Spinwork Blog

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

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