Spinwork Blog

I was starting to get sick of the last post being on top so I figured I’d prof a brief update on things. Lanternfly continues to grow toward 100,000 words and 200 pages, which it should break sometime in the next couple of days. Hopefully I’ll make it before Saturday, when I’ll be zooming off to New Mexico to throw down with my birth-family.

I took most of the weekend off writing after a crippling case of burn-out pretty much made it impossible to write anything without wanting to do bodily harm. After some rest, a few notes, and a rehash, I think I’m pumping in again. I suppose two things can be learned from this. One, if you’re writing stops being fun at any point–take a break. Do something else. You’ll only drive yourself mad. And two, if you think you have a plan, throw it in the trash. Repeatedly if you have to. The proverbial trash of a writer who plans even a chapter ahead is a fertile landfill of material where ideas tend to grow new limbs and apendages, I’m starting to find. For example, a massive piece of the ending fell into place for me today. We’ll see how long that goes before I trash it again, but the destination is still ambiguous in my mind and far enough off that I’m still excited by it. That’s what counts, I guess.

In other news, reading over that last post really makes me feel like a douchebag. I even considered axing it for a while. My decision to keep it up was based on several factors–mostly that I really am done with writing forums of any sort, and that I really do feel like there’s a definite lack of “zest” in any of them–only people talking big. And that’s just gotten too annoying. That, and I’m afraid if I stickaround I’ll become one of those angry “remember the old days” elitists waving his cane around and some shit like that. As if I’m not outspoken enough about fantasy as it is.

Back to the hole. Thanks for reading.

Spinner Daily Blogging, IS 2009

Over the last four years, I’ve had a bit of experience moderating and owning writing-related forums in various corners of the internet. I’m all for workshops, and resources up for helping writers. In 2006, I attempted to create my own. What I learned from it, and others is that writing and the internet are incongruous nine times out of ten, due to the rampant elitism and romanticized beliefs that comes from the craft. I swear, the internet is one of the most unforgiving cesspools of arrogance on the planet, and in the case of writers, most of them come from young people who look at writers like Rowling, Meyers, Pratchett and others and falsely construe writing as a goldmine. That the concept of the web lends itself to these fantasies aside, I’m sort of alarmed by the sheer number of people who strut about acting like they’re the future owners of the Newberry Award, or some shit like that.

My creative writing class had a discussion recently where our professor asked us what the point of telling a story was. The debate lasted about fifteen minutes, debating everything from the depth of character, and relating to the desire to live vicariously through the experiences of others, until he finally gave us his two cents–that the idea of telling a story is to have an effect. The answer was so obvious (most of us agreed) that we’d spent the entire time explaining things under that very pretense without realizing that was the answer. I think its needless to say most of us had a “duh” moment after that.

After spending so much time on the internet though, I can’t help but wonder if that’s common knowledge. Recently there was a thread at Inheritance Forums (if you have an account, check it out–otherwise you’re locked out) entitled “Depth of Writing” that discussed deepness in works of fiction. Virtually everybody who posted, aside from defending their work, or talking about it like people actually cared, seemed averted to the idea of allowing their writing to be  “deep.” The first thought that came to my head was, “What, you mean you want your stuff to be shallow, then?” I can’t help but wonder if “deep” is being equated to “thought provoking” in this instance, which if it is, I’m sort of amused that people can say that and attempt to title their work things like, “Deep Depths” and “The Shadow of Darkness”–and other crap that endeavors to sound voluminous and esoteric. That’s not to say profundity and thought-provoking are the same thing–not at all. The human mind, whether through living or entertainment, always forms an opinion on an experience. I tend to find the stuff that hits me hardest takes subtle advantage of that habit and either puts me in some state of moral quandary or self-relative realization. In short, it makes me think–not because of, “oh well hey, that’s deep,” but it’s something I hadn’t considered before.

If fear of provoking a questioning of morals is what aversion to writing depth is, then I officially give up on humanity.

Hypothetically saying that is the case, it’s difficult not to wonder if this unwitting acceptance of one’s state of being has anything to do with the supine nature of our society’s ability to cope with ethical challenges. Of course some degree of ignorance is unavoidable in any society but American culture seems to be founded on dismissing the difficult crap and letting the government take care of it for you—in effect, intellectual taxation without representation—while partaking in mindless enjoyment of the media, which inspires us to fantasize about best case scenarios and escapism.

And so it returns to the opposition of provoking thought in writing. I have to assume that the idea of writing to have an effect really isn’t something everyone knows about or people wouldn’t seemingly be so afraid of doing it. I’m not saying that the only way to affect a reader is to plunge them ass-deep into the river of moral anguish or anything either. All I’m saying is that the phobia exists is something to be worried about.

So how did I start this again? Oh yeah, the internet and writers.

I don’t pretend to be any authority on writing. The only reason I have a blog is to whine about stuff. I don’t force anyone to read it, and lately, after all the crap I’m reading about people acting like their writing is God, I’m tempted to just stop blogging about plot and shit all together and stick to what little advice I feel I can give about structure and what-not. If there is one philosophy I stick to, that any writer should stick to, is that absofuckinglutely nobody cares about your ideas. If ideas sold in writing, those would go to bookstores and not the 300 to 500-odd page manuscripts folks take months to years to churn out. I’m sick of people talking about what they do, how they do it, how they’re different—and then never finishing a damn thing. It’s all in the execution, and anybody who listens to an idiot who can’t even get through the first chapter of their damn manuscript and tries talking about writing really ought to be shot.

That also should include listening to me at this point, so I’ll wrap this up. I’d like to start making a change around here with the stuff I post—if anyone reads it, prolly no one but my blogroll. Lately I’ve been stockpiling some stuff I want to read this summer after I get Lanternfly done. All I’ve done lately is write, but really not read. Besides, I’d like to get out of my “genre” (wait, I don’t believe in genres) for a bit and see what I can let in on my stuff.

Until then, thanks for reading.

Spinner Daily Blogging Rants, the internet

I guess now I know why Pullman maintains that a first draft is a fragile entity that must be protected. I made a huge mistake using my unfinished Lanternfly material for my advanced creative writing class scenes, and reading over some of the commentary  makes me want to throw the book out a window (mind you, this is after getting home after finishing my 5 pages early today–which is enough to make me want to dance). The study, as well as numerous other experiences in and outside of my self-training have taught me that it is virtually impossible for me to achieve anything NEAR readability the first time around. I’ve had entire stories killed for me by showing first drafts to people out of pride at the seeds I’ve laid. I don’t know what’s kept me going with Lanternfly–raw stubbornness, maybe. Perhaps idiocy. Most likely both.

My therapist often questions whether or not my unwillingness to show incomplete work to people is actually some complex regarding the security of my innermost thoughts. I suppose that’s partially true. But if you’ve ever had somebody miles away from the plot or content of your work tearing apart things that are only partially developed, you’d want to keep them to yourself, too. The fact of the matter is, until the damn thing’s in book form, the story might as well be an innermost thought. You don’t try to raise a half-born child–it just doesn’t work. The same goes with my first drafts. This reaction reinforces why I always have, and henceforth always will keep my serious work as many miles away from my academics as humanly possible. You can’t judge and attempt to interpret something that has yet to be fully interpreted by its maker.

On a brighter note, Lanternfly has staggered painfully past it’s halfway point (I finished Chapter 15 today, now kicking into 16), and will probably triumphantly breach 100,000 words and 200 pages sometime in the next week pending I haven’t inadvertantly crippled my will to go on by reading those comments. Now the most prudent thing to do would be to mine my infinitely deep catacombs of bad ideas for something I can use for class.

[/whining]

Spinner Daily Blogging, Hellion

One of my biggest helps and detriments this semester has been having an Advanced Creative Writing class alongside my independent study. But where the class hasn’t been a hindrence with motivation, it’s given me some great tools to move forward and analyze my writing. I figured I’d share a few quotes from my professor from the first five-odd weeks of class. Hopefully even if these are confusing to some people, unique interpretations will still be helpful. I know they were for me in many ways.

“Every bad writer in the world has created a character whose job is to tell the truth.”

“She [character in story] doesn’t have the answers, she [character in story] has the questions.”

“YOU DO NOT KNOW ENOUGH to write what you want to write. Always research.”

“A strong character is one who is divided against themselves.”

“Always surprise the reader—without it there is no energy, no anticipation, no excitement.”

On “Fully Realized”

“Fully realized–one of those phrases like, finding your voice—one of those bullshit phrases.”
Has to do with your ability to transfer not just a little but a lot from your mind to the page. One dimension of that is setting.

“When creating a work of fiction, you’re not just providing a bunch of information—you’re trying to provide an experience. Recreating for the reader an experience that you’ve had. The notion of recreating an experience is “essential” and “impossible.”

“Realize” in context—to make real.

To better writing, one must draw from experiences that make you think and imagine more.

Everything is reducible and expandable.

A list is the most underused form of writing. People don’t tend to use these when they write fiction or non-fiction.

By doing this—writing in lists—it forces him [Sherman Alexie] to write in particulars.

“I want to encourage you to think all the time—I want my reader to share in my mental vision of this character, but I want them to see it in action, events, and drama.”

“In your narratives, you need to play with time.”

“Linear storytelling isn’t how people think.”

One of human’s gifts is to construct reality from small amounts of data.

You remembers certain details, and no certain details, and fills up the space that you don’t remember. In effect, we are constantly fooling ourselves, but we’re providing ourselves the necessary fill in for life to take place.

It is impossible to reconstruct/remember things the way a camera or a tape recorder might.

Tim’s suggestion: when you’re thinking about presenting a character and a pair of characters, is give us a scene, give us the narrative, give us the real time narrative, but don’t be afraid to mess it up and go into other dimensions as well. You don’t have to s tick to the real. Most of what goes on in our mind is hypothetical. It WILL make it more confusing, but it will make it much more energized and interesting.

Be alert to your own thought process while writing. You can often make bad decisions for what seems like good reasons—handcuff yourself that way.

To avoid stereotypes, focus on details the reader is not expecting. Be more detailed.

The more outrageous or bizarre you write something—the more matter of factly you want to write about it.

Its helpful to be able to see things through your character’s eyes, but have some perspective on the character so you can see them as other people see them.

Resist the temptation to write back-story as story unless you can write it as scenes.

Any scene or any chapter or any story or any novel—you’ve gotta think of the beginning as something that has impact and draw’s the reader in.

Every paragraph should begin with a sense of impact.

The verb, the first word and the last word are the most important words in a sentence. Verbs are about action or change, or something affecting something, which is at the heart of the narrative. The weakest verb in the English language is the verb “to be.”

By starting the sentence with there is—the first words of the sentence are useless.

In medias res—in the middle of the action.

Do not underestimate the value of verbs of motion.

“Penises freak me out—they’re like overgrown worms wearing Darth Vader helmets.”

Spinner Daily Blogging Brookes says, class notes

There are days where I wish that I was an artist instead of a writer–or both (is that really too much to ask?). Have you ever had a thought or an image in your head, and all of a sudden you’re slamming whatever’s in front of you and saying, “I WANT TO DRAW THAT”? It happens to me pretty much regularly. Before I even began Hellion–back in 2003–I had this idea that I was going to make a webcomic about a bunch of kids in a metal band who went on wacky adventures. That of course never went ahead because I simply cannot draw, and most of the stuff got assimilated into my other stuff. That, and if I ever did a webcomic, it’d probably wind up or this sort of caliber (you do not want to click it, and if you do, yes, it’s wearing a tophat). That, and anyone who’s seen my handwriting will know I have the dexterity of a drunken turkey.

I think what’s always annoyed me is that the words I come up with for this stuff will never live up to what I see in my head. I guess that’s sort of the catch-22 about writing a book that trades heavily in the concept of dream and perception–you really do have to let your reader do most of the imagining. Its true for any book, really. I forget if it was Erik or my creative writing teacher who said this, but we were talking about movie adaptations of stuff and how readers are usually all “WTF” about how stuff is rendered (lets think of the Inkheart and Eragon movies here). I think I realized there’s a sanctity about being left to the mercy of our visual imaginations because its a way of making the story your own. I know I probably picture Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Goodman Brown much differently than my English teacher did when she first had us read it. Alternatively, I know that I picture the imagery of Opeth’s Damnation album differently than Mikael Akerfeldt did when he wrote the lyrics. In the end, its all up to intepretation.

The reason for this babble is that lately I’ve gotten criticism from two of my professors about “over writing” imagery. Its not even that I’m dragging my feet about it. Writing lately has been going swimmingly (172 pages, 89k, baybay!). I suppose I’m just venting artistic frustrations (wait… I’m an artist?)

Speaking of writing, I’m fast approaching the half-way point of Lanternfly. In six days, it’ll have been a year since I began working on the draft, the longest I’ve kept on a first draft of something and not wanted to kill it or myself. I think I’ve begun to recognize a principle part of my process is seeding my work, and then coming back to unearth the scenes individually in the second. As Erik has told me, the first draft is the hardest part. So I really just gotta stick it out until I’ve got the end-to-end in my hands.

If there is one thing I must stress more than anything to all you other aspiring-novel writers out there–before you wet yourselves with concepts, characters and plot twists, LEARN YOUR PROCESS. If there has been one godsend in this, its been knowing what comes next in the grind. Do not shoot for something awesome the first go around–you will fail miserably. You will write shitty scenes. You will write inconsistant characters. You will want to kill yourself (or maybe that’s just me). No matter what happens, KEEP. GOING.

And so ends my crackpot internet-delivered advice for the day. Keep pluggin’ ^_^

Spinner Daily Blogging, IS 2009 artwork, IS2009, Lanternfly, Rants

When I started Lanternfly, the urge to write manifested itself simply: get downtown, into cafe, use rocket  launcher to destroy anyone in my way. Over the past four-odd weeks, that had dulled to something more like “slump onto bus, be an asshole about what music I want to listen to, get to cafe, spend 45 minutes talking to coworkers while deciding which cupcake I want, WAIT FOR TEA TO COOL, unpack laptop, STARE OUT WINDOW IN SLACK-JAWED ANGUISH, SIT DOWN–” you get the idea.

Such is what happens when you start viewing your writing as a project and not something fun. This is why I avoid all sorts of forward projections about my book length and why I’ve (for the most part) stopped outlining. The last few weeks, this past one in particular, have been less than fabulous for my sanity. After several days on end of staring, slack jawed at the manuscript, screaming at the top of my lungs, frightening away customers and creating several rifts in dimensional space, it looks like I’ve got my focus back on things.

So yeah, there’s a quick update on that. I’m going to go downtown now before I sprout wings and fly there. xD

Spinner IS 2009

If I have a greatest flaw as a budding writer, it is that my urge to create sometimes overshadows my will to learn. To be honest, I don’t think I’ve had much of a learner’s will for anything other than development processes since I graduated high school. Trauma will do that to you, really. If you’ve ever had to unpack a poem in four steps, or dissect what Franz Kafka is trying to say in the first chapter of Metamorphisis over the course of a week, then you probably feel my pain. That I generally had an unpleasant academic experience in both the schools I attended before college also may have something to do with it.

Lately, though, I’ve been trying to quit my readophobia by picking up a number of books on my own. The first was Huxley’s Brave New World, which I was inspired to read by the Iron Maiden song, as stupid as that may sound. I managed to finish it the other day and I really, really enjoyed it. I’ve got a few others on my list, too, like Sound in the Fury, and 1984. What I hope is that I’ll actually get a decent balance of read/write going on. I think a large part of the reason I get so frustrated with my stuff is that I tend to “run dry” every so often. Hopefully a healthy intake will allow me to combat that.

Danielle’s character continues to drive metaphorical nails into my leg. Last night it reached the point where I realized whatever crude literary GPS tracker I tagged on the girl back when I took a break from Lanternfly in August had either fallen off or gone dead. Its not as if I haven’t lost characters before. Anyone who wants a prime example of protagonist-loss should read the untouched draft of Shadower. I think I lost Hope so many times that I completely changed her character at some point. Salamander was even worse. I didn’t think it was possible to lose characters I hadn’t actually ever found until I did it. Yeah, shit.

After a few exercises last night, I think I’m finally back on track with her. We’ll see, though. I’m very annoyed at how this has been ruining my writing days.

That’s my update. Back to the grind.

Spinner Daily Blogging, IS 2009

My writing lately has been feeling really forced, so tonight I spent most of my time on a page-long bit of freewriting to try to find my voice again. It didn’t really work out to well, but its good enough to share anyway, I suppose…

Marbles

Tucked into the corner of the park bench across from the playground, Danielle Bruegger pretended to read. Her feet tapped idly on the faded and peeling paint, matching the tune of the strains of a distant street jazz band she’d seen playing near the entrance to the park. Her eyes flicked indifferently across the page several times, and then raised, gazing in the direction of the playground. They cast about, soaking in the playing children and scattered parents in jerky images and snapshots before returning to the page in front of her.

Her feet, which had stopped tapping for these hurried glances, resumed in their echo of the distant tune.

Danielle lifted the book against her knees, flipped a page, and then reached to the bulging leather pouch that hung at her hip. Without looking, she undid the buttoned flap and wriggled in her hand. After some rattling and clacking about, she withdrew some of the contents, and, arranging her shirt in a tiny bowl about her stomach, deposited them.

The marbles rolled about in the cloth cup, gathering like droplets of water in a leaf. Once they had settled, Danielle plucked up three—there were six in total—and popped them one by one into her mouth like candies, rolling one under her tongue and the other two into the hollows of her cheeks where they wouldn’t attract attention.

She closed her eyes and lifted the fresh images of the playground from the sticky spider-web of the day’s other offerings. They were like little scraps of paper, some no more dynamic than a photograph—a boy about to catch a ball, two children hanging from the monkey bars, two sisters huddled in the sandbox with shovels and an incomplete sandcastle before them. Others captured a few seconds of movement—a girl pulling on a siva boy’s tail as he winced, a laughing boy flying aloft on a swing pushed by an exuberant older brother, a father coaxing his frightened daughter down from the top of the jungle-gym where she’d planted herself, arms outstretched for her to jump into.

Danielle poured through them, arranging them and rearranging them in her mind, examining them like puzzle pieces. Their colors flowed through her like the windblown seeds of fur trees through spring grass—catching this one, snatching that one, the rest rolling on by. Slowly, new colors began to form. The blues became more than blue, the sky-like qualities of their tones lifting beyond merely loftiness, the yellows brighter than sunlight, more vibrant than flames.

With carful hands, Danielle set each color into its place until at last all was in order. Then, she popped the marbles out of her mouth and wiped them against her shirt.

She looked them over. Everything seemed to be in order.

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