Spinwork Blog

My God. Holidays at Starbucks were made to murder both customers and baristas. The last five days has consisted of some of the most maddening hours I’ve ever spent at this job. Rushes have started lasting all day, from 8AM to 5PM, with intermittent swells before and after. I’ve even noticed it as a customer. Those of you who follow my twitter will know I had numerous occasions today where I had people’s butts shoved in my face for minutes on end. Not cool. Even if growing up on the New York City subways have me partially used to it.

The other day I finished something that’s been driving me starkers since mid-November, that being finally finding a good, solid opening to Cloudnigh. People who read the IF version may or may not know how much I hated the original opening. If I have one pet-peeve, it’s protagonists that give an impression of emotional patheticism–which Roman did, uncharacteristically so. After much attempting to soften what I had, and then fretting over it, I finally  broke down and wrote a new first chapter. I’m fairly happy with the result–again, shocking, since I hate first chapters.

Now that I’ve got a solid foundation, my effort can now go into editing the remainder of my material–my goal is five chapters as a buffer–and then getting things going. I’ve been toying with web designs and the like in my spare time, and leaning towards a brown-grey themed design (Matt’s artwork asks for it). We’ll see how that goes in the long run. I’m not sure how long it’ll be before I have something up, but I’m aiming for late January, early February. I’ve also got some Spinwork related changes coming down the pike, but that’s another update.

So, it’s the new year now, meaning I should have some new years resolutions. Yeah. Well, I do–don’t get me wrong–but nothing really worth discussing on a writing blog–losing weight and eating better is among them–but nothing writing-related that I’d call a resolution. 2009 has been the best year for writing for me since 2004/2005, and that’s saying a lot for me. I finished a draft of Lanternfly, which still continues to mature and grow in my mind even though its been 2 months since I did any work on it, worked on and off on Shadower throughout the year, and fixed my sights on Cloudnigh. Its hard to believe I’ve been working on the story for eight months–exclusively, for four. In short, there’s nothing I want to accomplish in this year that I can’t from setting realistic goals and just keep walking.

In other news, I’ve started reading Anna Karenina, which has induced many orgasms of joy. Tolstoy was one smart mother fucker when it came to people. I can’t count the number of times while reading I found myself laughing and thinking, “I’VE THOUGHT THAT WAY,” and “I KNOW PEOPLE LIKE THAT,” which seems to be the pinnacle reaction to my reading lately. Its so incredible how writers from the fucking 1800s are seeing the same sort of human traits I’ve picked up on with the people I’ve known. I’d always thought that when a society evolves, the mannerism did so too, which in retrospect, I guess is sort of naive. No–people seem to have had the same “shoulds” and “oh-god-fucks” and “ZOMFG WHY?” now as they did then, if not made a little bit more insecure and unstable by the 21st century’s marketing and media machine.

Things go swimmingly–so off I swim. Thanks for reading!

Spinner Books & Reading, Cloudnigh, Musings & Rants, Site-related 2010, Anna Karenina, Cloudnigh, Lanternfly, New Years 2010, ranting, Starbucks, work

It’s about 10:30 in the morning and it feels like its about midnight. Chalk it up to my World Issues professor deciding it would be a good idea to watch Wall-E at 8:00 in the morning instead of a final. Not that I’m complaining–Wall-E’s one of my all-time favorite movies, but one I like to watch after a long Saturday, or when I want to wallow in the movie’s unique atmosphere, not just after waking up from an involuntary all-nighter. The upside is I’m currently blessed with that clarity that comes with 2AM writing sessions, where everything makes that sleepy kind of sense and you’re less inhibited to pursue your muse through the pearly avenues of her perpetual acid trip.

I finally finished Atlas Shrugged last night after a near three-month struggle. I say struggle because Atlas isn’t one of those books you read–it’s one you excavate with heavy explosives. Where the effort in reading it was is difficult to say. It’s a long sucker, to be certain (1168 pages), complete with everything I was taught not to do as a writer–from long, expository passages (60 pages, long) to dragging explanations of character’s morals, sexualities, and stoicism against emotional trauma. Still, when it pulled me in, it pulled me in good, and hundreds of pages would fly by in a blink. I wouldn’t quite say its a page-turner, because there are times I had to reread entire passages with a feeling of, “wait, what the fuck did he/she just say?” The reward of being able to fist-pump on my favorite characters in the end was amazing, though (DANNESKJOLD! REARDEN!).

The book is, without question, one of the most intense, overwrought, annoying, hair-tearing, scalp-shredding, bitter-laughter inducing, inspiring, life-changing books I’ve ever read. There’s something masochistic about reestablishing my reading habit with two, 200,000+ word books in quick succession–books that have earned me groans of “you’re reading Ayn Rand? But she’s so conservative/republican/economically fascist/idealist/reactionary, and her prose sucks.” I don’t read books for their agenda. Every writer has an agenda. I have an agenda. I don’t force it down peoples’ throats, and I don’t swallow when writers try to force theirs down mine.

Virtually every criticism I’ve heard about both Atlas and Fountainhead focused on Rand’s views, and I agree. Rand is an idealist, and her opinion is conservative past realism. Her prose is clunky–although, in her defense, English wasn’t her first language–and not something I’d recommend to someone looking to improve their writing. What hooked me was her focus on character and her portrayals of the ideal man (and woman, in the case of Dagny Taggart), which, although hyperbolic and utopian as the rest of Rand’s themes, had enough “real” for me to latch onto, and sufficient “unreal” for me to suspend my disbelief. In a way, I think it was that hyperbole that drew me in. You can learn a lot from exaggeration. After all, it’s more or less the core of comedy. Apparently it works well in fiction, too.

In the end, its difficult to put into words just what the effect was. There were a lot of parts in the book where I’d read a scene or speech and be like, “I FEEL LIKE THAT SOMETIMES,” or “DAMNIT, I’VE HAD PEOPLE PULL THAT ON ME,” or at times, be  awed that such a complex story could be held together with such ostensible simplicity. Maybe the message and the meaning is meant to be mine alone.

That said, I’m continuing my reading extravaganza. I don’t know what I’m going to read next, but I like blogging about it. It gives me something to talk about that isn’t creatively whorish and expository (a use for this blog!). On my list right now are Slaughterhouse-Five, Anna Karenina, Les Miserables, Scarlett Letter and Stranger in a Strange Land. I should also look into finishing Snow Crash, but I haven’t been in the mood for sci-fi lately.

My semester’s over as of yesterday, closed with a read-and-edit of my friend Will’s book, Imperium, which he’s been working on about as long as I’ve been working on Hellion. It’s been really interesting seeing where he’s come from and gone with his stuff, and I’m really starting to see his story and concepts coming together, which is exciting. I’m just hoping he sticks to it. *stern look*

With the semester closed, the time’s come to do more work on Cloudnigh, which continues to stumble and swell in the relative semblance of growth. I haven’t done any actual writing on it in a few days, as the story seems to be demanding some background notes. Its sort of nice that I can finally identify the feeling of “what the fuck am I doing?” as a reminder to check my notes and see what I’m actually trying to say. When I look at the inspiration of my process, its sort of weird to see where I’ve drawn it from: Ayn Rand, Jonathon Stroud, Phillip Pullman, J.K. Rowling, Herman Melville, Fred Gallagher, my dad. I guess I make it work in my own way. Only now am I starting to realize how adaptable you have to be to plan a project. I’ve approached Cloudnigh in such a different way than I approached Lanternfly.

In that vein, I’m still working on Lanternfly–not as actively as I used to, but still. I’ve got a long term plan for that, and for Shadower. The gig right now is trying to execute Cloudnigh as best I can and see what comes of it as an online project. I’m finally at this place of relative confidence (90% acceptance of failure, 5% raw excitement, 5% stubbornness) where I can start to realistically plot out my course for the next year. With luck, that course will be Cloudnigh.

We shall see.

Thanks for reading!

Spinner Books & Reading, Cloudnigh, Daily Blogging, Hellion, Shadower 2009, Atlas Shrugged, ayn rand, Cloudnigh, fountainhead, Hellion, inspirating, Lanternfly, Rants, reading, reading list, Shadower