Are Rubber Ducks The Solution To Your Writing Problem?

We’ve got concrete!

I got nervous Sunday night because of the predicted weather, which included the possibility of a derecho coming through. The weather sirens sounded in Muskogee due to wind speeds, but there wasn’t any rotation reported in our area.

Athena had a rough day. The concrete guys showed up around 7:15, so she spent the next couple of hours barking her head off at all of the commotion. She’s a great watchdog; I just wish I could find the off switch, you know?

They had another pour to do Tuesday, but they were back Wednesday to fix the tire tracks from the concrete trucks and set forms for the next section. We’ll get the rebar in place Monday and pour Tuesday.

And Then…

Because we can’t do anything the easy way here, we went ahead and started a bathroom renovation project.

We’ve had a leak in our master bathroom for quite a while, like a few months. We tried to trace it, but still couldn’t find it. But water was coming through the wall between the bathroom and the kitchen. We finally got in touch with someone who answered our calls, showed up when he said he would, and sounded like he knew what he was doing, so after meeting with him Friday, we told him to go ahead.

He showed up Saturday morning to start demo.

The leak was the result of poor workmanship. That’s the only way to describe it. We had thought almost since we moved in that this shower had been converted from a bathtub, but we’d found some indications that maybe the person wasn’t completely clear about what they were doing. The drain wasn’t in the lowest spot of the floor, and was oddly off-center, among other things. Turns out that when they put the tile up, they just glued it to the drywall, without any waterproofing at all. No backer board and no sealant. The pan material they put down on the floor wasn’t big enough to protect any of the walls, either. That explains the seepage and so forth.

Youngest Daughter is a little stressed out because she likes her bathroom just so, and now she has to share it all with not just her brother, but both of her parents as well. She’s only a little stressed though, because she leaves this week for ten days in Italy. That kind of makes it all better.

Writing

I got stuck again in Ghost trying to figure out how something was going to work. I’d spent the better part of a week kicking around different ideas and decided I’d post the question to the Crime Scene Writer’s loop for input. The advantage of doing something like that is that to get good feedback, you first have to write a coherent message. The other writers have to understand what you want and what you need to have happen in your story before they can give you any advice.

So, I drafted this long message—like almost 500 words long. Gave them background of the story to where I was stuck. Outlined the two ideas I was choosing from, including the pros and cons of each idea.

I was about to paste it into an email when the solution hit me.

That happens pretty often, actually. For some reason, writing out the problem to explain it well enough to an email group or a writers forum manages to jar something loose. It’s almost as if writing it out rewires my brain just enough to let me see the solution.

One person I talked to points out that some people have difficulties just thinking things through. They suggested that writing it out probably frees up brain space and makes it easier to understand. Turns out there’s a name for it: rubber duck debugging. The basic idea is that you need to explain your problem to someone who has no other information. You’re essentially teaching them, and teaching requires you to look at things from different perspectives so that you can explain everything clearly. Doing so seems to give everyone a better understanding. That’s the theory, anyway. Maybe I’ll start using my gargoyle.

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