Spinwork Blog

Finals’ time is here again, meaning fire season and impending doom. Things are actually looking pretty light this year, even though this semester holds the record as my worst academic performance pretty much ever. Senioritus is a flaming bitch. I’m actually convinced it hasn’t left me since high school, since most of college as-is has been like, “wait, I have to do work?”

That said–things are continuing to progress with Cloudnigh. Its been so long since I’ve been 100% dedicated to a fresh project like this that I’ve almost forgotten how exciting it is. Better still, is the feeling of streamlining and improvement of process that I’ve gained since the last time I undertook something like this. What’s weird is I’m actually taking to outlining this time. Nothing too restrictive–but something to go off of as I push forward. I’m recognizing that I really can’t just wing it like I’ve done in the past, since I’m actually (hopefully) going to have readers this time and I want to tell a solid story. The outline was actually finished last Sunday night (or early Monday morning, however you want to look at it), leading to a very interesting and demented flight back to Burlington (due to the sleep, of which I only got an hour, not the outline).

What was refreshing was realizing I had a pretty solid idea of the story already, after working on it throughout the summer of 2008, and the little bits I did even further back. Now that I’ve got a shell, my structure, character and continuity problems are a lot clearer, meaning I can now focus on where the story *will go* rather than where it *might* go.

In other news, I finished Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions last night. Without a doubt one of the funniest books I’ve ever read. There’s just something about his depravity that I can identify with–even initially I had no idea if he was just being flippant with his self-insertions, literary crutches, and commentary on the holes in the plot, or brilliant. That, and there were innumerable penis jokes, which everyone knows I’m far too mature to partake in pretty much made the book. I’m going to head back to reading Atlas Shrugged and its numerous philosophical posings and self-absorbed, romantically-materialistic, individual-exalting sex scenes.

Thanks for reading!

Spinner Uncategorized 2008, 2009, Atlas Shrugged, Breakfast of Champions, Cloudnigh, Outlines, Vonnegut

The last few months have been some of the weirdest ever for my writing. It’s been about two years since I haven’t had a real “project” to work on, and the lull has felt kinda… I don’t know, empty.

Much of October was spent mulling over what I learned during the Lanternfly panel and what would become of the series. I’ve got a pretty good idea, but I’ve decided to set things aside for a bit to give it time to ferment. Creative energy is similar to brewing lagers, I’m finding–and let me tell you, October was fucking BRILLIANT for those–they just take a liiiiittle more time than you’d like to brew up properly. In that time, though, I’ve been further kicking around the idea of doing Cloudnigh as an online novel. Its been something I’ve wanted to try for years, but have always either been too nervous about the investment, or too busy with Lanternfly to give anything a solid bill. Until now.

What really kicked off this whole thing was seeing that Matt Page was open for commissions. I’ve been following Matt for years, and he’s a brilliant artist. There’s just something amazing about the rough, unpolished feel of his work. We fired back and forth a few notes on deviantArt, and after sending him the description, he set to work.

This was the result.

In the end, this piece was just the spur I needed to start taking Cloudnigh seriously. Over the past month, I’ve dedicated most of my time to editing what I have of the story, plotting out the rest, and creating promotional and web materials for a launch. I’ve got a pretty good idea of my resources at this point, and the story, my main focus, is growing more and more solid by the day. At the moment, I still don’t have a realistic time frame for when it’ll launch–I’ve just started working at the Champlain College Writing Lab and I’ve upped my hours at Starbucks for the holidays, because I’m broke as shit and I like being able to eat now and then–but I’ll let y’all know when I do.

Right now, I’m thinking late December to sometime in January, February.

In the meantime, I’ve set up a few pages for the story. For day-to-day updates, my sevenspinner twitter is a good bet. I’ve also created one specifically for Cloudnigh. Lastly, there’s a Facebook page for it you can find right here. Head over there if you’re interested.

Finally, after a year, I think I’m going to be moving yet again to a new domain. I registered sevenspinner.com over the summer, which has quickly become my web-identity for everything (e-mail, twitter–it’s pretty much open in everything). I’d be transferring my blog over to there obviously–probably sometime after I get Cloudnigh up and running. Its heavily dependent on my time to design something, so I’ll see.

And lastly, November 15th was Hellion’s fifth birthday. What the fuck.

Thanks for reading!

Spinner Uncategorized artwork, Cloudnigh, deviantart, Hellion, matt page, sevenspinner, twitter

Not much new to report on the Lanternfly front, although its finally hitting me that I’m going to be wrapping up the book sometime in the next three weeks. I don’t know whats scarier–that this is the first novel I’ve finished in two years, or that I have to have it done in three weeks for my independent  study.

Not that I’m particularly worried. Things have been singing since explosion-chapter, and I’m realizing that although shit-hitting-fan parts 1 of 2 was longer than I thought, I don’t have to do as much stuff for the next to than I thought, meaning more fun for the last few bits. Yay! Downside? 26 hours at work this week, which while awesome for the money factor, sucks massive balls on the writing front (yes, 6 hours more really DOES make a massive fucking difference at this job). Something tells me I’m going to be drinking a LOT of espresso this week.

Like I said, not much to report, really. 4-5 chapters to go! =)

Thanks for reading!

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I don’t know what’s happened this weekend, but something in my brain seems to have shut off and any effort to churn out so much as a page of writing has been met with utter failure. When this happens, there’s usually one of two causes. One is some kind of unconscious blockage, like an emotional or moral distraction, usually lasting for a couple of days and then kicking off, or two, something about the project has overwhelmed me, like a really bad scene, or that I feel like I don’t have enough inspiration, or the idea of writing a book, period.

Whichever, it usually leaves me in a state not all that dissimilar from a tightly wound ball of rubber bands. When that happens it’s usually best to partake in some sort of loosening exercise–like writing poetry (which I suck at), or some abstract scenes, or whatever. Today though, I hardly feel conscious enough to do that. Its one of those days no matter what I do, my writing cogs are trying to convince me to write-off.

If there’s one thing I despise about myself as a creator its how hard I am on myself. The fact that I’m so frantic about writing when I don’t yet have to worry about quantity is sort of a pain in the ass. I’m not going to write today off, but I need to find some way to loosen myself up that is going to work. Bah.

Spinner Daily Blogging, IS 2009, Uncategorized

Still sticking to my guns about writing in this once a month if I can. This semester has officially begun eating me alive, one piece at a time. Even finding time to write is becoming difficult–made worse by my old over-sized Dell kicking the bucket a couple weeks back. Fortunately, I was able to pick up a new one almost immediately, only this time instead of sticking to Dell, I got myself a Macbook Pro, and I have never been more pleased. I’ve always been a hot-key dork, and this machine seems to beg for it. If this thing had any more sex appeal, I’d–well, I’ll spare you.

Writing-wise, I’ve been trying to narrow my focus to one project, two at best. So far that’s been going about as well as it can given my schedule. I haven’t had much of any time for anything writing-related lately. At the moment, I’ve got The Lantern Fly, Endoflux Theory for my projects, and several short stories. The post title is actually a quote from one of them, which spends a bit of time mocking wordiness and purple prose (I am suspicious I’m really mocking myself). All of them are in various states of completion–some needing to be reworked completely (Pennies, And the Silence Screamed), with others needing edits (Unwound) and to be finished (a few untitleds). No idea when they will be done–but when they are, it’ll be nice to have something for the site.

Other than that… not too much is going on.

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In some cases, your original material can be a lot more valuable than the stuff you come up with during the editing process. As of right now, I haven’t touched any of the finished chapters of Hellion because I feel, no matter how bad some of it may be, it would really help to get the book done before I worry about those things. And there are quite a few bits that need work. Nothing’s “so bad that I can’t stand to look at it,” but there are some areas that just don’t do it the way I want it too. Oh well, that’s a lot better than how Salamander went. By this point in the writing of the latter, I had so many scenes that I just wanted to die that it wasn’t even funny. That doesn’t mean some of the scenes didn’t have gems in it–I just wasn’t a good enough writer then to separate those gems from the stuff that was pure crud.

Lately, I’ve been considering going back and doing some character touch-ups. It’s difficult when your characters are ever-changing as you write–or ever-growing, depending on how you look at it. I don’t expect to have my characters nailed down in the first draft, but I’d like to feel as if I have a *sense* of who they are as I write. Characters do change throughout a story, especially a story like Hellion in which so much of it is based on discovery, macro-cosmic, self or otherwise. I feel it’d be a lot better to have that part of the story down more than anything, rather than have to invent it all as I edit. I’m far enough into the book now to know what my characters are heading towards. In short, I have all the story worked, out just not the details. So it’d be nice, when I do reach the ending, to have enough of those themes saturated that I don’t have to destroy my soul trying to bring them out in-edit.

I’ve wandered  miles from the original point of this post.

I’m realizing that a lot of the material I’m working with is reworked versions of stuff I actually came up with for Hellion back in 2004. It surprises me how closely the story mirrors what I worked out, especially for Danielle’s character (Lionel is a whole different story). It reinforces my belief that this is something that’s matured with me over the past few years and that it was something I was eventually meant to write. More importantly, I’ve been reconsidering the title Aura as the title for the first book, which actually stemmed from a conversation I had with my father back in the autumn of 2004 over sushi. Danielle’s character was actually inspired by a story he told me about a woman who spent most of her young life attaching colors and visual essence to things she saw, and thought it was something that everyone did. This eventually blossomed into Danielle, who I added to the original Hellion almost as an afterthought (I’d originally wanted to write a story just about her). That’s more or less how this version began–which I think is how it was meant to be. Thus, the original vision of the story won over.

What killed the original version of Hellion for me was how I virtually edited the concept to death after I’d finished two drafts. I think it’s important when writing, and even more when editing, to keep the original idea of the story intact and to add things that will flavor the concept, and take things away that either don’t add to it or sour the ultimate taste you’re trying to create. It’s really impossible to change the direction of a story mid-way through, or so I discovered.

As for how the writing’s going…

Slow. I’m realizing that I have a very specific method of working on stories. It usually begins with the initial idea or image, which will last me 20-30 pages, or however long it takes me to get a sense for the budding essence of the book. Then, I get a plotline in mind that will lead up to the discovery or ignition of the overall plot, then I write that. Somewhere in there then, I get lost and disillusioned, and wander aimlessly for weeks or months trying to figure out just what I’m writing, get an idea, outline like mad, and write, changing things as I go, until I reach the end. That’s how it went for the original Hellion, Shadower and Salamander books. To be honest, I think thats a flow I need to go with. So, I’m working through that.

Other than that, the book is going very well.

Spinner Uncategorized

I’ve been awfully quiet about my work lately, mainly because not much has been going on. Only news I really have is that I finished a short story, loosely titled Pennies that I’m going to be putting through the proverbial meat grinder in a few days. This is going to be a great test for me to see how my editing techniques work. It’s honestly been a year since I finished anything of any consequence (I’m still working on And the Silence Screamed). What’s good is that the story is bad enough, yet has enough potential to really keep me interested. There’s a lot of shit there, a lot of loose metaphors and interesting characters that I want to unearth more.

That said, I’ve been tossing around the idea lately of picking up Salamander again. Not like, rewriting from scratch, but the actual draft I got 2/3 of a way through from June-November 2006. Things would change, of course, but recently I think I found a way of making the story work in its high-fantasy form. Besides, it would be a great exercise in working a story that is in a hole, something that I’ll need to learn if I want to do this professionally. We’ll see how things go.

In other news, I have a new design of ESS in the works. It really is just a change of color scheme with a tweaked navigation system. That, and I’m working on making my profile and stuff sound much less pretentious. Again, we’ll see how that goes.

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Uguu.

Finals season is biting me and biting me hard. The funny thing is, its really not the finals that are bogging me down, but finding a job and what-not so I can stay up here over the summer. That’s taken away much of the time I wanted to use on The Paper Angel.

Last few weeks have seen a lot of plot changes… I’m still working how I want to write the next segment, and just what I want to add. The real annoyance is I haven’t had much time to keep updated on notes and chapter maps, so I’m pretty much sitting stock still waiting for inspiration to hit me. Up the paddle without a creek, so to speak.

Lately, I’ve actually been pretty busy on SE4, an update or rehash of Seventh-Element, the community I run. I could say a thousand things about what I want to do for that damn place, but fact of the matter is, I usually only wind up doing half of them, if any at all. My latest project has been to learn CSS, which is proving itself to be a magnificent bitch, lush with complications I’ve never dreampt of. Mother fuck. All I can say is that I’m gonna keep slogging, and hope something positive comes out of it.

Tally ho.

Spinner Uncategorized

It’s been a little while since I’ve had time to update. Took the week off on working on the project. I finally found a suitable working title for it–”The Paper Angel.” No idea if it’ll stick or not, but it works for the time being, so there we go ^^;

I’m beginning to reach the part of writing where I have to take time off and slog through plot change after plot change to keep the story working. Already, I’ve discarded a number of plotlines I’ve written in and I’m working in a few others. I’m using a nice little trick to help me organize all this. Pullman mentions that making a scene, sticky note map after the first draft is done help to give you a good view of the piece from above.  I’m trying this to help organize the stuff I’ve already written and updating as I go along so as soon as I finish the first draft, I won’t have to take my two weeks to a month and then have to read through and organize. I can just use the map I’ve already put together. I haven’t been using it long enough to gauge the use of it yet, but I’ll let you know how it works out.

Logically, I see why people say not to edit the quality of your work as you go along, because it can become obsessive. For me, it looks like if I keep the storyline solid, it’ll mean less headaches in the actual editing process. So far, so good there.

My only gripe with the book right now is that I hate breaking stride. This new plotline I’m adding in involves adding five chapters of stuff (two weeks of work, roughly) to the book. Maybe it’ll be less. Maybe it’ll be more. But it definitely saves me from rushing things later on in terms of plot development. I guess I’ll see how it works!

Spinner Uncategorized

It’s a little hard to believe I’ve been working on this book for just under a month and I’m already a third of the way through. Somehow, karma is going to come back to bite me in the ass. I just know it.

To be honest, I don’t know what’s more bothersome–how long I’ve been working on it, or that I don’t have a title for it yet. Usually by this point, I have something to call it, at least for myself when I refer to it in my head. I’m not honestly bothered, it’s just not something I’m used to. I had a name for Salamander after I wrote the first chapter. Now, I’m at the start of the 11th and I’ve got nothing.

But I like it. I like it a lot. I’ve actually got a method now, one that seems to be working kind of nicely and yet is easy enough to adapt. I’m fairly aware I’m over writing a lot of things–especially in the first half of what I’ve got so far (just over 50,000 words and 100 pages). But those things are as necessary as notes at this point. The characters I’ve been discovering as I go, and while I’m still discovering voices and their stories and what-not, I know it’s all stuff I can change later. I’m not running blind, which is something I effectively did with Salamander.

Also, I have a fall-back.

The other night I went deep into my archives and dug up some notes from late 2003 when I was starting off planning on Wild Jack. It’s freaking ridiculous that I still have love for a story I wrote that long ago, but something about the character got to me. After some idle day-dreaming, I began writing anew. Its nothing major… I probably won’t do anything with it unless I hit major turbulence with what I’m working on now and need to take a few weeks/months off. But I want to write it eventually because the themes I have in mind are something I’ve always been curious about. So it’ll be a journey for me and the character. Also, it was one of those times where I knew the character the moment I started writing him.

Ugh… that actually bothers me, especially with what I’m working on now–getting to know your characters. Every writing-help book I’ve read tells you not to rush it, to get to know your characters–and this is what has me apprehensive about this current work of mine. I know the characters–a little. Enough to move the story forwards. But not enough to say, “well, I don’t think they’d do/say/act like that.” In a way, I think I will have to stop soon, because next chapter I’m introducing at least three new characters that have a major baring on the plot (Oh helllllll! ;_;). And when their paths cross, how many chapters from now, I’m worried that I’ll muddle them up and won’t be able to tell them apart. Maybe that’s what I ought to spend tomorrow doing.

It’s nice making your weekly quota. In a way, I’m sort of surprised that I did. I base my 5-page a day, 25-page a week, 100-page a month quota thing on Jonathon Stroud’s method. Thing is, I usually top it by at least one page. Maybe three, four days a month I’ll do 3-4 pages, but most of the time I’m pushing out 5-7. I had one 9-page and one 10-page day this month, which makes up for at least two days work. Maybe it isn’t a surprise I got to this point as fast as I did.

Waiting for the other shoe to drop–praying it doesn’t mean break my will to go on when it falls.

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