Spinwork Blog

I’d been wondering who I’d have to sleep with to get some time to myself lately to sit down and blog about the happenings of the last couple weeks. Honestly, though, if sleeping with people was what it took to get some peace of mind from all the crap going on in my real life lately, the list would be pretty long–the CEO of Starbucks, various officials at Greyhound, the president of Champlain College, among others. Given half of those are probably twice my age, that’s probably not happening in any literal or metaphorical stretch of the imagination. I mean, aside from the fact that “sex for peace” really doesn’t work as is…

Anyway.

On Monday, October 5th, I finally had my Independent Study panel for Lanternfly. Given this was actually supposed to take place back in the last week of April, and then May, and then August–we were all sighing a massive “finally” about getting it over with. The panel convened over 114 pages (50,000 words roughly) of the 700 page (170,000) manuscript, which I had to select based on plot relevance. It was an interesting process, actually–especially since I have a tendency to over-write, and I hadn’t actually gotten around to editing anything. Rumor has it my screams of anguish are still ricocheting off the walls in Starbucks.

After much deliberation, printing shit, and twiddling my thumbs until my fingerprints wore off to the point where I needed skin grafts, the day finally came. Unfortunately, it also came on one of those off days where I’d been working since 7 in the morning, and had pulled in all-nighter the night before, leaving me to stagger into the panel over-caffeinated, mentally shot and smelling like an espresso bar. Fortunately it wasn’t as horrifying an experience as I’d thought. My good friend Will Ryan was there, as well as Erik, along with Tim Brookes, the head of the Professional Writing program. Over the course of an hour, we made short work of the manuscript, as I talked about the concepts, what I’d learned about my process and the like.

First and foremost, I have learned it is completely impossible for me to draft work on a deadline. I thought I could waltz in and write and come out with relatively decent material at the other end–yeah, wrong. Quantity of pages a week? Yeah, bad idea. Oh yeah, and minimalized concepualization and not editing a bit during the process to make sure I’m standing on a good foundation plot-wise? Epic fail. So I think it’s suffice to say pages-a-day are leaving my process–which isn’t really a new idea to me (I’d been skeptical about that since March). Other than that, the rest of the stuff was also stuff I’d figured out over the course of the study–don’t take three pages to walk ten feet, and so on.

By the end of the panel, I had a pretty clear picture of what my road forward with Lanternfly would be. Without a doubt, it was the most helpful hour of my college career. I’m pretty happy with the grade on it–even though I firmly believe even if I’d failed, it still would have been a successful course–and even though I pretty much have to start Lanternfly from scratch, I’m more excited than ever about the story and the way forward. A little weird, maybe, but I consider it an excuse to do a better job. =)

Ultimately, the panel was the perfect crossroad for something I’ve been considering for a while. More and more lately I’m beginning to realize being online has been more of a hindrance than help to my writing–and where I’ve been considering online publication for a while, I think it would be a health-hazard at this point to subject myself (and my work) to something like that. Perhaps its the age of the people I’ve been spending my time around–and don’t get me wrong, there are some great writers scattered in all these ones and zeroes–or maybe it’s mechanical and wholly uninspired nature of the online writing communities out there. Regardless, I’m realizing I get absolutely no joy from talking about the shit I write. Actually, 90% of the time, I feel like I’m bastardizing my process and the work itself. I understand there are people out there who are interested in my work, or–God knows why–respect me for what I do, or how I do it. Believe me, I thank everyone who’s ever given my shit, this blog, or any of my sites a glance from the bottom of my heart. Writing has never been about publishing for me, but being a storyteller, and I think it’s now time to listen to that part of myself and take a step back for a bit.

I’m going to keep working on Lanternfly, and eventually, I’m going to publish it. I think for now, the thought’s going to go towards writing and making a way for myself.

Thanks for reading everyone, and I’ll see you around now and again. =)

Spinner Hellion, IS 2009 Internet, IS2009, Lanternfly, Panel

I’ve been thinking now and again about how much I use this blog and how useless it is. I mean, I’m not a published writer, and no one really ought to care about what I have to say. Hell, I don’t even have any experience in the industry aside from advice I’ve received from various professors over the last few years. By that logic, this blog shouldn’t exist, and I shouldn’t be trying to promote myself. People don’t care about books until they’re done, and I highly, highly doubt the world needs to know about the growing pains I have with my writing.

Prior to this, I spent about six years around with a LiveJournal which was pretty much a wild emo-fest covering day-to-day events from 2003 onwards. Its sort of horrifying to look back on now–2,500 entries or so of raw emotional defecation. I still use it now and again–mostly to publish really personal things for my closest friends. That, nonetheless, is my introduction to the world of “blogging.” I really shouldn’t be that uptight about posting useless shit. After all, that’s what my twitter is for, even if I did spend an entire day once mocking the people who used it for useless crap like the fact they were “drinking coke, lol.”

There are just days where I go through these existential bursts of “what’s the point?” Fortunately the amount of these moments that concern my writing are less and less as of late. I wonder how long THAT will last. I’ve been trying not to remind myself I’ve got the second draft of a novel to slog through by August. The fact this is the first second draft I’ve done aside (at least, the first second draft of anything over 20 pages), I’ve got a bit more to write before I actually start the process of going through and taking stuff away and fiddling. Oh, and then theres the research. There’s a lot of stuff I want to look up on steam engines, flower arrangements, mopeds, law, the feudal system, the history of–ye gads. Yeah. I think I proved my own point. There’s a lot of stuff to do.

I think the point here is that I want to start doing more with this blog than just ranting about how the writing’s coming. I’ll see what I can do about that.

In other news, I’ve been working on two site-related projects–one, the final design integration of this blog into the Spinwork layout, and… *gasp* the forums. I’m still struggling over whether or not I want forums on Spinwork. I always thought I’d wait until after I got some short stories up. I may still–but it’ll be good to have something waiting for when that actually happens. I mean, if this blog is bloody pointless, then forums would be like trying to burn ashes.

I’ll see what I can do about actually interesting content in the interim.

Thanks for reading!

Spinner Daily Blogging, Hellion, IS 2009, Site-related 2009, Bitching, forum, IS2009, moaning, Spinwork

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

A little bit ago, I polished off the last page of Lanternfly for the time being.  I’m waaaay, waaaay too exhausted to go on any long drabble about the book. I think its abundantly clear to me that this is just one of the initial steps in banging out the story and that I hope the road to a proverbial finished product is just as fun as these last 14  months have been (Jesus Christ–that’s twice as long as it took me to write the original).

What comes next?

First, I gotta get done with school. Then, I begin the part where I go through and journal-enter like mad for a bit about what everything is, if its needed and what absolutely sucks… write additional scenes (in this case being about 6  chapters from scratch and one plotline). Then… we’ll see! =)

Thanks for following guys. The journey’s not over!

Thanks for reading.

Spinner Daily Blogging, Hellion, IS 2009 draft one, IS2009, Lanternfly

I knew about this Friday, but I wasn’t sure how it was going to play out until today (Monday).

So, I’m going to be able to finish Lanternfly before semester’s end. That’s the good news. The bad news is that I have to take an incomplete because there wasn’t enough time to get a panel together to read the book. D’oh. My first reaction, and continuing one until a few minutes ago was utter panic. What do you mean, an incomplete?! Y’mean I’ve been busting my ass for four months for nothing? My school is infamously anal about credits when it comes to housing, and I have a great deal this summer living with three of my best friends.

I was partially asleep when Erik and I talked this over on Friday, so it staved off the panic until today. Luckily the incomplete means I have a certain amount of time to polish everything off–until about July/August. This means I can have a rudimentary second draft done for August that people can actually read. Okay. Panic gone. World not ending. Put on some Katatonia–ignore everything.

I’m pretty sure that I’ve put my feelings on hold for this one. Too much work to really think about anything right now.

Thanks for reading.

Spinner Daily Blogging, IS 2009 deadlines, incomplete, IS2009, Katatonia

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

I’m finally getting to the point where I can officially begin freaking out about my Lanternfly deadline. As of right now, I am in the groove  to get the book done sometime in the next 2-3 weeks. In that time, I also have a 12 page paper to write for a class, on top of other assignments. That, and my work schedule is glorious enough to make me want to obliterate large, preferrably uninhabited portions of the Midwest using a very powerful rocket launcher.

So in short, here comes the stress.

Lanternfly on the other hand, is really sailing. I finished the 22nd chapter tonight of what is probably going to wind up being 26 chapters (27 if I somehow wind up needing more space to pull off the ending). Averaging 2 chapters a week, as I have been consistantly through March, this is more than doable. The only problem is–well–that I’m going to have to go into relative seclusion to do it. I’m even contemplating finding some other cafe to write in, as the amount of people that bother me is starting to rise, on purpose or not.  I’ve always had to deal with idiots who seem to think my writing is some trite hobby I have to keep myself busy, and those are really the last people I want around as I throw down the end.

Maybe I should invest in a tazer. Or a bodyguard. Or something.

All I can really say is how overwhelming well the story is going for the speed I’m writing it. It’s taken me by complete surprise that I can manage a pace like this without the writing being terrible in every facet or not coming. Maybe something will blow up and I’ll get hung up on 23, or something. I dunno. I don’t think that will happen.

I may not be around much in the next couple weeks as I get this out. One thing’s for damn sure. Y’all will know when it’s done ^_^

Thanks for reading!

Spinner Daily Blogging, Hellion, IS 2009 IS2009, Lanternfly, work-load

It took me 240 pages, but I finally got to blow something up in Lanternfly. I’m really proud I held out this long. Back when I was writing Salamander, I couldn’t got 50 pages without hitting up the awesome complex (of course, I’m about to draw heavily from that scene in Salamander, which pretty much involved someone catching fire for about 10 pages). Yeah.

Reading this blog sometimes, you’d think Lanternfly was this epically explosive adventure epic involving multiple bad guys and shit blowing up every five seconds (so much so, that I had to allude to it twice in one sentence). It really isn’t, though. At its core, the book really onto takes place in three principle settings and is more focused on the lives of the characters for the first 3/4ths. Not that I’m trying to be captain boring or anything–I just figured I’d write something where every other event isn’t quazinuclear. I just figured I’d save myself for this moment–4:30AM on a school night when I should NOT be writing at all and when I have tax shit to do. adorqhpawersld.

Weeee. I really didn’t have much to say other than dancing over the fact I finally got to blow something up. Chapter 20’s done–now onto 21 where I get to blow up even MORE things!

Thanks for blowing shit up reading!

Spinner Daily Blogging, Hellion, IS 2009 awesome complex, IS2009, Lanternfly

I’m very blessed to have the job that I do–any job, in this economy–but there are times where I really just want to make a really big Americano (read–like, 80 shots or so) and drown myself in it. It’s not that 20 or so hours a week of latte-making is particularly difficult. In fact, with the coworkers I have, its really a lot of fun. Where else can you make jokes about shaking babies when the song Twist and Shout comes on?

Because we all know the chorus really sounds like they’re saying: Shakin’ a baby now, shakin’ a baaaaybeh… twist and shout…

*is promptly evicted from the internet*

Anyway–what’s been annoying is the toss between writing and work. Yeah, I like my job. But I like writing more. A lot more. Even if sometimes it makes me want to make a cats cradle out of my intestines while pillaging my brain with ice tea. And now that I’ve got the deadline thing going down… yeah.

It’s really shocking that I have under 100 pages of Lanternfly left to go and a little over a month (30 days abouts) to get it all done in. It really hit me today when I finally got around to the final set up of “that scene” I’ve been harping about on my twitter for the last week or so and I realized that my procrastination to understand a character had developed a yawning chasm in the story. Nothing a second draft couldn’t fix, but obviously you want to get as much as you can right the first time. So here’s me, running in circles, guzzling tea until my bladder beats me to death with a giant inflatable middle finger, and I realize I need a break.

I’m kind of new to this whole deadline thing with my writing. Looking back at high school, where the average homework load was eight hours a night, I’m used to pushing myself and insanity. But I’m also used to unwarrented attacks of epic freak out. So when you realize you need to reexamine something potentially serious and your short on time, thats about what went down. It wasn’t even poor planning on my part–just something I had to see when the idea translated from brain to binary. Ah well. Its something to fix on Saturday night then.

That’s more or less my update for now. Thanks for reading.

Spinner Daily Blogging, Hellion, IS 2009 deadline, IS2009, Lanternfly, work, work-load

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