they would not have done without the influence of a member of the family.  In my first book In Times Passed, Brent Garrett jumps to another time period claiming the excuse that he had to get away from his mother’s interference.  After he makes a life in the new time period, it is family again that affects him, influences his actions.  Loss of family nearly destroys him.

In No-Time like the Present, family motivated Misty Meredith to trust a stranger and jump two hundred years into her future so she could stand before her father and prove to him he failed by leaving her, that she didn’t need him anyway because she had her Uncle Mick and Aunt Emily, family that cared to raise her.  And she is surrounded by family, starts her own family and ultimately learns that family means no one ever really leaves anyone behind.

Mick and Emily never had children of their own, yet they raised a family.  They keep taking in the orphans, granted they are family, but this act of parenting the parentless is a basic feature of their lives.   So in Next Time We Meet, this couple think they have nothing to give the future, but what they are always offering is future to those who need it most.  All their efforts are directed at creating, supporting and reuniting family. 

I am currently working on the fourth book in the Students of Jump series, working title Testing Time, and family is again basic to the story.  Sarra Marsh’s family must break up in order to survive what is happening in the world and time she lives in.  The group she ends up with is guided by two individuals, Ma Potterby (a mother to all the assembled renegades) and Carnegie, (a sort of patriarchal figure whose terse manner ensures discipline in the ranks).  As she endeavors to enact change in her society as dictated by her father from a distance, she is always aware of her disbursed family.  Until change occurs, they must remain separated.  And the change may be far too late to bring them back together.

I have an anthology of short stories.  Not one of them lacks the basic feature of family.  The title story, “Gardens in the Cracks,” is steeped in the fact that major change was made in how families are established, maintained, organized and torn apart.  Marga Graber has already given up one child to the demands of planetary survival and is now facing more tears in her family fabric no less damaging.  The novella sequel that follows it in the anthology deals with the events that should pull family together but often does the opposite.  Still the pull that drives us from within to desire and seek family lives on and is at times the only thing that keeps these characters going.  Thus, in Scrapper, a boy finds his way home greatly changed from the boy who was excited to leave family.

Family is integral to us all.  I cannot separate it from my writing.  I am forever influenced by a woman I don’t even remember because she was at one very brief time my mother.  My father now deceased more than eight years is daily a part of my life.  For a time he held a dual role in a time period when few men could imagine being a mother to two children: one a toddler, the other an infant.  He potty trained me, and when I was becoming concerned about my daughter reaching that milestone in development, who did I call?  Yup, my dad, who offered his usual sage advice.  Potty trained in less than a week and my little girl made the decision.  I just offered opportunity and a willingness to listen. But that’s a story for another time.  Family, gotta love them.

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Write when you can.  Be there the rest of the time

All writers juggle their private and public lives with their writing lives.  It doesn’t matter if they write for a living or write part time.  Yesterday, I had a rare day free from any after-work demand from my job.  I had a post for my blog to write, and the possible chance that I could work on Book 4 of my Students of Jump series during that open evening.  All in all getting home and working on my computer was definitely one of the options open to me.  But it was not to be, and I knew that at the start of my day.

My daughter had a project to do for a scholar’s program she was accepted into.  That project called for her gathering quite a few pictures, audio and video together.  Normally, this is not a problem.  We have a computer we used to use, before we got out of the business, for wedding videography loaded with all the necessary software and support features needed.  But technology is not always reliable, and the monitor started intermittently failing.   It is not hard to figure out what sort of delaying factor this had on her project.  We worked for hours nursing this monitor along from the time school let out and her midnight deadline arrived.

I was there for advice, instruction in software usage and emotional support as that monitor raised her stress level.  Fearful of  finding herself with a two-minute film imprisoned on a hard drive we could not access, she was working from a flash drive which slowed her progress as well.  But when we came close to the deadline and she had completed the video, we switched to another computer to upload the rendered product.  You’re probably wondering why we just didn’t shift the software to another computer. Well, it’s been some years since we were videographers and that software is old and cannot work with Windows 7 or 8.  She was managing with the oldest computer in the house because she had no choice.

Usually it takes a few days to hear back how she scored on a project.  Today we arrived home, and she checked her email to find she had been notified that her grade was posted.  My daughter told her father and I about the notification then accessed her grade book.  The nervousness she was feeling was evident in her grip on her iPod and how she turned away from looking at its screen.

If I wasn’t nervous myself, it would have been funny watching her slowly turn her head back toward the image, her eyes squeezed as though anticipating having something thrown at her as she tried to make out her grade.  With a dramatic “Oh, my, God,” she threw back her head and leaned against the back of her chair, a picture of sudden enervation.  We weren’t sure how to interpret her response and asked how she did.  To avoid bragging, I’ll just say she did very, very well.  Neither of us had much sleep last night, and there was some uncertainty about what was actually wanted, so I would have clapped my hands over just about any grade.  She had reason to be pleased.

So you found me out. This is one long excuse for not posting my weekly Wednesday post this morning.  But tired as I am, and though I did not get to work on my book and went through a school day feeling a bit fuzzy and running on my “I’m not a tired teacher” gear, I’m glad I was there for my girl. 

Family, friends, work: we write in and among, around and through these demands every day.  Sometimes they are big events; some inconvenient; some, like this activity, part of being a mom.  All of these are part of being a writer.

What have you had to write through and around?  What moments are you thankful for that got in the way of writing but left you feeling proud you were part of it?  Tell me your tale of distraction/connection.

The post The other half of a writer’s life: family, friends, the other work first appeared on L. Darby Gibbs ~ Author.