I Cracked Too Many Eggs For My Omelet

It's been a rough semester, but the good sort of S&M type of rough that I don't mind as much, everything that's happened has ended up benefiting me in one way or another. My novel got snapped in half and is now two novels. I have no clue how anyone else would look at it, but it's DAMNED annoying. The snapper was one Gina Frangello, and awesome teacher and really good editor. She pointed out some things in my plot, things I'd been fearing personally since coming up with the concept, but she also helped me restructure the plot and now the book is kind of a completely different one.

The new plot isn't completely finished yet, much to my dismay, and it's different enough where some of the 220 pages I've already written and by some I mean kind of a lot is going to be scrapped. But there's a lot to keep. So sadly my plan of just writing through the winter and next semester is out of the window and I'm going to spend the next couple of week slaving over what stays and what goes while putting the finishing touches on the new plot. What really blows about the whole experience is just that it's a setback, but I'd rather have it happen now than have finished my original idea and have to break that too. Also in the end I'm a lot happier with where everything stands, i'd always been afraid I was writing two different books that'd been sewn together like a pair of terrified and unwilling Siamese twins. Whereas now I have something I'm a lot more confident in and something I can throw my weight behind.

Also, in the past week, a friend turned editor pointed out something to me in regards to Black Dogs which is up to 9 pages now. The first chapter has no major hook; now that doesn't mean it's hopeless just that I fucked up. I'm still kicking myself over it, and I've figured out how to fix it and it'll be fixed by the printing but it's still pretty frustrating. I know this was my first time doing a comic, and I was exited and excitable and ready to go and all but in the big ball of enthusiasm that is me I managed to forget the fundamentals of storytelling. Start with the dead horse in the living room, make sure to keep the reader asking questions, keep it compelling. Somehow all of that slipped my mind, between the rush and the obsession with plot I fucked up. Again, not an irreversible fuckup by any means but it is what it is.

Now that this is in my mind, I will make sure that the mistake isn't repeated in issue 2 and at the end of the day, BD is a giant learning process for both me and Sarah, I'm just hoping that we managed to make some money off our progress, at least that's the hope, and gain some fans. But all in all fucking up is a part of the process and at the end of the day I learned something, which is the most important part of this whole journey, learning and applying that knowledge.

It's the night before Christmas and I'm going to get some reading done, then I'm going to lay out exactly what my plan is for the novel, which also needs to be renamed because of the changes. I also need to pop out a story to submit to Story Week Reader...try and pull 5 publications in a year...now that would be impressive. We'll see what goes down, but for now, I'm out.

Dos and Doubts

So, I'm taking Fiction Seminar this semester instead of one of Columbia's conventional fiction classes and I've been turning in the 30 page chapters I'd written last winter and this past summer for revisions, and due to some rushing on my part, my book is now two books. I've always been really selective with what advice I will and won't take and the major reason I decided to go along with this is because it's something I'd been fearing since I devised the plot in the first place. Despite how frustrating it is to know I need to go back and reorganize the plot and devise new subplots to flesh the book out, I'm happy this happened when it did. It would have been far more frustrating to have finished the book and had to rewrite then.

Thing is, my oversights have made me start to wonder about Black Dogs, or at least it's made me more wary of the plot and in the time between this semester and Spring I'm going to be thoroughly working on the world, the plot and the characters. For once my impatient ass is quite happy that it's going to take so long to get to the real meat of the story. On the other hand, after careful evaluation the fact that Black Dogs and Publicity Tour are such drastically different types of story gives me less reason to worry, also the fact that pacing in comics as opposed to novels is quite different and easier to manipulate.

I'm still going to be working my ass off on the first draft of the novel, it'd be nice to have it by the end of my final semester, but it's unlikely it'll be done by then. I may be able to have the first draft done by the end of summer if I'm lucky, but I probably won't be. Now that the comic is up I'm almost more impatient; everything's going the way I want it to, but as I've felt since I was like 13 everything is taking too long. But as the great Mort Castle once said "it's a cross country race, not a sprint." and given how long it's taken me to get to this point, and how long I've been trying to start a comic and start a novel...I'm actually doing pretty good.

But I refuse to slow down...I'm not sure what I'd do if I tried.

A Little Late But Worth The Wait

It's been nearly a month since my last post, a lot has happened, most importantly, the comic I've been after for years, is finally up and running. As of now there's only one page, but that's a lot better than none and page two will be up in half an hour. It's been a trying week only because I've had page 2 since Sunday and it's taken all my willpower not to post it.

I don't have too much to say, well, more like i'm not in the mood to say much, I just gotta keep up my 2 a month quota...and if somehow you don't know, go to Theblackdogs.net

Lifelines and Deadlines

The semester so far has been turbulent and I haven't had much time to write; though, as it stands I won't need to write all semester. The only fiction related class I have is Fiction Seminar and since I'm getting the first 4 chapters of my novel worked on I won't need to write anything new. So the only thing I've really been doing is reading a whole lot. I don't mind too much but it's...draining I guess. I wish I had the time to write but I guess this is one of those necessary dry periods that allow me to go all howitzer shark crazy like I did over the summer. I'm done whining...for now.

One thing that's been keeping me psyched is the fact that Black Dogs is fast approaching existence...like a greased up baby shooting out a....yeah let's just leave that metaphor alone...but it's true. Black Dogs will be premiering (hopefully) on Oct 21st which also happens to be my 23rd birthday, hurray for oldness. It's hard not to be excited when I see stuff like this.



I guess this has been the much needed lifeline to my creative sanity, I also need to stop being such a lazy ass and but the website...I swear if the URL is taken I'm going to stab myself and make everything all around unpleasant for...well me I guess. Alright I'll stop wandering off, this has been by far my most pointless post. I'm mostly posting out of self-discipline because I'd like to keep up at least two posts a month.

I'll be getting to work on some short stories soon, because I really want my third publication before I graduate and that means I'm going to be spraying a couple pieces all over the net around Christmas, which really means I need to start WORKING on said pieces.

Oh on another note I went to the Chicago Women In Comics panel at my school and got to see Spike, the artist/writer of Templar, Arizona a really cool webcomic you guys should probably check out. I've been bugging spike about the comic, and particularly webcomic business for like 3 years now. I ended up talking her husband's ear off about Black Dogs and he honestly seemed pretty down with the whole idea...and I feel like Sarah's art speaks for itself...so if I'm lucky she may throw me a shout out eventually. Only a couple of weeks till launch folks...I'm fuckin excited.

DON'T TELL ME HOW TO DO MY JOB!!!

So school has began and I have to temporarily hide away from writing the stuff I love the most to suffer through class (I actually kind of like my classes this semester but that's not the point) but I figure I'd take this time to address someone that's freaked me out since I started writing. Those writer's tips lists, the ones every good writer and their mom have written, Vonnegut, Palahniuk, and dozens of others have these lists, more industrious authors have BOOKS about them and they all freak me the fuck out and the more I read the less I know.

So, I'm lucky, as far as writing goes because I literally don't have to think about it, not much anyways. Almost everything I write seems to just WILL itself into my mind almost fully formed. I just gotta nip off an extra toe here, a second head there, sew up the holes and BAM I'm done. Of course reading different authors and analyzing their styles has helped a lot too but it's more patchwork additions to my style than reprogramming my creative nerve center in accordance with the rules. But not thinking about what I'm writing is a double edged sword, when everything works it's all great, and I can normally feel it when it doesn't work, but it's sort of hard for me to explain to anyone else WHY it all works. I figure out the plot, figure out who the characters are, have the plot modify the characters, describe stuff, throw in some talky words and I'm done...but there's so much more beneath the surface that I just KNOW to do and here's where the effing instruction manuals fit in...they make me doubt myself.

I think I actually found Vonnegut's rules to writing first, then via Stumble: Writing I found a BUNCH of different guides to writing, what to do, what not to do and instinctively, wanting to do the right stuff, I read them all. This quickly turned into a creative mindfuck with me re-reading things and just musing over where I did that and made sure NOT to do that and generally overreacting to everything. According to everything I've seen and noticed about my fellow Columbia students and a lot of writers in general I'm not normal, not even close. Everything I do is a response to a simple question 'what would be cool'.

I've learned that with the way I work, I shouldn't worry about it, not that I think I know everything about writing, but I learn best by example and instead of reading someone's rules to writing I should READ their writing. That's what I've been doing, Reading Cormack McCarthy and Richard Price has really made me start looking at atmospheric pressure and pacing as well as McCarthy's beautiful use of negative space and what I would say is some of the best word choice I've ever. Price had a way of describing characters that I've been trying to mimic ever since. I find it a little weird that when someone tells me their rules I freak, but when I simply figure them out for myself...I'm fine.

Marathon Man

So, I've been done novel writing for a couple of weeks now...but it feels like forever. Everyone has always told me that you should let the smoke clear between bursts of work, while I've never heeded ANYTHING anyone has ever told me ever, cept maybe Tina Jens...school makes for good breaks, I get all of my horridness out then and then as soon as that bell rings and the last day of school comes around, I'm back on the horse and I'm riding it until it's legs break. Anyways I haven't even started to make a point yet, other than I'm going to miss the freedom to work of summer and the confining coffin of school, but only two more semesters to freedom.

ANYWAY.

I started on Chapter 2 of Black Dogs on August 30th and I finished the 27 page chapter off last night with an 11 page sprint, and a part of me doesn't want to stop. It was sticky at first, switching from noveling to comicing is a bit clunky, especially when you're shifting drastically in subject matter and tone...and I was doing both. After a couple days in however I hit my stride and took off like a coked out rabbit. I think a part of the reason I exploded so rapidly is because I'm more excited to work on the webcomic than I was to work on the novel, not because of the subject matter or anything like that because I love both of my incomplete children equally...kind of. But I like the comic more because as anyone who know me knows, I'm an impatient spaz; I want to be started yesterday and I personally think life has been taking to long for quite some time now. To make that a bit more coherent, I know the webcomic is going to take a lot less time and effort to get to the masses than my novel will.

The webcomic, Black Dogs, is a steampunk fantasy written by me with art, colors, and bloodysweatytears by Sarah Smith, a former Columbia Fiction Major. It follows the crew of The Black Dog (go figure) as they go on adventures and have problems. Sounds a bit like firefly if you replace space with steampunk. What I'm hoping really sets us apart from those inevitable accusations is the story or should I say stories, like your typical guys on a ship adventure series (Andromeda, FireFly, Babylon 5 ect) are going to be the fact that most of the stories I'm writing or dreaming up for the series are going to be big overarching plots that almost always develop characters and change the social dynamics of the crew, basically I'm not here to fuck around. As a writer I'm a plot whore, I like seeing people forced to do things they hate, I like palpable atmosphere and I like for people to feel connected to my characters and my stories, and I'm going to do everything in my power to evoke that from every orifice of Black Dogs, even the not so pretty ones.

Looking back on the chapter I really like what I did, I have plenty of ideas that could easily run the series for a decade or more and since I've plotted that far ahead I have hints that need to be dropped early, like first, second chapter early, and I'm doing my best to do that. As I've stated before I'm a huge anime and managa fan but I can only stand manga's that know where their going to end from the beginning, and that's how I write, the end isn't crystal clear yet, but I'm pretty positive of where I want to leave it off, but it's going to be a long and crazy ride along the way and I'm going to relish every moment of it.

The main characters in Black Dogs (for now DUNDUNDUN) are

Asher-the man whore of the crew, the son and great grandson of two legendary inventors who's more of an engineer than an inventor but is just as talented as those family members. He's also in love with Alex, or so he thinks, and he and Lucien have been kids since childhood. Like his father Asher is an inventor and creates all kinds of things on board; after a couple of unfortunate technological mishaps Cap and Alex stitched to the back of his coat "if you see me running, try to catch up".

Anastasia the female Captain of the crew known better as Cap, she's a feisty gun and sword wielding lady with a shadowed past (lulz cliche) and a bit of a drinking problem. Her crew is her family and like a good matriarch she does what she needs to do to protect them, even if she has to skirt the borders of morality.

Alex-the female first mate of the crew, she's more composed and quite than Asher or Cap and tends to be the voice of reason in the face of her emotional and compulsive crew-mates. No one but Cap knows where she's from but it is known she spent extensive time in the east in the circus, preforming as a trapeze artist and an animal tamer, she's deadly with her hands, and a whip.

Lucien-Lucien is the suave handsome man of the crew, he's the type that doesn't open his mouth unless something needs to be said. Lucien is the bastard son of a nobleman who was raised by his peasant mother to retain his status in spite of the fact that his father refuses to claim him. Lucien as a result does have a sense of regal poise about him that's more intriguing than arrogant, he's also an amazing swordsman and the ships main gunner.

Sir Roderick R. Clemens II-The son of the famous General Roderick aka General Rock a battle hardened soldier and renowned strategist his 19 year old son isn't exactly a spitting image of his father. Roderick II surpasses his father as a strategist but fails miserably as a fighter, he's also a surprisingly adept airship pilot with his mandatory year of military training.


Those are just some brief character biows of the crew...and now, A PICTURE!!!! YAYYYYY




These are the first two panels of the FIRST Chapter..the one I wrote last summer...but that's another less fun story.

Can't Stop

So I'm done novel writing for the summer, between broken computers and lost jobs and all kinds of shit life has thrown at me I managed to write 145 pages rounding out the writing at the end of Chapter 8. I've been done for about a week now and I've been working on my webcomic project (lord knows I can never just exist or anything) and I've come to find that I actually miss writing the novel. Don't get me wrong I love Black Dogs (Webcomic in the making), but I feel like I've been trapped in a room with a sibling I didn't know I had all summer and now that we're free I kind of miss them.

Writing the novel hasn't been easy as stated in my previous posts, Ch 7 and 8 turned out to be pretty difficult but overall it's been a crazy love hate relationship. Sometimes I would go out of my way not to write, just to back off but I always went back, I almost stopped writing earlier, but I was drawn back, I feel like I loved the writing and hated it to. The process of writing it had become like a living thing, not just the story, but everything that came with writing it too, it's an interesting almost mystical experience.

Writing Black Dogs isn't very different, well it is since Black Dogs is a steampunk, fantasy, epic and Publicity Tour is a Crime Thriller, but conceptually they're pretty similar when it comes to actually writing it. Working with a decent sized cast of characters and working out the plot while dealing with character relationships and interactions and subplots and all that good stuff, pretty much the same thing you do writing any big story...and yet I still find myself missing Publicity Tour, and a little sad that it has to go on the shelf while I go back to school. I've had other fiction students suggest steeplechasing it, but honestly I think steeplechase would only hinder the process, at this point I know where the story is going, changing perspectives and first to third person and putting it in script form, that's only necessary when you don't know where a piece is going, I never have that problem so it's not that useful for me. Though if I'm lucky I'll be able to do some writing on it in fiction seminar, who knows.

Either way, Publicity Tour is probably going to be on the shelf for the semester, and my blog title is going to become a lie because I'm going to blog about Black Dogs too, which is a project I'm really really really excited about and will go into on my next post, hopefully sometime before school starts on the 7th.