Spinwork Blog

My God. Holidays at Starbucks were made to murder both customers and baristas. The last five days has consisted of some of the most maddening hours I’ve ever spent at this job. Rushes have started lasting all day, from 8AM to 5PM, with intermittent swells before and after. I’ve even noticed it as a customer. Those of you who follow my twitter will know I had numerous occasions today where I had people’s butts shoved in my face for minutes on end. Not cool. Even if growing up on the New York City subways have me partially used to it.

The other day I finished something that’s been driving me starkers since mid-November, that being finally finding a good, solid opening to Cloudnigh. People who read the IF version may or may not know how much I hated the original opening. If I have one pet-peeve, it’s protagonists that give an impression of emotional patheticism–which Roman did, uncharacteristically so. After much attempting to soften what I had, and then fretting over it, I finally  broke down and wrote a new first chapter. I’m fairly happy with the result–again, shocking, since I hate first chapters.

Now that I’ve got a solid foundation, my effort can now go into editing the remainder of my material–my goal is five chapters as a buffer–and then getting things going. I’ve been toying with web designs and the like in my spare time, and leaning towards a brown-grey themed design (Matt’s artwork asks for it). We’ll see how that goes in the long run. I’m not sure how long it’ll be before I have something up, but I’m aiming for late January, early February. I’ve also got some Spinwork related changes coming down the pike, but that’s another update.

So, it’s the new year now, meaning I should have some new years resolutions. Yeah. Well, I do–don’t get me wrong–but nothing really worth discussing on a writing blog–losing weight and eating better is among them–but nothing writing-related that I’d call a resolution. 2009 has been the best year for writing for me since 2004/2005, and that’s saying a lot for me. I finished a draft of Lanternfly, which still continues to mature and grow in my mind even though its been 2 months since I did any work on it, worked on and off on Shadower throughout the year, and fixed my sights on Cloudnigh. Its hard to believe I’ve been working on the story for eight months–exclusively, for four. In short, there’s nothing I want to accomplish in this year that I can’t from setting realistic goals and just keep walking.

In other news, I’ve started reading Anna Karenina, which has induced many orgasms of joy. Tolstoy was one smart mother fucker when it came to people. I can’t count the number of times while reading I found myself laughing and thinking, “I’VE THOUGHT THAT WAY,” and “I KNOW PEOPLE LIKE THAT,” which seems to be the pinnacle reaction to my reading lately. Its so incredible how writers from the fucking 1800s are seeing the same sort of human traits I’ve picked up on with the people I’ve known. I’d always thought that when a society evolves, the mannerism did so too, which in retrospect, I guess is sort of naive. No–people seem to have had the same “shoulds” and “oh-god-fucks” and “ZOMFG WHY?” now as they did then, if not made a little bit more insecure and unstable by the 21st century’s marketing and media machine.

Things go swimmingly–so off I swim. Thanks for reading!

Spinner Books & Reading, Cloudnigh, Musings & Rants, Site-related 2010, Anna Karenina, Cloudnigh, Lanternfly, New Years 2010, ranting, Starbucks, work

The temptation of understanding the creative process for me is similar to the medieval idea of immortality through alchemy. There are times where it drives me absolutely nuts not being able to have full control over things like my style, or how my ideas and the sentences that flow in my head don’t transfer onto paper the way I want. The latter is the worst part, because I tend to have a pretty narrowed down vision for the feel of my stuff. There are areas in Lanternfly where I strive to set a certain atmosphere, and lately I’ve been working on trying to kneed out one. Maybe it’s less like alchemy and more like emotional serendipity–because I can’t find the emotion I want–the one I started writing the book with.

Point is, a lot of my stuff has felt really forced lately. This happens to me every so often. The trick is usually settling into some kind of groove of understanding what I’m writing and where it’s going. After exploring some of my IS2009 material, I’m realizing that the writing is about 45% of how I want it. Usually my margin for salvaging when editing is 30%, so I can keep most of the crap in there. Maybe that’s what’s holding me back. All I know is that I’m approaching my writing with too many “shoulds,” and it’s starting to hold me back.

In other news, I finally did what I’ve been hemming and hawing at all summer–sitting down and doing a scene plan of what I have and what I need. What’s liberating about that is I now have a map of the book I can look at and mess around with, add to if I need, take away if I don’t. Maybe this will be a savior in getting the book to finally flow the way I want–so I’ll have all the plot material squared away so I can just write with it consideration without going, “this is poorly paced” or “this wasn’t something I wanted to write.” Yeah, shit.

Just a bitching rant right now, I guess. I’m actually reading Fountainhead by Ayn Rand at the moment. Marina gave me the book a few years ago, and I’m just getting around to reading it. I’m almost done, but the book was a challenge. The damn thing is about a third longer than anything else I’ve read, and pretty dense. But the way the plot flows and how naturally inspired me. I can see how a lot of people would sneer at some elements, and some that I can’t. I’ll finish it and see what I think. Then I’ve got Atlas Shrugged to read sometime after. Woo…

Thanks for reading.

Spinner Daily Blogging ayn rand, fountainhead, ranting, scene plans

 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