Author: Laura Highcove

#WIPJOY July 2017 Roundup

Laura Highcove

In regards to my writing, I made a good overall word count and I’ve been doing work piecing everything else together. Some things that were eluding me are starting to become clear. I didn’t have any real trouble this week, which is awesome. But it does make for a short journal post.

On the other hand, I did finish out the #wipjoy event I was participating in, so I’ll just turn this post into a rehash of the event so that you can see all of the posts for the month collected in one place.

1) Describe yourself and your WIP

I am a fantasy author who has a Bachelors in Computer Science, works at a horse barn in the mornings, and writes in the afternoons. I am also a geek who loves anime, video games, D&D and whatever cleverly written show happens to be on TV. (I’m looking at you Lucifer.)
My WIP is the second book in a trilogy, based in a world where the laws of magic create fairy tales by forcing people to play out the roles required. The first book focused on a prince charming who is actually a girl. This book focuses on a villain who is trying to throw off that role. #wipjoy

2) Your MC’s aesthetic in 7 phrases

Alone. Black. Brawler. Depressed. Devoted. Huntsman. Villain. (Seven phrases seem like an awful lot, so I decided on seven words.) #wipjoy

3) Your 1st Inspiration for this WIP

My inspiration was to focus on Gabir who was a supporting character in the first book in his childhood Arabian setting. I wanted to show his back-story and his struggles in more depth. #wipjoy

4) 3 books that go nicely with yours

The Fairy Godmother by Mercedes Lackey (Any of the 500 Kingdoms series, really.)
Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
1001 Arabian Nights
#wipjoy

5) A line in which your world comes alive

Gabir helped Maze forward, leading Kidder behind him. He felt a tightness in his chest looking over the familiar scene of cream colored buildings and minarets that stretched into the sky. There was no mistaking the copper plated roofs that reflected the desert’s heat and light. #wipjoy

6) Would you rather: Get trapped in your story for a week or have your antagonist enter your own life for a day?

I’d rather be trapped in my story because then I would get to meet all my characters as opposed to just the antagonist. #wipjoy

7) A line where the plot thickens.

Tabitha felt a familiar pressure before everything in the ballroom stopped. In the doorway stood the faerie that used to be the Emerald Godmother. #wipjoy

8) What would your MC be like as the antagonist?

Well, that’s sort of what I’m playing around with in this story, so it’s not too difficult to imagine. Gabir is forced to get close to the villains of the tale and starts to lose himself in it again. #wipjoy

9) What would the antagonist be like as the MC?

Assuming he has the same goals as the current MC, Gabir, there likely would be little difference. The antagonist is who taught Gabir everything he knows and they’re very similar. #wipjoy

10) Dish about a favorite side character!

I finally got to add a character I had to pull from a previous story for being superfluous. He had to undergo some changes, but he still has the exact same feel about him. This is Chae, little brother to the Lady of the Maze, who thinks he’s a demon and can fully take on any mythic form without losing himself to it. #wipjoy

11) Which parts of this WIP are drawn from personal experience?

I have depression and one of the ways I cope with it is by writing down exactly what it feels like for me to fall into that hole. I have used some of that writing to influence the scenes where Gabir has his depressive episodes. #wipjoy

12) A line you nailed perfectly

“Don’t bother.” The Huntsman’s voice had dropped into a deep, dangerous sound. “Don’t try and stop me with your righteous bleeding heart. You don’t believe anything you said, you’re just playing the role of the prince charming and you would defend anyone. I don’t need that kind of pity.” His eyes flicked toward Wildrose. “And I certainly don’t need this team.” #wipjoy

13) Would you rather: Never publish this WIP, or watch it be adapted into a horrible movie.

I’ve actually considered this before. If it has been adapted into a horrible movie, that means that it was a popular book that people read and enjoyed. And what I really want out of being an author is having people read and enjoy my books. #wipjoy

14) Describe your MC’s personality with a GIF

15) A line involving a decision

“Well, I suppose since we have some time to kill until the Mirror Man is ready. We should all go get a drink together. We can go through the mirror together. All buddy, buddy.” The Beauty smiled, but her eyes remained hard.
Gabir wondered briefly why she would want to travel with them, especially if she still blamed him for being one of the Storytellers that ‘helped’ destroy her kingdom.
“Oh, I would like that.” the Lady of the Maze said.
“If that is your wish, my Lady, then it is mine as well.” Gabir bowed. #wipjoy

16) Chose an ideal reading spot, food, drink, and music to go with your book.

Someplace quiet without any distractions, a couch in the basement, a tucked away corner at the library, a bench deep in the woods. Food would ideally be small, snackish, and leave no residue on the fingers that might dirty the pages of the book. Drink would be something light and appropriate to the snack. And I don’t know about music, Gabir and his book don’t actually have a theme song, and I’m not the type who reads with music going.

17) What’s something you’re still figuring out about this WIP?

When I wrote the first book I had so many great ideas of things that could happen, that I laid seeds for. When I started writing the second book, I realized this meant my ability to simply discovery write was horribly limited because I had so many points to hit. Right now I have lots of scenes and I need to fit them all together. #wipjoy

18) Share a thought that keeps you going as a writer.

#wipjoy

19) A line that was hard to write.

“No,” Gabir said. “I still have the Lady of the Maze.”
“What makes you think she’d even want you?”
Gabir felt himself slipping. He felt the numbness settle into his body. He didn’t want to move; didn’t want to think. It was too much effort. It was so much easier to sit here, separate from the rest of the world. The demon version of himself smirked. He had to say something, anything. “Because otherwise it may as well end now.” #wipjoy

20) Would you rather: Have tea with your antagonist or be stuck in an elevator for 3 hours with your MC?

My antagonist would be far better conversation, so I’m going to have tea. Of course, I don’t like tea so we would have hot chocolate instead. #wipjoy

21) Why do you yearn to share this story with the world?

I want to be able to entertain people the same way books entertain me. I hope one day to have fans who want to inhabit my worlds and get to know the characters I’ve created. #wipjoy

And for getting through the whole challenge with me (Yes, it ended after 21 days.) here is a teaser for the picture of Gabir I’m having drawn.

I hope you enjoy all of the teasers for my current WIP. Let me know which are your favorite and what you are looking forward to the most.

Still on Track

Laura Highcove

I had a great week writing and then I got sick last Friday, so my productive writing time suffered. I’m glad I don’t get sick very often. I still got a lot of good words written for the beginning of the novel, all coming after the rut I got myself out of two weeks ago. I’m also getting to know Emelia better and better, which is making scenes with her easier. Looks like she might end up being a pov character after all.

The plan is to finish up the beginning (which shouldn’t be too much more) this weekend and then start working through the ending. I have most of the ending written, just not fleshed our or in the correct order. Being a discovery writer is so much fun! But I am ending up with some extra time this coming week so I should be able to get a lot of work done.

In addition, I am currently participating in #wipjoy, which gives prompts to answer about your current WIP. So if you’d like some tantalizing insights into what I’ve been working on, be sure to check out those posts daily on my facebook page.

My Effort Toward Better Conversation

Laura Highcove

I decided a while ago that I was tired of being scared of conversation. It is something I became aware of several years ago, that I go into almost every conversation in an attempt to make the conversation short and painless. I make myself as agreeable and inoffensive as possible and often apologize or explain my reasonings even before questions come up. I do this both speaking and writing and frankly, I’m tired of it.

I’m tired of how exhausted it makes me worry all the time about being wrong. I’m tired of not connecting with people who may be great because I start out defensive or with one foot out the door. And I’m also tired of not saying what I actually want to say because it’s habit (and thus easier) to just agree.

I started working on this in my written messages, mostly because the time delay makes them easier to write, look at, and then take out all the soft words, the apologizing, and the explanations. Every time I’ve done it, I worry about how it’s going to come across and what the other person is going to think. I haven’t gotten any push back yet. Just shorter, to the point messages.

I am still struggling with this in my speaking. Even when I rehearse what I’m going to say before I open my mouth, I tend to shift into apologetic/explanation mode without realizing. Then I admonish myself after the conversation is over, not that I can change anything at that point.

It’s hard to change habitual behavior like this, even with intention. But I know how much better I’ve gotten with my social anxiety in the past four years, so I figure if I start working on this now, I’ll see results in another four years. My ultimate goal is to be in an uncomfortable conversation and be able to stop, take a breath giving myself time to think, and then respond the way I actually want to.

Anyone else working on improving themselves in some way and want to share their progress and/or struggles?

Getting out of a Rut

Laura Highcove

So my goal for last week was to write 10k more words for The Wizard and to get through the halfway point of The Huntsman.

I did not get 10k new words for the Wizard. I ended up focusing mostly on The Huntsman, which I did get through the halfway point. I did a lot of new writing for the Huntsman, there was one scene that needed to be completely rewritten and a few scenes that I am now adding in. I’m not sure if that’s ended up being near 10k words. When I’m revising words get written and deleted and moved all around so it’s not really as easy as saying ‘Yes, I now have 10k more words’.

Setting a word count goal worked a lot better on The Law of the Prince Charming, which I wrote lineraly. On the Huntsman that is just not working because I jump around so much. So I’ll say half of my goal was not achieved, but the other half was. I got through to the halfway point of the Huntman.

After finishing through the halfway point of Huntsman, I went back to the beginning. The details of the ending are starting to come together more clearly now and I have an idea of how to better tie them into the beginning. But when I tried to change things around in the beginning, I was completely stuck inside this huge info dump that would logically happen, but that was absolutely no fun.

I struggled with it for a few hours before realizing I was stuck in a rut. I had these scenes and I was trying to move them around each other to fit together better and I just couldn’t do it. So I went to my hubby and told him where I was and he was able to offer a few suggestions of completely different ways to go, one of which sounded really good, so now I and rewriting the beginning and so far it’s going much more smoothly.

Goal for the next two weeks: rewrite the beginning so I’m happy with it, then go and rewrite the ending. Once I have those two things smoothed out I can start working on the second half of the book, which is the part I always have the most trouble with.

How my Writing Taught me to be a Discovery Rider

Laura Highcove

I have been a discovery writer since before I knew what that was. I always balked at outlines in school and avoided them when I could. English papers were created with no rhyme or reason and not edited before they were turned in. (Okay, maybe sometimes I read them over once.) I never got very good grades on my papers and, as a result, I hated English class, much preferring math and science.

My writing has always been like that. I don’t know what I think until I write it. I can’t plan how my characters are going to react until I’m in the scene with them. As such, writing is like magic to me. I discover what is happening as a result of the decisions my characters make, as they each grow to be more and more real.

As I’ve become more serious about my writing, the one thing I’ve found is that I can’t just think my way through a story. When I try, I generally just get stuck staring at the screen. Sure I get little bits of inspiration (that I need to write down as quickly as possible before I forget it) but I never really plan things out in my head. Or if I do, when I get back and start to actually write down the words, I’ll find I forgot or misjudged something important and it has to change.

What works for me is to sit down at my keyboard and start writing. Sometimes I pick a character or a situation first, sometimes I put word after word until I realize what I’m writing about. And what I produce is a rough draft. It needs to be organized and cleaned. But because I have taken the action, I have something to work with, something to learn from. That is my process, and I end up with good results eventually.

However, when I started riding and I learned a new technique, I would listen to the instructor describe the process and then think through the process. I would talk about it. I would ask questions. Then I would try the technique, get it wrong, stop, and try and figure out what was going on.

Suffice it to say it took me a long time to realize that I needed to treat my riding the same way I treat my writing and become a discovery rider. I take the general idea of what I want to get done, trust the skills that I have learned, and then I go and try the new technique. I inevitably get it wrong, adjust, and try again.

Because all of that thinking and analyzing never helps. I am never better at doing something new by thinking about it because I have absolutely no feel yet. As I’ve said before, you can’t develop feel without getting in the thick of it so you make mistakes and figure out how it’s NOT supposed to be, which eventually distils into what it IS supposed to be.

I’m not saying to ignore instruction, either in writing or anything else, but sitting there and thinking about it instead of acting doesn’t do you any good. In the grand scheme of things, the only way you’re going to learn and get better is to do, and being a discovery writer and a discovery rider has taught me that.

What is something that you haven’t done as a result of over-thinking it because you’re worried about getting it wrong?

New Title for The Storyteller

Laura Highcove 1 Comment

For those of you who have been around for a while, you know I have a novel called The Storyteller. I never spend all that much time coming up with titles for my books. They’ve always just been a way for me to label my files and refer to them when I talk to my husband.

The Storyteller is the first novel that I have actually finished and polished to this level, so my mentor suggested keeping my mind open to ideas for a different title. It occurred to me that maybe I should think of a better title. They said on the Writing Excuses Podcast once that when you’re pitching your book to potential readers, you want to be able to grab their interest with the title of the book. Well The Storyteller isn’t really a title that jumps up and grabs attention. That’s why I decided to change the name to The Law of the Prince Charming. Overall, I think it captures the feel of the book as well as perhaps being better at grabbing people’s interest.

So I made a new cover picture for my facebook page. The ‘Sign Up’ button is a link to my Newsletter where you can get the first chapter of The Law of the Prince Charming.

As for my writing these past two weeks, I’ve been doing a bit of back and forth. I finished the rough draft of The Huntsman (still the working title) which means I have my beginning middle and end. I decided that it would be a good idea for me to start working on the third book (working title: The Wizard) instead of going through and polishing it all the way up first. That’s mostly because, as a discovery writer, I am still developing the ideas for these two books. I know mostly where everything is going, but there are a few pieces that I need to tie everything together and I haven’t been able to pull them out of my brain yet.

So I’ve been going back and forth between writing 1500 words a day into The Wizard, and revising my way through The Huntsman. And the story ideas are already starting to tighten up. I even went back and wrote a character (albeit, rather minor) out of The Law of the Prince Charming; giving his part to a different character that ends up working better. It’s a bit of a blessing that I can still go back and tweak things in that first book.

My goal for the next two weeks is to revise through the halfway point of The Huntsman. And get another 10k words down for The Wizard. My process seems to rely heavily on the back and forth from new material to revising the early stuff, so I’m going to see how well it works for the next two weeks.

Analyzing my Awareness

Laura Highcove

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. When I started Laura’s Morning Routine, I had planned to take the data and make a graph with it in excel. I expected to find some sort of beautiful pattern that I could analyze my awareness. Several months in I realized that I didn’t need to analyze the data.

If you’ll remember, this trio of posts was about developing awareness in order to learn feel and the only way to learn feel is to experience something over and over until you just know. I didn’t need to analyze the data because at that point I had learned the feel of myself.

What I Learned About Myself

1) I saw a shift in my mind and spirit right before my period. It allowed me to mark that on my calendar so I was aware of it and for the effects of it. In the past I would have a few days of depression, now it’s regularly down to no more than a few hours at a time.

2) I began to see patterns in my mental state based on events that happened. That probably sounds like common sense: When something stressful happens in my life, I am effected by it. What I learned, though, was my mind often attributed the stress to something completely unrelated to what I was actually stressed about.

In April of 2015 (while I was doing this exercise), I found out that one of my cats was starving to death because she had severe periodontal disease that my husband and I wrote off as ‘bad breath’. She had to have surgery to remove all of her teeth. You can read about my reaction to this here, which is when I had a real breakthrough in understanding about how my mind hid the true reason for my depression under myriad other complaints for three terrible weeks.

I only knew that something was wrong, however, because I knew what normal was for me, and I was still stuck in it until I reached out to my riding coach, who was able to talk me to awareness.

3) I became more aware of my mental states. While I would write down an overall number for each day, I began to be aware of different periods within those days where I was one number or another that would later shift. This is when I knew I was really raising my awareness, because it expanded to times when I needed it and not just the time I was actively practicing it. And when this happened, I began to figure out when I could then consciously shift my mental state, and when my mind or spirit really needed to be low.

4) I really got to understand that my emotions happen, they change, and that they’re supposed to. And with being able to see the overall data over weeks and months, I was able to put less weight on the way I was feeling in any given moment because I knew it would be changing. In truth, it helped the lows be less low because I didn’t focus on them as much, and made the highs higher because I would be aware of them and grateful for it.

The thing is, that without the experience of looking into myself and my life, I never would have been able to develop the feel about myself that I did. The numbers don’t matter, I threw them away at the end of the year, but the feel I had developed in creating them was invaluable. There is no way around this. If you want to develop feel, then you have to be aware.

So How Does this Apply to Writing?

That being said, here’s where I tie this all back into writing. I promised I would. I admit the post got away from me a bit, but I hope seeing my results will give you some insights.

I used my new-found awareness to track how productive I was in different environments, doing different types of writing, etc. I didn’t change what I normally did at this point any more than I changed my life at the beginning of the year when I was focusing on awareness. I also didn’t use numbers at this point (though you’re certainly welcome to, do what works for you.) but over time I became aware of what worked and what didn’t and collected those common elements.

Things that I Discovered:

Where: I can’t write facing a wall, I need space in front of me. Other than that it doesn’t matter much.

When: I write much better in the mornings and after dinner it’s really a struggle to write creatively, though revision can still happen late in the day.

What: Location doesn’t matter so much (as long as I’m not facing a wall) but the amount of distraction in the space does. New prose is harder to write with noise or activity of any kind (that includes music). Revision and smoothing, it doesn’t matter as much, though part of that could be because I like revision best so it’s easier to keep focused.

How: Writing new prose is best on my phone or netbook where I don’t have access to the Internet. Revisions and smoothing are better on my computer with the large monitor.

Once I began to get a feel for what worked, I was able to focus on changing things up. I would try a new place or a new technique I had learned. Most people suggest trying something new for at least two weeks to see if it works, but since I’ve learned to better distinguish the ‘this isn’t right’ from the ‘I don’t like this’, I often don’t need to spend more than a week or so trying it out. The important thing to keep in mind is to trust yourself and your feel.

I know there are those of you who might want to skip right to this exercise because the writing is what you care about. I get that and I wish you the best of luck with it. And you might take just a moment to ask yourself why you’re not willing to develop awareness in yourself. If it feels too ‘whoo whoo’ …I would argue that so does the concept of feel in general, but you know feel is real. If you don’t think you have the time …well if your goal is to become a professional author and have someone pay you for what you produce, then there is going to be time invested.

Overall, I hope that you were able to get some ideas or insights from this series of three posts. If none of this clicked for you, then great, you tried it and now you can move on and try something else. If you got something valuable then I’m so happy for you. Either way, feel free to leave me a comment and tell me what you thought. I look forward to hearing from you.

This post is last in a series of three:
Post #1: The Skill of Feel
Post #2: Developing Awareness

Remembering my Process

Laura Highcove

I started this weekend with the knowledge that it was as good as the end of the month. The first week of summer camps start at the barn on Monday and I will be back to working full time to help you. I knew if I was going to finish my rough draft of The Huntsman before June like I planned, I was going to have to get most of it done this weekend.

I got a lot done on Saturday. Almost 3k words and some revision. On Sunday I wrote a different version of a scene which I thought created more conflict but no longer worked with some of the character tie-ins I had gotten out of the first version of the scene. And that sent me into a spiral of self-doubt where I questioned everything to the point where I was ready to change something fundamental about the world in an attempt to fix it.

My husband noticed my distress and tried to help me outline the story, but that ended up to be too daunting a task for a Sunday afternoon. Instead I gave him the first 45k words (which are in a ‘readable’ state, as opposed to the rest of the book which is a complete mess) to read. While he was reading I went back to look at what I had given him to see how much of a mess it actually was.

While there, I ended up reorganizing it into draft 4 and after reading the beginning, I reminded myself that I am actually a good writer and that working on the second half of the book is just my biggest weakness. This ‘omg, nothing will ever work’ is what happened with Shifting Winds (and why I gave up on it) and then happened again with The Storyteller. However, I plowed through that draft anyway and eventually wrote the second half over to get a book I absolutely love.

With that reminder, I was able to write several scenes with which I was completely happy. (They came out of nowhere too. I love being a discovery writer.) I just need to remember that whenever I hit that impassable wall in my story, I need to step back to read/revise the beginning and remind myself that I am good at writing before I dive back in. It’s funny because this book has been so different in the writing from The Storyteller that I didn’t think any of my process would be the same, but it is.

Do you have any situations where you struggle doing something only to finally remember to take a step back so you can go at it the right way?

king arthur the legend of the sword

Review: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 and King Arthur The Legend of the Sword

Laura Highcove 2 Comments

A week after it came out, my husband and I went to see Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2. I enjoyed the first GotG and I’ve seen most movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and enjoyed all of them. Two days later we went to see King Arthur because I’ve been a fan of the Arthur myth since BBC’s Merlin and, truth be told, the trailers looked awesome.

As I have had the fortune of watching a myriad of movies in my lifetime, I have learned the lesson to judge something based on what it’s supposed to be. In reference to movies, that means you don’t go into an Adam Sandler movie expecting Oscar bait. With that in mind, I didn’t think GotGv2 was a good movie and I think King Arthur was.

Don’t get me wrong, I was entertained by GotGv2 and I loved the scenery porn. (You can always get me with scenery porn.) And according to what I’ve seen, GotGv2 is being hailed as a pretty good movie, but when I compare it to what I’ve come to expect from Marvel …/shakes head.

When I watch a Marvel movie, I have come to expect good writing with strong themes and a solid plot. Also a nice tough of humor and style. The thing that let me down with GotGv2 is that the Guardians are supposed to be an amazing team/family (you can’t argue that family is not a theme of this movie) and yet they spend a majority of the movie unapologetically ribbing and the rest of the time being cringeworthily (I’m not sure that’s a word, but go with it.) mean to each other. Now I’m a fan of groups and relationships that have a healthy dose of insults thrown back and forth, but the problem I saw in this movie is that the team then did no real getting along and working together as a team.

There was a moment when Quill and Rocket were being idiots, switching drivers back and forth through the super awesome looking asteroid field. Groot fell on Quill for some reason and Quill picked Groot up, and tossed him over his shoulder (without looking or saying anything) to Drax, who caught and secured him. That is the type of teamwork of which this team is capable. That sense of knowing what needs to be done in a tense situation, and just doing it without need for communication. And that was the only example of it in the entire movie. Heck, the team wasn’t even all together at any point after Ego showed up until after the climax. (That’s not really a spoiler.)

No one acted like a family in any way in this movie, and they barely acted like a team. Yes, there was pretty scenery. Yes there were laughs. Yes there were cool awesome moments. But the theme, that family are the ones who are there for you, fell on it’s face and skidded off a cliff. As such, it was not a good movie in my opinion.

I walked into King Arthur knowing it was doing horribly in the box office, it had 27% on Rotten Tomatoes, and most reviews I’d read call it a ‘mess’, and I walked out having seen a good movie. King Arthur pulled me through the believable arc of Arthur and his uncle, with the other characters playing the roles they were supposed to. It had quick cuts and lots of spectacle, all seasoned with acceptable anachronisms. If this movie lacked, it was because Guy Ritchie wanted this to be a six movie series, and it shows in that some detail was just left out.

There is a montage at the beginning of the movie showing Arthur growing up. It it literally that, a series of quick cuts showing Arthur getting beaten up on the streets, learning to be smart, and growing stronger, that lasts only a few minutes so we can start the movie proper with him all grown up. I remember watching it and thinking: ‘Well this is ridiculously elegant, and most people won’t be able to follow it.’ and I feel like that’s what happened for the entire movie.

Let’s face it, I like this type of movie. The heavily stylized, very quirky, outside of the standard type of, movie. That doesn’t mean I think they’ve all been done well. The first 2/3 of Man from U.N.C.L.E. was beautiful, then that whole car chase ruined it and Jupiter Ascending needed another two hours at least (and a better lead actress …). But Speed Racer is my favorite movie of all time, I adore the recent Three Musketeers movie, and I am still pissed that they canceled Pushing Daises (not a movie, but same thing) Yet I know that most people don’t like this kind of movie. They continue to do poorly in the box office and get lousy reviews. And at the same time, I know I like it and that won’t ever change.

This article is not here to try and convince you that I’m right and you’re wrong about what kind of movies are good, (I gave up on that after Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them) but it is here so I can express my opinion. And frankly these types of things do keep popping up, so there are other people out there who like this style of media. Let me know if you happen to be one of those people. I’d love to hear your opinion on Kind Arthur or any other movie you think didn’t get the love it deserved.

Developing Awareness

Laura Highcove

In my past post, I walked about what feel is, and that to develop it, it helps to be more aware. If you missed that post, you can go back and read it here.

At the end of 2015 I decided I needed to be more aware of my depressive episodes. I knew they followed my period in some fashion but for the most part I would be miserable for several days until I realized my period was coming, and then I would be able to actively manage my depression. That was no longer working for me, so I made the choice to do something about it by developing awareness.

You may remember from my last post, the way my riding coach asked me “Did you feel that?” over and over until awareness had become a habit. So what I wanted to do was create an exercise where I could remind myself to be aware. I call my exercise: “Laura’s Morning Routine”. You don’t have to call it that, but you can if you like.

What I Did

Every morning for a year, I sat down and did two things:

1) I closed my eyes and I took stock of how I was feeling in that moment.

The whole exercise takes no more than five minutes. It was simply a set time for me to stop what I was doing and focus on myself for a few minutes. Since this was not something I had done before, I had no experience with what I felt like, and thus had no idea what I was supposed to be feeling.

As time went on, I began to notice when things were off my baseline. By taking stock at the same time in the same place each morning, I cut down on other variables. I got used to how I normally felt, and began to notice when things were different.

2) I rated the previous day on a scale of 1 to 5 in the categories: mind, body, and spirit.

I am a computer science major. I like beautiful, organized databases and so rating myself on a number scale worked for me. I chose body, mind, and spirit because I thought it would be interesting, then I defined each one thusly:

Body: Rated based on how much pain I was in that day. ONE was pain that got in the way of my day, THREE was how I feel normally (no pain), and FIVE was amazing. Over the course of the year I only had a few ONEs and no FIVEs. This measurement ended up being the least useful to me, but I didn’t know that when I started.

Mind: Rated based on how much chatter or negative self talk my mind was generating that day. ONE was a near constant racket, THREE was normal (not none, but manageable), FIVE were days when I was very positive, either extremely grateful and/or having lots of great story ideas.

Spirit: Rated on how much social anxiety I was dealing with. ONE were days I was withdrawn and did everything to avoid attention. THREE was normal (chatting with people when they were around). FOUR were days when I sought out interaction with people, FIVE were days when I would sing out loud with my music.

I would also make note of important events going on that I thought might influence my emotional state. This included my period.

Making your Own Exercise

I showed you what my own exercise looked like as an example and a guideline, but don’t feel the need to stick with doing everything exactly like I did it. The important points are to:

1) Set aside a time to do the exercise and try and make it happen in the same place and at the same time as often as possible. The whole idea is to get used to being more aware, so if you do it once a week it may be harder to build a habit of being aware, and if you change the time and location constantly it will be harder to build a baseline for how you feel.

2) Define your rating system so you know what it means. You can rate yourself however you want. You can have a scale from 1 to 100. You can rate yourself in .5 increments. You can rate yourself using fruits. The important thing is that you know what it means.

Please Note

Developing feel is not something you will see an immediate result from. (I did this exercise regularly for then entirety of 2016. Not saying I never missed a day, but I didn’t let myself miss many.) It is a lifelong pursuit, but then so is growing as a writer, so these things go hand in hand. I’m not telling you this to discourage you, but to encourage you. I don’t want you to try these techniques for a week or two and then think something is wrong when you’re not magically aware. It takes a bit of dedication, but the results will be worth it.

Now you may be thinking: “Okay, you’re having me gather all this data. What am I supposed to do with it. I should analyze it somehow. What if I get a ton of banana days and almost no limes. What does that mean!?” For right now I encourage you to give this a try for two weeks. Write down your data and don’t analyze it. Or at least do your best not to. Humans like to look for patterns in things and they like to know why. In my next post I’m going to talk about what you can do with the data you collect and how you can shift this exercise to help you become more aware in any facet of your life, and yes, that includes your writing.

This post is #2 of a series of three:
Post #1: The Skill of Feel
Post #3: Analyzing My Awareness