Spinwork Blog

Writing dramatic structure into an extended piece of writing is one of the most excruciating aspects of the process for me. When you look at it, two, or even five pages a day, five days a week is such a pain. You start, you stop, you laugh, you cry, you go through monsoons of inspiration and salty droughts while your life breezes on around you and your unconscious, the refuse filtering through the cracks.

I don’t pretend to have an unconscious any more or less complex or vulnerable than the next jack, but there’s something annoying about being on the precipice of finishing the first major milestone in the process and hitting a brick wall. Its not the first time this has happened to me. Writing my third book, Shadower, saw me hit a rather profound pile of this about six paragraphs from the end, stalling me two months. You gotta wonder if it’s you in moments like this, especially when you run into it on two separate occasions in two very different books two years apart.

For those who follow my twitter will know chapter 25 was a bit of a pain in the ass to write. Anyone who’s racing to finish something for whatever reason will know how giant a deadline looks when you’ve gotta redo a part of the peice three times. I guess I can chalk that up as another learning experience–rewriting a full 15  pages 3 times in 48 hours. Its not that I don’t know what I’m writing–or that my muse is an emotionally disturbed, bipolar slumbitch who requires heavily bribery to operate properly–but that there’s so much other shit going on. Papers, projects, more papers, housing selection, class selection, half the people at work bailing for new jobs. it weighs on you after a while.  But this is where stubbornness comes in to play, I’m learning, and although I probably won’t get 26 done til Thursday night, I know I can get everything settled by Sunday. Just gotta push, push, push.

I’m happy to say that Lanternfly has held together as a  much better than any of my other efforts. Its not perfect by any means, and it won’t be for a long while, but the story’s there, and I feel like its definitely workable into something I can finally finish and show people. I feel like I’ve finally found a process I can parry with–one that hasn’t evolved all that much since the Writing a Novel Guide I posted sometime ago (minus the outline bit). There are still things to tweak (I’m not sure if my going a draft without any sort of edits are going to work in the long run–I have a lot of shit to rework in this book), but I’m liking the majority of what I’ve set down. Also, Advanced Creative Writing has been very helpful with research methods. I hope to keep that going.

In other news, my 22nd birthday was on Tuesday. I’m at that age now where birthdays have really lost their charm. People keep asking me if I did anything special. Aside from jury duty forms (FUCK), and a nice card from my grandmother, I endured two classes and went to a Hibachi place with my friends where the chef set onions on fire and sculpted a dollop of rice into a stunted choad with balls. Maybe when I’m 25, or 30, I’ll do something exciting. For now, I’d like to focus on graduating.

Thanks for reading.

Spinner Daily Blogging, Hellion, IS 2009, Shadower IS2009, Lanternfly, Shadower