It’s a one-word-in-front-of-the-other night. I don’t see the light at the end, but I know if I just keep typing, words will keep dropping down in front of me. This always works, yet I have not been applying this highly reliable rule in my life. Sit down, turn on computer, double click WIP and let the words drop. Nope, I’ve not been doing it.

The real fly in this ointment is that last year I had so much to write and so little time, yet I managed to write my longest book to date (100K), get it to my beta readers, edit it about 50 times in a variety of ways and publish it. I even updated some book covers, rewrote my blurbs and maintained my blog. Now with time streaming out my ears, my blog is a wee bit anemic, I’ve written very little on the book that has been dogging me for about two years and which I had to hold off until book 4 of the Students of Jump series was done and published, and I have just 13,000 words written so far of Joanie and Friends. Appalling. And I have no excuse. It’s February, for gosh sakes!

I haven’t been on Twitter, Google+ or Pinterest in what seems like ages.

My life has been no more engulfing than anybody else’s, a loss here and there, a gain or two, a lot of smooth sailing and generally the normal actions of a busy life. And I am not alone in my sluggishness. My husband is just as unfocused. He says its having our daughter away at college. Could that be it? The mother part of me is missing?

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Okay, had to stop and digest that.
Writers nurture ideas.
We foster growth and change in our characters.
We step back and watch them make mistakes, hope they gather their wits about them and come out of the stituation okay and when all else fails, we step in and give them a prod or two rolling again in the right direction.
Writers consider possible consequences of actions, follow out scenarios and shift the possibilities.
Writers tuck their books into bed and hope they go out into the world and make good, reliable friends. We tell people about our story’s beginnings, shout out our grandest schemes coming to fruition, trouble our friends with our plot glitches and compare the poor scribbled things to successful writers’ works.
Writers are parents, and perhaps my parenting mode is still recovering from sending off a much more prized creation than any book I’ve ever written.

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Alright, let’s not get carried away. I’ve just been lazy, luxuriating in my extra breathing space this year. I’m a writer and writers write, so soon I will be tapping away my usual word count, characters bobbing about between my ears, chatting away, rustling through my days for the next opportunity to get back to writing. Yup, enough playing around.

This has nothing to do with my daughter being off to college with no one she’s known for years watching her back. Nothing to do with going to bed not knowing if she’s yet in bed. Nothing to do with avoiding eye contact with my partner because if I do hold his gaze too long, he’s liable to start talking about how much he misses her, and then I’ll think I hear a crack in his voice, see the early mist of a tear in his eye, a sigh on the rise in his chest. Then I’ll start to cry. Silly me. I just need to sit down and write something.

#writing
#daughter

The post Nope, it has nothing to do with that. Nothing. Nothing at all. first appeared on L. Darby Gibbs ~ Author.

50+ years of experience

I’ve been gathering experience for 50+ years

1. I have already been told numerous times I was wrong and proved that I was right.
2. I have been wrong before and survived and I will again
3. I have paid my bills, and when I didn’t, I learned to pay them the next time.
4. I found out I don’t have to answer any questions I don’t want to.
5. I have learned how to ask questions so people want to answer them (they don’t always, but they want to).
6. I refuse to sit in the corner and cry about it.  But I know some times a good cry works wonders.
7. I know what my body does when it is terrified.
8. I know what my body does when it is tired.
9. I know what my body does when it hasn’t slept for three days. (My husband and I laughed our heads off about nothing funny, but it was a blast) Not recommended more than once a year.
10. I know that how I react is not necessarily how another person will act.
11. Now I decide what I am going to do about it and do it.
12. I wrote a book.
13. And then I wrote three more.
14. I published a book, and then I published three more.
15. So I am writing another book.
16. I plan to publish it.
17. Creativity is in the mind, of the mind, doesn’t always mind, but mind you, it never really leaves.
18. There are days I don’t want to write.
19. There are not many days I don’t want to write.
20. I love my parents despite and in spite of all they did, tried to do and never got around to doing.
21. I am a parent, and I think she’s going to love me in spite of and despite of all of it.
22. I married the right man, and he agrees.
23. What I really know, really experienced and really care about can be a great help with writing about the things I didn’t know until I looked it up, didn’t experience but have an idea about, and don’t care much about but can see how someone would.
24. I know that crying is not proof that someone is hurt 
25. I know that not crying is not proof that someone does not care.
26. I know that silence is not agreement, and taking a stand is far more reliable.
27. I know my opinion needs to matter to me more than it matters to anyone else.
28. I have learned that opinion is not fact.
29. I know that some believe opinion is enough to hang a hat on.
30. I rarely wear a hat.  Don’t have the head for it.
31. I can wait a long time, I already have.
32. I will not wait long for things not worth waiting for or things that should not be allowed to wait.
33. I have learned that criticism can hurt, but even that sort can be learned from.
34. I have learned to give criticism that teaches.
35. Nothing is forever except ideas.
36. Escapism is not a bad thing.  Writers depend on it. Readers need it well done.
37. Every day I need to seek out knowledge.
38. As often as possible I need to share knowledge.
39. I know how to say I am sorry and mean it. 
40. I have learned that some of the closest friends a person can have shed, and their only flaw is the amount of hair that can accumulated in the corners.  Dogs, kindness in the warm, occasionally wet-nosed package, that renews itself every morning and sometimes numerous times in the course of the day if you step outside enough times and make a big deal every time you come back in.
41. I have been an infant, a toddler, a pre-teen, a teenager, a lover, a newlywed, a pregnant woman, a new mother.  I remind my daughter I am old enough to be a grandmother, but I am not ready, nor is she ready to make me one.
42. I have struggled with self-consciousness and reached a point of mostly not caring what people think about me.
43. I have found meditation has numerous benefits
44. I have struggled with achieving a pregnancy, giving up, gone a decade believing and accepting that it was not possible.
45. I have lost a pregnancy, and helped a friend deal with losing her own pregnancy.
46. I went preterm and held out for a full term delivery.
47. I have had a child remind me to pay attention. And I listened. I held her sitting in the crook of my arm.  She placed two chubby hands on either side of my face, turned me to share an eye-to-eye look, and she said, “Momma?” with the firmness of a drill sergeant. 
48. I know how to hide the fact that I am a shy person. (Head up, chin up, eye steady)
49. I know how to say no and mean it.
50. I found out why mothers are never shy when a child is involved.
51. I learned how to give orders so students do what I say (but don’t ask me to explain how it works).
52. I have made friends and lost friends and will forget neither.
53. I have been lied to and lied, and carried the burden of both.
54. I have fallen in love and worked hard not to climb out because holding onto love is not an easy thing.
55. I know how it is to lose a parent to cancer.
56. I know how it is to lose a parent to unexpected death.
57. I know how it is to lose a parent to dementia.
58. I have petted the family dog and felt her life flow out and cried for the loss. And I have explained to my daughter why she will not be coming back.
59. I know how it is to watch my sister lose a child to a brain tumor.
60. I know how it is to witness a miracle of survival.
61. I have lived on the East Coast, the West Coast, the Northwest and South Coast.
62. I have hiked the beginning of the Narragansett Trail and the end of Oregon Trail.  Missed the middle.
63. I know the reality of not doing something now.  Do it now or it will never happen.
64. I have graduated high school.
65. I have graduated college, three times, different degrees.

I figure I still have plenty to learn, and all of it will be useful to me as a writer and a person.

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