Spinwork Blog

The other day, I had an in-between day, a rarity when I’m up at college. In order not to be bored out of my skull, I did something I haven’t done in a while: I curled up and read.

Reading regularly is one of the things I lost in high school. Something about reading 50-odd pages of this or that classic a night, followed by 45 minutes crammed with tearing it apart didn’t sit well with me, so I just stopped. Between then and now, I’ve only read a few books, which were usually stuff my dad would give me, or that my friend Marina would recommend. After a while, I began to feel like my writing was starting to suffer, so I knuckled down and began picking things up here and there–first, Cat’s Cradle by Vonnegut, which was fucking hilarious, and then Brave New World by Huxley, which completely changed my perspective on science fiction. Finally, I finally picked up The Fountainhead, which coincidentally, Marina gave me as a birthday present way back in 2007–and read it in about three weeks.

I’m not sure what it was about that book, but it’s since turned me into a voracious reader. At the moment, I’m trying to resist the urge to pick up more than one at a time–which I’ve already failed at by reading Atlas Shrugged and Breakfast of Champions simultaneously. In my defense, Atlas Shrugged is dense and long-winded as fuck, and the sex scenes–of which there have been several–remind me of British tea ceremonies interrupted by violent, individual-crushing, possessive ravaging. From the ceiling in the form of Batman. I’m taking it slowly, in doses, breaking to laughing my ass off at Vonnegut’s drawing of *ahem* beavers in Champions whenever Rand decides to spend 30 pages to detail Dagny Taggart’s quest to find the creator of some random static-powered atmospheric motor.

What? Yeah… pacing fail.

Nonetheless, breaking my reading phobia came at just the right time. This past summer was an absolute slog for writing. It was one of those times where I knew I had to make my process more adaptable, and was fighting tooth and nail to get writing in between that and my job. I think in all my sessions of muse-abuse, I’d completely forgotten the distance you sometimes need to put between yourself and your work, and that time can be just as constructive as the process of creating. That’s what’s always been detrimental to my working–I’m sometimes so fucking desperate to get something down that I’ll go into full tunnel vision and burn myself a new one. Hopefully reading will mean I won’t be so hard on myself, and that I’ll allow myself to do that rather than obliterating my sanity.

Or hang out with friends. I’d forgotten about that.

Thanks for reading!

Spinner Daily Blogging 2009, Atlas Shrugged, Brave New World, Breakfast of Champions, Cat's Cradle, reading, The Fountainhead

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