Spinwork Blog

A week as has passed since I finished the first draft of Lanternfly and I’m really surprised by how empty I feel without something to do every day. This has got to be the first (and longest) period in the past two years where I haven’t gone to some cafe and sat down to write. When it wasn’t Lanternfly, it was Endoflux, or a short story of some kind, and one of my many tangent projects, and if it wasn’t actual writing, it was conceptualizing. The other day I sat down to look at all the material I have and its sort of shocking–especially the amount of stuff I did in 2007 that *wasn’t* actual writing. Not that I did much of anything writing-related in 2007, but… ah.

According to Erik, the fun part starts with editing. Not that the last 170,000 words weren’t fun, or anything, but the entire effort of actually writing something that I’d eventually have to edit was sort of like coaxing myself to jump off a cliff. In fact, a good portion of the process this time around was writing with editing in mind. I don’t know when, but I came to a point where I just went “fuck it” and started banging away. That really made all the difference, and that’s when I really started having fun.

Now that I think about it, I’m really looking forward to editing, especially since it means I get to revisit and reexplore many of my characters. It also means learning more about the drafting process, and how much room I can give myself in the initial writing. The biggest problem I ran into in the independent study was toward the end where I ran out of time to develop the concepts and characters of the chapters I was about to write. The last three, while decently written, are a complete mess and a prime example of what happens when you don’t space out the bones you throw readers. There’s also the first three, which were when I thought I was writing a story about some girl whose father worked on steam engines in Quebec City and the relationship with the girl’s mother made her run away up there. Well, I still wound up in Quebec City–nearly wound up in Germany, however the fuck that came about–but with a very different story

Something I noticed in writing is that not all the characters came to me fully formed at the end. In fact, one particular character, one who actually used to be the protagonist of the whole damn series, and will assume that role later, is the worst off. In fact, I pretty much ignored his development completely in the first draft just because I had no idea “how much” the reader needed. Now that I’ve got the book down, I’m thinking, I’m hoping, that I can go back and tinker with him a bit and get him how I want. That’s the glorious thing about the drafting process is you can consciously allow a few of these. Or at least, that’s what I think right now. Maybe I’ll wind up revisiting him and shoot myself a quarter chapter after his introduction or something. Fuck.

Last Friday, I had my last meeting with Erik about the independent study. Idiot that I am, I was half asleep through most of it being that I was up late doing things that one should not do when they have to be awake at 9AM. One of the best parts about working with him has been the manner of his encouragement, and caution of holes I could possibly fall into while writing. I think the most important question he asked me was sometime right after we started and he asked why making dreams concrete was important. I sort of sat there for a minute and was like, “wait… what?” And then realized he’d hit on something I hadn’t thought about directly. I had thought about it, but in that really abstract way you do when you’re hashing out an idea and want to leave the specifics out for the time being. In the end, that conversation helped me come up with a pretty important bit of info, and I was able to write merrily again.

There was also a lot of good reading over the course of the study. The two that affected me the most are the ones he gave me about character and the idea of the villain as a catalyst as they taught me to view my characters and my antagonist as humans and not devices. It opened my eyes to a lot of possibilities, not just for the book, but for the series as a whole that I’m really eager to explore.

I could write a million more things about this, and how much fun I had on the first draft of Lanternfly, but I’d be getting ahead of myself. After all, the book’s not done yet and I still have a lot of stuff left to do before I can let anyone read it. What I’m going to do now is enjoy the rest of my “writing vacation,” finish out the semester, see my family and then kick back into things again. And make lattes. Can’t forget the lattes.

Thanks for reading!

Spinner Daily Blogging, Endoflux Theory, Hellion, IS 2009, Short Works 2007, draft one, Erik, IS2009, Lanternfly, Rants, school

I didn’t want to say it before in fear of jynxing myself to a gruesome death, but looks like things are finally hitting their stride with Lanternfly. And by hitting stride, I mean 18 pages since Sunday, a chapter and a third, and a few realizations about characters and themes. On top of having a lot to tackle between work and school, I’m pretty proud of that figure. I’ll stop breakdancing in joy now.

You know, I’d always been fairly proud of my weekly output, but after this project, I don’t think I’m ever going to take my daily/weekly goals as seriously as I have been ever again, unless I’m either terminal or on some kind of epic deadline. While the stuff I’m pumping out feels pretty decent, there’s a part of me that hates this feeling of flying by the seat of my pants. Whats good about now is that I’m actually actively working on things in spare minutes. I somehow managed 250 words between my breaks at work, which aside from probably conjuring really awkward mental images of some manically laughing dude in a Starbucks apron hunched over a Macbook, really shows I’m back to my late-2005, early-2006 interest levels in my writing.

For the last three odd years, those are the days I’m most nostalgic about. I mean, who doesn’t like to remember the days of being so prolific that their Spanish teacher used to shit on them for writing a fight scene in class? Where every free period was spent in the library kicking out edits? Jeez, I remember when final projects rolled around, the librarian, who was my advisor, had to take my manuscript away so I’d actually do the work. Back in 2007 during my whole “FUCK LIFE CANNOT WRITE” thing, I always looked back on that as my golden time.

Ah, those were the days. Good to see em’ again. ^_^

I think one of the best parts of what I’m writing now is the ideas and material from the old Hellion that have crept in. Like, OLD, OLD, 2004-2005 style stuff. For those unfamiliar with the history, Aura was the title of the first book in the Hellion story and had many of the same characters (Lionel, Danielle, Kit, Beuran, among others) as Lanternfly does. In fact, I think about 90% of the major characters from the original make an appearance in the books at some point–not that anyone will know when they read. Only two people ever read substantial portions of the original (and have since been killed). I suppose it’ll just be a nice in-joke to share with their–um… souls.

Eee. Excited writer! ^_^

Thanks for reading!

Spinner Daily Blogging, Hellion, IS 2009 2005, 2006, 2007, Lanternfly, old Hellion

Over the years, I’ve just accepted the fact that it’s impossible to write in whatever living situation I’m in. Dorms are particularly hard because you’ve got people around. Not that I don’t write around people every day. I mean, I write in coffee shops where there are anywhere between 5 to 25 people around me at any given time. It really just depends how zoned out I can get.

Yet somehow, in my home and in my apartment, I’m never able to write. Its probably because of the constant distractions–the want to pull up AIM or MSN, or even SE and chat with people on there. I never get that in public because I’m so detached from the people around me. Honestly, you can find yourself a lot more comfortable in the anonymity of a crowd at some points. That, and when you’re listening to music that drowns everything out, it’s easier.

I experimented while I was home over Thanksgiving with writing in my room, the first I’ve really done since I wrote Hellion, by putting on headphones and listening to some Soilwork. I wound up polishing off And the Silence Screamed in that session. It was really fulfilling in the end.

In a way, it’s kind of nice to be coming out of this massive writing slump I’ve been in lately. First, because I’m not taking myself as seriously as I did and because I can experiment with different environments and mediums (And the Silence Screamed is my second attempt at writing in first person). For instance, I’ve been thinking about adding another cafe to my collection: this lovely tea house on Church Street with a really nice selection of teas. Its a little ritzier than what I’m used to (you can’t smoke hooka at Starbucks–not that I smoke). I think it’d be nice to deviate from the $5.00 beverages for a while, especially since I spend so much money on feeding myself now days.

I have such a shitty diet. First half of the semester, I lived off of Dominos Chicken Kickers and pizza. I live in an apartment and I have a limited meal plan, so I technically should be shopping for myself. Yeah, fail that. Lately, I’ve been dancing between Chinese and actually eating the caf food once in a while. When I do eat. I’m gaining and losing weight at the same time.

Aside from excessive distraction, there’s another aspect of my living situation that causes me some issues. Lately, I’ve taken to torrenting. A lot. My roommates and me torrent a shared terrabyte a week. Most are usually between my roommates who are better equipped in the hard-drive department than me, but lately I’ve taken to watching Clannad, an anime based on a Japanese video game. I’m torrenting the first eight episodes as we speak.

I often fail at recognizing how much anime influences my writing. Stuff like Fooly Cooly, Negima, Love Hina, and Chobits really have had a much greater effect on how I view themes than I thought. I noticed while watching the first two episodes of Clannad how real certain animes can be. Naturally, you really can’t call stuff by Ken Akumatsu or FLCL “real”, per se, but all of them have various elements that ignite that “oh, I’ve felt that” spark. It’s those character dimensions that rise above the genre and medium cliches that make me enjoy anime so much. Not every anime has squealing girls and panty shots.

Realistic, developed characters. That’s something I’ve always wanted to bring to my writing. Rowling did it brilliantly in Harry Potter, and shows like Lost constantly inspire me to focus on my character development. But that’s always been a problem, especially with two of the three major projects I’ve done. When I was planning Hellion, my character development was very rudimentary, just sentence long profiles. With Salamander, I didn’t even bother developing until I was 100 pages into the book (I paid for that, dearly). The only project I’ve really approached with a degree of character depth in mind was Shadower. In that case, I had the benefit of having lots of material done, on top of the actual short story.

I probably could rant on forever, but it’s 2 in the morning and I should have gone to bed a number of hours ago. ^^;

Spinner Daily Blogging, Hellion, Musings & Rants, Short Works, Uncategorized 2007