Spinwork Blog

Inspiration is like a winding river infested with beavers who build dams like coke addicts do lines.

I find it really funny that I spent six months in development on Twice Born and I’m still more ready to tackle The Madonna Lily and Shadower than I am the big one. Then again,  I am looking at planning three books fairly completely before I start, which is daunting for anyone. Perhaps I’ve second-guessed myself. The best way to take anything is slowly, something I’ve learnt the hard way over the past year. Much of my slump had to do with trying to do things too quickly. It was probably wrong of me trying to–once again–set a release date on my work. Never again, I say! And this time, I’m sticking to it.

Boy, do the days go. Around this time last year, I was writing the last chapter of the second draft of Shadower and trying to rekindle my interest in Salamander. It really was to no avail. 2007 really wasn’t that hot a year for me writing-wise–not in the way 2006 was (Hellion, Salamander and Shadower in one year. Holy hell.). I really should do some sort of writing-related “New Years Resolution” thing. Like not being a “ashf;alsf” about projects and tagging my blog posts (seeing that tag thing empty depresses me for some reason). Maybe I’ll tag this post. Yeah. I think I will.

So. Resolutions. I resolve not to over exert myself on my writing in 2008. I resolve not to set any release dates when I don’t even have anything written yet. I also resolve not to be such a draft-miser, and give crits to the guys on SE and IF once in a while. I also resolve to finally do that goddamn layout for SE I keep telling Julie I’ll do. I’d resolve to read Nightbane by LCC, but I have a feeling he’d hunt me down and give me multiple paper cuts with the manuscript if I didn’t follow through xD. I don’t feel like taking that risk, Lionel, sorry xDxD. I also resolve to get a girlfriend neuter myself.

And in other news, I’ve begun the hapless “etching” phase on The Madonna Lily–you know, that lovely part where you take all those random threads of story in your head and put them on paper, then figure out which ones you want to use or not. I remember when I was doing this for Salamander. I had so much fun, especially since I was doing it on an intense sugar high on an Amtrak train at 11P at night. It was epic. Any way, I’ve figured out some pretty loose stuff about how I want the story to go, and a few ideas about which aspects of the screenplay version I want to keep. I know I want to start actually writing it over break, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to. I’d still like to get And the Silence Screamed and McKenna done before I really churn out anything else. Then again, it’d feel awesome to sink my teeth into something new.  Not much has been done on those two short stories since my last post.

With Christmas in traction, hopefully I’ll be able to get some stuff down. In the meanwhile, I hope you all (those who actually read my rambling shit xD) are having a happy holidays. Keep safe and eat lots ^^;

Spinner Uncategorized And the Silence Screamed, McKenna, New Year Resolutions 2008, Reminiscing, Shadower, The Madonna Lily

Ah, I love Finding Nemo ^^;

As I’ve mentioned a few times lately, I’m still trying to get back into the swing of things writing-wise. The process has been slow, given I’m really only working on short stories at the moment. I have this tendency to metaphor-cram when I work on shorter pieces which means a lot of working and reworking. Yesterday, I had Marina look over And the Silence Screamed and it turns out I’ve still got a lot of work to go before it’s anywhere near where I want it before I can ask for crits. I’m looking at one character who’s a complete cardboard cutout, and a bunch of unnecessary melodramatic moments amongst a host of other Benism errors.

I’ve also been working on some loose plans for Shadower, lately. Part of the upside about working on a story that you’ve already done 2-3 versions of is you get to know the structure pretty well. I already have a pretty good idea in my head how I want to do it–I just need to lay everything flat and see what I have. With Shadower, everything kind of builds to this one moment. I think I’ve mentioned before that most of the book is told in flashbacks, or rather, one long flashback followed by decisive action. It’s laying out the flash back that I need to worry about right now. That’s probably going to be the part of the book I write first, too because it leads, pretty much, right up to the present day when the story is being told.

It works out this way, since as soon as I get the plan together in a linear fashion, I’ll be able to write on and off while I work on The Madonna Lily and Twice Born.

I cross my fingers I’ll be able to get some stuff done on break.

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When I was going over my material for McKenna the other day, I realized how horrible my grasp on the Old Port of Quebec is. I’ve actually been to Quebec City twice–once in 2001, and again in 2002 for a school trip with my middle school. There’s so much that I find interesting about the place, how it’s the only walled city in North America, one of the oldest (founded in 1608), predominantly French speaking, and resembles Paris in a way Montreal never could. When most Americans think about Canada, they think about Toronto and basically any city with a sports team. Or they think about moose and maple syrup. Or something cliche like that.

Given I know absolutely nothing about Canada, I could have played the ignorance card and written about how Hope’s dad works in a maple syrup factory and goes hunting moose on the weekends while speaking French for no apparent reason. But my brain really doesn’t function like that. I was the kid who would force his dad to bring him to Penn Station in New York to take pictures of the trains so his renditions of it when recreating it with blocks could be more realistic. I kid you not.

So I did my research. Of course, I had to do research twice because the first time the information I pulled out of Wikipedia profoundly sucked. Like how I called all of Old Quebec “Basse-Ville.” For those of you unfamiliar with the French language, “Basse” means “lower,” thus, “Lower Town.” What wound up happening was that I completely botched my rendition of the shopping district, where most of the action in McKenna takes place.

I learned that the shopping streets in Old Quebec are actually two fold–Rue du Petit Champlain, which is basically below the walls and nearer to the port, and Rue Ste-Anne is the street that I was trying to portray originally. There’s more, obviously, but that’s what I got.

Actually researching this stuff also afforded me some other valuable information, too. If anyone ever has the question of whether or not it’s worth it to research your crap, even a little bit, do it. It’s very worth it, and your piece will only benefit from it. Even if it’s checking Google Maps for accurate street layouts.  So few writers do it, that it might even help make your work stand out.

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It’s snowing something epic up here in Vermont right now. Weather.com says the storm’ll dump 12-18 inches on us tomorrow, with an additional 3-5 possible tomorrow night. That’s gotta throw off finals somehow, right? Please?

I’m really looking forward for the semester ending, and not just because I’ve pulled seven all-nighters in the past two weeks. Lately I’ve been getting a wealth of ideas for both The Madonna Lily and Twice Born, and even some possible titles for the latter. Usually, I don’t share titles in progress, but I really don’t see the harm any more. Part of the problem I suffered in my writer’s slump was being far too stringent on myself. I’m hope maybe loosening up a bit will help with that. Not that I’m going to start posting full plot outlines on here or anything, but I’d like to get back to “yeah, here’s what I’m working on, and this could be the title!”

I’ve mentioned before I reused a lot of my material from older projects in Twice Born, and the current titles I have in mind reflect that. Right now, I’m looking to call book one Hellion, book two Salamander and book three Dragonfly. Alternatively, I could also call book three Nephilim and the first book Pendulum, but I’m pretty set on the second book being called Salamander. There are a lot of titles flying around right now, each having to do with plot threads I’ve been screwing with. A lot of the stuff I came up with for Hellion and Salamander (the originals) are being reused in the first two books. I think the last book is the only completely new story. But we’ll see how it works. Like I said in my last entry, these outlines will probably evolve massively before I’m done. There still are at least three other titles for the books I’ve also considered (Starling, Aura, Temujjin), but I have no idea for which book those titles will be connected to.

I think the wealth of titles I get for these projects is very telling of the sheer amount of material I wrestle with on a daily basis. I rarely suffer from a lack of material when I write–more how to write it in a coherent fashion and tying it in with what I want to say. This entire trilogy has a message behind it that’s been brewing inside of me for a while and part of my chaotic “renaming, never finishing” of these projects has to do with the maturing and developing of that message. It’s hard enough to apply a structure to my every day life, much less this work. Twice Born really is a fairly ambitious project, which is probably why I’m going to tackle the Madonna Lily first.

Some of you who visit frequently–and I admire your patience–may have noticed the new poster I put on the opening page. As I mentioned before, The Madonna Lily is something I’ve been putting about for the last three months. I originally intended it as some kind of thirty-page short work, but me being who I am, it’s already morphed into a much larger project with a life and themes of its own. Right now, although I’ve yet to sit down and do any real development (no time), it’s looking like a good prelude into the world of Twice Born. I’m far from figuring out any kind of schedule or release for it, but it’s been fun to screw with so far.

I really shouldn’t apologize for the way I keep pushing back my stuff. I’ve been working on Twice Born more-or-less since late 2004–just over three years–and the only two people who’ve read it are Marina and Allaya. I think it’s constant development has been a good thing. The current plot, with the exception of a few character names, is completely different from what it was in 2004 and it’s even switched genres. I think the reason I’m so uptight about my work is because I’m training myself to be a professional, and I find the constant dithering over materials and titles, especially in public, to be insanely unprofessional of me. Well, hopefully no more ^^;

For those of you who actually like reading my stuff, I’m still working on two short stories that I’ll be posting soon. Keep an eye on SE and IF for that.

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” A pirate walks into a bar with a steering wheel down his pants. The bartender eyes him nervously, and says, ‘Excuse me, Mr. Pirate. You’ve got a steering wheel down your pants.’

The pirate goes, ‘Arrr, I know! It’s drivin’ me nuts!’” 

Such are the state of finals in Bensville at the moment. In some ways, I think not having any written, sit down finals are a curse because it gives my professors an excuse to give us semester-long projects that drive us bonkers when we could be studying and not catching fire over how we haven’t done any work the entire semester.

In a way, I was pretty lucky for my Creative Writing class. Most of the writing I did over the course of the semester managed to fit into the projects somehow. It’s even given me an excuse to work on And the Silence Screamed a bit more recently. I’ve spent the day writing a new lead in for the story and making some notes on a few angles I’d like to add.

Part of the reason why I work in drafts is because my first drafts are always shit. For me, working in drafts has always been a no-brainer. You get the story down, you mature it, then you go back and rework stuff. But some of the people I’ve met at SE and IF work otherwise. Consistency has always been an issue. I’ve long since come to terms with the fact that outlines change, but I’ve never been able to change the outline as I go. I usually just scrap it and do it from scratch, which costs me time and patience. My upcoming projects are really going to test that, especially since I won’t have time to write the book through and then go back and edit. I pretty much need to have an idea of where it’s going when I start and any evolution and change will simply happen. Naturally, not everything is going to stay the same when you write a book. I had no idea where Salamander was going when I started it. I think it didn’t hit me until 100 pages in that the story was more about Eleni than Adrian and Cadogan. When I worked out the ending, I loved it, even though it did change several times through the course of my writing it. So it’s not that I need to know the ending for these books when I start. I need to have an idea.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been screwing with plans for The Madonna Lily, a spin-off story set in the Twice Born universe. It looks like I’ll probably get around to writing that before I do any Twice Born stuff, especially since the plot is far more linear and less epic. I think it’d be helpful to actually have a finished story under my belt before I attempt TB. Sure, it may set TB back a year or two, but it’s still something ^^;

Just gotta get this crap done and I can focus on it!

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My good friend Brandy did a little bit of compiling of her projects over in her Livejournal, and inspired me to do the same. In a way, this’ll go to show what I’m working on, what I’ve decided on and what I haven’t.

Novels

The Madonna Lily (working title)

Twice Born Series (working title): Untitled (Bk. 1), Salamander (Bk. 2), Dragonfly (Bk. 3).

The Shadower

Extinct Generation Series (working title): Untitled (Bk. 1), Untitled (Bk. 2).

Fairchild Project (working title)

Short Stories 

And the Silence Screamed (Draft Done)

Autumn Waker (Severe Editing Needed)

Train 67  (asldkhdfsda)

The Things They Say To You (also in a state of slfhfs)

Some of this stuff is still sketchy as all hell, but it pretty much fills you in on what I’ve  done and what I’m doing. I think the only relevant “new thing” on the novels list is “The Madonna Lily” which some of you may have noticed on the main page of the site. I’ll update on that when I feel I’ve got enough stuff to.

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For the past three months, I’ve been pondering writing this “supplement” story to Twice Born that would introduce a major facet of the universe I explore in the series. Not that it really needs it, though. The idea just came to me as a random thought that I started writing. Over time, it’s evolved into a bit of a monster.

This is exactly what happened with Salamander, if I remember correctly. It spent a good two-three months stewing before I sat down and began writing it as a supplement to Hellion. I guess that this is happening is some kind of sign that maybe I shouldn’t be focusing all my efforts on developing Twice Born. After all, this new story looks like a deal of fun and something I definitely could wet my feet with before I take the plunge into TB, which is much larger and ambitious. While this idea is anything but fun and games, it’d give me a chance to experiment with this world’s parameters before I go nuts.

Also, I’d be able to get it out sooner. At this point, I won’t be able to get any real work on Twice Born done until after New Years, while I already have a partial outline for Untitled. So while you won’t see any TB stuff til’ May/June, you’d probably get this new one in February at the earliest. I hope. I pray.

We’ll see how this goes. Consider me “throwing this out there.”

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I probably mentioned in a previous post that I have to write a 50+ page screenplay for my Screen writing class. What I probably didn’t mention was that it’s now 70 pages, almost done, a synthesis of about three previous projects and that now it’s given me an idea for a new book.

I hate being a writer sometimes. Now I have to effectively stop, and then outline this fairly complete idea I have of the book. It’s kind of like being hit in the face by a really big fish. Maybe I’ll discover I really don’t want to write this now and won’t. If I do, then I am in a load of trouble ^^;

In other news, I’m listening to the new Apocalyptica album, World’s Collide. If your interested in mostly-instrumental cello metal, this is a good band for you to listen to. Their new offering is a little different than what I’m used to from them.

Back to the grind.

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I’ve just realized–I’ve had this blog for nearly a week running and I haven’t made any updates on the progress of any of the work I’m doing right now. I suppose I’ll start with the obvious.

Technically, I’ve really been working on Twice Born for three years as of November 14. It’s a synthesis of two of my previous projects, Hellion and Salamander, neither of which I really finished (I did a draft and a half of Hellion, but that doesn’t count. Why? Because it sucked. Plain and simple.). Technically, this incarnation has been incubating for the past eight months as I’ve struggled with writing slumps, a seemingly perpetual block in my logic and lack of faith in my writing. In August, I sat down and penned a pretty complete outline of the first book and worked out some notes for the other two. Now, over three months later, I’ve got at least four different ways I want the series to go and about nine-thousand themes to deal with.

So I think it’s pretty much solidified I won’t get anything out in January. The natural assumption is that I just combined all the plans I have. It isn’t that easy. Such a haphazard approach to my work has doomed other projects of mine–Covenant and Salamander most notably. I promised myself after the “my characters are flat” issues in Salamander and the “my characters change every chapter” problem in Covenant that I’d put a lot more into character development the next book I did. Unfortunately this sort of means taking a lot more time to develop than I normally would. Of course, it’s not even that smooth. I don’t think I’ve touched Twice Born since October because of my mental state and work load, which is all good. Better ideas usually form in times I spend away from projects.

I do love the way my characters for this piece have been shaping out though. I’ve been with Lionel and Danielle for about three years now and finally I think I’ve gotten them right where I want them character-wise. Now I just sort of need to… learn more, as I will probably be with them for at least 800-1,000 pages ^^. I think what’s made me so interested in them now is how real their issues feel to me. Lionel, for example, has juvenile arthritis that has the tendency to be debilitating, among other issues. I’m looking forward to finding out just how that effects his role in the plot, much less his disposition.

In other news, there’s Shadower, which I haven’t really touched in a year. Yet in that time, I’ve gotten ideas that have made me so excited for the book. I really can’t say much or I’m afraid I’ll jinx it. So not much to say there.

Lately, I’ve been working on a couple of short stories, And the Silence Screamed and What Dreams Bring (a working title). The former I actually began writing in August but set aside because I couldn’t figure out how the hell I wanted to pull the story off. I won’t give too much away in case you actually want to be surprised by it, but it deals with  the urges some people have to impress their parents. Can’t say much more than that, other than the fact that it’s around 11 pages and has many comic elements (At least, I find it funny…).

The latter, What Dreams Bring is just something I thought up while falling asleep one night. I’ve been trying to do an exploratory piece that allows me to explore the world of Twice Born for a while now, but I haven’t really been able to settle on a set story. Fortunately, this has kind of done it for me. I guess that’s all I can say for now.

Wow, I’m such a cryptic asshole.  ^^;

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Most artists know there’s a fine line between inspiration and downright plagiarism. This was a problem I ran into frequently during my early web-design days. Back in the day, if you wanted to get into website design, you either started a Pokemon or a Final Fantasy site. Sure, I liked Pokemon, and later on, Final Fantasy.  Problem was, I wasn’t really dedicated to creating a website for either. I just wanted something to do. So, I put all my effort into design by finding websites and examining their code, and sometimes, learning by recreating the layouts myself.  It was through this that I learned HTML, some CSS and how to navigate Photoshop. The problem was, I had little-to-no design originality of my own. At least, I didn’t put enough effort into my design then to be original. I got into trouble several times when trying to launch projects that bore “too much” or “uncanny” resemblance to other websites.

Sure, I did do original work sometimes, but those projects usually inconveniently never went anywhere, like the Final Fantasy project I tried to pick up in 2003. Most of the problem was the sheer wealth of “good” web designers out there, whose tricks I wanted to learn and couldn’t help but be inspired by. Unfortunately, what got me into trouble is taking the inspiration too far into something that wasn’t “inspired” and more “ripped”.

This is a problem in writing, too, and one of my biggest fears as a writer. I remember back when I was doing Hellion, I had a rather unnatural obsession with the movie Master and Commander, which resulted in an entire 100-page sequence in the book that was basically ripped directly from the movie. I’m lucky no one besides Marina ever read it because even now thinking about that sequence makes me want to commit seppuku. The whole thing was just so goddamn random when you look at the entire book, which was for the most part, Tolkienesque high fantasy.

Fact of the matter is, we’re exposed to art all the time, whether it’s movies, books, television or a piece of work on deviantArt. Sometimes, a work touches us so profoundly we feel the need to recreate it and make its emotion our own. That’s where you begin to run into danger of copying. Think Inheritance Cycle, which shares elements of both Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. It’s a pretty well known fact that Paolini’s a major sci-fi fantasy fan and he’s cited both works as major inspiration. The problem is how it shows through in his work that makes readers raise their eyebrows.

Mid-way through writing Salamander, I picked up the His Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman. I remember very vividly a conversation I had with Marina about how I was terrified to read the books because I was “afraid I would be inspired”. Will, who is basically my genre-opposite in terms of material had been ranting to me about how “amazing” the ending of the third book was and how I had to read it. It wasn’t until after I gave up Salamander that I decided to read it.

And God damn if it didn’t become my favorite book series of all time. Once again, I was lucky that my profound affection for the series came in the all-time worst creative slump I’ve ever experienced (eight months of over-analyzing my style to the point where writing was impossible).  I did do a couple of short projects at time that tapped into the “Adam and Eve” metaphor from His Dark Materials–which never went anywhere because I realized pretty early on I have little to no interest in the facet of faith that Genesis deals with. I haven’t even read the fucking Bible. Yet. I want to.

I think we’re all prone to the Unintentional Fan Fiction syndrome at one point or another in our growth as a writer. Some people become molded by it, where others don’t even seem to be touched by it. I get the feeling it’s a question of learning where to put your respect in terms of the artists around you. Some people have this tendency of respecting authors and artists so much they’d recreate their work thinking that if it’s tried-and-true, they’ll meet some kind of success. But in the end, what is success but a gray area between self-fulfillment and validation? Do you seek success by writing something that makes you happy, or something that will make others happy?

Ultimately, I think what the writer should strive for is self-satisfying before anything else. None of my work has ever been rated for a particular audience. In fact, I think my non-audience rating has annoyed some people I’ve shown my work to. I also have that “showing people incomplete drafts” problem.  I don’t anyone’s ever really seen my completed “the best of my abilities” work. Hell, I’ve never seen it. All I’ve got is the vision.

In the state of mind that is writing, that’s not enough.

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