Spinwork Blog

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

 Untitled is now known as Avondalius.

I hate the planning phase of projects–especially big projects. I think that’s why up until now, I really haven’t ever gotten past the planning phase of any of the things I’ve done. But things are progressing, even though I haven’t figured out the core yet. There are so many questions on my mind about how I want to pull this off–everything from points of view, to character themes, to how much character back story I want to build up. Then there are experimental plot progressions. Jesus, my dump notes are a disaster area right now. I’m working with at least two different structures at the moment and I’ve got a budding structure for book two.

I figured I’d try something different for Avondalius in terms of the way the story is structured. Instead of one book, I’m giving a dilogy/duology a shot. The structure I’m going for is cause/effect or event/repercussions. I already have a very loose idea of what the repercussions are, but it’s been a bitch and a half making the cause sit well. Technically, its not even two books. It’s one book in two parts meant to “test” the dilogy structure. I think if I’d kept up with the original version of Salamander, it would have wound up a dilogy. I’ve always been very inspired by the Odyssey and Illiad and I’ve wondered what it would be like trying to structure something like that. Those two stories always struck me as very independent of each other. I’d like to try to achieve that and thread them together some how.

Ramble, ramble.

I think what I’m trying to get across with this rant is how much I hate the planning phase. No. Expound on how much I hate it. I mentioned in my guide one entry below how sometimes you can want to plow ahead with ideas but need to figure out where those ideas are headed before you can. Well, that’s my current dilemma. I know–more or less–where I’m going, but I need to know. My main goal for this, besides actually finishing it, is running it online to see if I can hold an audience. To do that, I need a pretty solid plan of book one and a rough outline of book two.

So I’ll cease bitching now–I’ve got classes to go to and a paper to write. Maybe that will settle my brain from the “PLEASE GIVE ME NEW MATERIAL SO I CAN GO BACK TO WRITING” thunderstorm going on in my brain right now. And maybe, in my anguish, I’ll find a way to make this first chapter behave itself without breaking out the bondage gear.

Spinner Uncategorized Bitching, moaning, ranting