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

I tend to learn something new about my process every day, even when I don’t write. Weirdly enough, I’m starting to think the times I’m writing and the times I’m not are equally important. At the moment, I’ve been wrestling with that feeling of utter stupidity I have from looking at the first draft of Lanternfly and going, “what next?”

Truth be told, I have a crystal-clear image of what I need to do, how I want to go about doing it–but I can’t. I don’t know if its that I took so much out of myself just getting the manuscript done, or that I’ll dig in and discover I actually hate what I’ve been working on for what’s going on (technically) five years. Whatever it is, I’m in this limbo of, “oh, come the fuck on, Ben,” and “eh… it’ll pass.” Maybe this whole process is like a diet, where you’ll always start it “tomorrow.”

Well, I’m technically on a diet right now, and that’s going terribly (in fact, the only thing I’ve managed to hold together is biking to and from work every day). I’m also stuck working full time at work this week, which also marks my one year anniversary at this job. All my shifts are closes, which means I literally have no time to anything other than wake up, go to work, make however-many hundreds of lattes, go home, and dick around until I have to do it all over again.

Of course, I COULD not dick off and actually plug in my flash drive and open up the manuscript, or at least crack my journal and get some concepts done. I COULD write down those ideas I’ve been batting around in my head for the last three days about book two and where that might be going. Or I could continue to sit here and get down on myself about *FINALLY* finishing a book after two years of being a recluse until I could actually get a workable idea rolling.

What I think I’m learning is that this part–just like starting the actual book, is probably a lot harder than it is. I’m gonna hem, I’m gonna haw, but at some point I’m just gonna quit my whining, knuckle down and do it. It’s not like I’m completely void of time. Seriously, I could have turned out some serious material in the time I just wasted on LOST (even though the words “wasted” and “LOST” can’t be used in the same sentence).

So, that said, sleep, and tomorrow–writing. If not, I give my ghost-readers every license to kill me.

Thanks for reading.

Spinner Daily Blogging, Hellion 2009, Hellion Book 2, Lanternfly, LOST, procrastination, work

Lately I’ve found myself being distracted by a bunch of fresh ideas that have nothing to do with Lanternfly. I guess that’s good–a fresh story, a fresh perspective, something different. Yet I can’t help the feeling that by pursuing them I’m engaging in some maritial affair. On the one hand, it means I’ve finally settled on Lanternfly as my project. On the other, some of these ideas are kind of good. There’s one I’m actually kicking around on the back burner that I might do a bit of work on in my spare time–the concept of spare time being relative beneath the concept of impending 30 weekly hours of latte-fest.

This new idea, though, is a lot more microcosmic in comparison to my other work. What I find interesting about it is that it hinges on observation, yet doesn’t make the narrator an irrelevant character. I don’t think I can elaborate any more than that, the story still being in its infancy and all. At the moment, I’m calling the story Leophim. I’ve got a little bit written. We’ll see what happens with that.

In other news, all I’m really trying to do is get back onboard draft two of Lanternfly. That I may be enmeshed in this part of the process for a year or more isn’t all that helpful. Apparently, the worst of this is over and I’ll actually enjoy this. Then again, I do have a lot of ground-up rewriting on the beginning and ending, at least three characters I still only partially understand, and about 30-40,000 words to cut. Uguu.

At least I’m going home tomorrow! Weeee~. ^_^

Thanks for reading.

Spinner Daily Blogging, Hellion, Leophim 2009, draft 2, Lanternfly, Leophim, summer, work

For those of you who visit the writing-void (WORKING ON THAT) that is my Spinwork portfolio, I updated a few of the pages, added an FAQ, cut the Endoflux page, and added more detailed sections and pictures for the Lanternfly and Shadower sections. Still working on the blog layout, and possibly, a forums (I have the stuff installed, I just need to skin it and actually figure out if there’s even a point/any time).

Backing up to the Endoflux thing for a second. Why’s Endoflux gone? I’m not cutting the story–but it’s just not on my list of in-progress projects right now. At the moment, Lanternfly is my 100% priority. Hopefully I’ll get to Shadower sometime before 2010. But Endoflux–I really don’t have time for it right now. It’s a great idea, and has a lot of potential. But I’ve got other stuff I want to write, so that’ll have to wait. And that’s that.

In other news, I got to change the water filters at work today. Seriously one of the most entertaining moments at Starbucks ever. First of all, it gave me every reason to never drink unfiltered water ever again. New York/Vermont water is fairly clean, but looking at a brownish water filter after three months of use and you’ll actually realize there IS shit floating around in there. Haha, fuck.

This is a lot later than I’ve been up in a while. Funny, I’ve actually been sleeping lately.

Back into Lanternfly tomorrow. Thanks for reading!

Spinner Daily Blogging, Endoflux Theory, Hellion, IS 2009, Shadower, Site-related Endoflux hiatus, FAQ, Lanternfly, Shadower, Spinwork, work

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