Category: blog post

What Type of Stories Would Women Write?

Laura Highcove

Spoilers for Naussica of the Valley of the Wind, Uprooted, Macross Frontier, and Damsel.

I have given a lot of thought to the very real fact that men have been in charge of, well everything for most, if not all, of recorded history. This means a lot of things that we are becoming more and more aware of, like the creation of and studies for drugs and safety equipment being tested on, and thus designed almost exclusively for men. The fact that I, and a vast majority of medically trained personal, didn’t know women have different symptoms for a heart attack than man. That I tried birth control, and stopped using it because it made me insane, and then I found out that’s just how it is. Women are expected to try different birth controls until they find one they can live with, take it every day at the exact same time, and this is just considered what is expected.

So I started thinking about the fact that stories are written a certain way, and that different cultures have different structures for stories. As an American, I expect stories to have a certain structure, certain beats. And then it occurred to me, that if the male experience had so permeated the world at large, in ways we don’t even notice because it’s just always been that way (seat belts are not designed for women, and the “normal” temperature that offices are set at support men in suits, leaving women in dresses freezing.), that stories are like that too.

The content and structure of stories were created by the male writers. And so I started to think about what stories might look like if written for and consumed by women. We have a few examples of that, the genres of writing where women have been “allowed” space. Romance being the main example, cozy mysteries, and books for children (picture books through young adult) But at the same time I wonder how much of even that has been dictated by the male gaze, because that’s what was available, because with very few exceptions, that’s what we’re made to read in school. (See this article about my own blind spots.) I think the only book school had me read that was by a woman was “To Kill a Mockingbird”.

Note: I am speaking in generalities and not directly to the LGBTQIA experience at this time. I recognize ‘not all men’ and ‘not all women’ and the presence of non-binary. Now, moving on with my point…

So I tried to go back to the beginning, what type of books would women write? What stories do women write when they write naturally? Men tend to be put favor on strength, being strong, beating the odds and the opponent, physical stuff and winning. Protecting, meaning they’re doing the protecting and to do that there obviously has to be a bad guy for them to protect from.

Women are the nurturers, they want to care and connect. And I have been slowly collecting examples of what I just in general call ‘feminine endings’. For the most part I am simply looking for stories where fighting, defeating your enemy, proving your superiority is not the way the story is ‘solved’.

Examples include Naussica of the Valley of the Wind (Manga)
Uprooted by Namoi Novak (Novel)
Macross Frontier (Anime)
And most recently, Damsel (Netflix Movie)

The way I determine this is that the ending is such that fighting is tried, and does not work. The way the conflict is solved, is through compassion and learning to communicate with the ‘enemy’ and coming to understand them.

In Naussica, the titular character works her way through a world that is increasingly covered by a poisonous mushroom forest where humans fight each other over the remaining livable area. Naussica takes time to understand the forest, the creatures that live within it, and works to stop the fighting when empathy and understanding.

In a similar vein is Uprooted where the world is being taken over by a forest that corrupts everything it touches, and humans are slowly losing ground to it no matter what they do. Agnieszka finds out the forest was created by hate and regret, by using magic based less on ‘rules’ and more on ‘feeling’, works slowly to heal it.

Macross Frontier, humans are traveling through space, looking for a habitable planet because Earth has been destroyed, and run into a hive-mind species of alien that they have to fight against for survival. In typical Macross fashion, the songstresses learn to communicate with the aliens through song, and once they can talk to each other, they come to a ceasefire.

When I started watching Damsel, I was hoping it would be the same. Elodie is sacrificed to a dragon (without her knowledge or consent) and manages to survive and escape, only the kingdom that is sacrificing these women say it’s because the dragon demanded it, only Elodie finds out it was because the king of old went in and killed the dragon’s whelps. Once Elodie manages to convince the dragon that the kingdom is taking women from other kingdoms and it’s not even the original kingdom suffering, she and the dragon team up and wipe out the royal family. It’s still fighting in the end, (I mean ‘fighting’ in that the dragon just burns everything down) but the came about by alliances of people who had been wronged.

Now I’m not saying stories with fighting in them are bad in any way, or that there shouldn’t be any fighting in stories. My main goal is just pointing out that this is not the only means of conflict resolution. That it has become normalized because of the pervasiveness of the males being in charge. Again, it is not inherently ‘bad’, but it means that as a society, we’ve come to expect that the person who is ‘right’ is decided to be whoever is stronger, or louder, or confidant (huh, ‘confidanter’ isn’t a word), or trickier. There is little attempt to come to a meeting of the minds, treating reasonable people as such, and using communication as a valid way to resolve conflict.

So be aware of what kind of story you’re telling, and what message you’re portraying about ‘strength’, ‘truth’, and ‘right’ vs ‘wrong’. I’d like to see more stories that have a more feminine bend, and that these stories are actually seen. I want to know what stories women would write if they weren’t inundated with male stories, expectations, and gaze since birth. It might be impossible right now, but I strive for a world where it becomes more and more possible.

The Power of Stories

Laura Highcove

Stories are the most important thing in existence. More than actual reality, stories shape who we are because they shape our experience of the world and our very identities. What happened, what could happen, who we are, who we can be, and who everyone else is in relation to us, all of these are stories.

“Wait, no, those sound like memories.” You might be thinking. Technically yes, you have memories of what has happened, but are you aware of how ridiculously unreliable your own memories are? The brain is an amazing tool, but not always the most accurate. For example, there is a known issue with eye witnesses remembering things incorrectly due to anything from ambient conditions to racial profiling. There’s also the fact that science knows your memories change every time you remember them.

This doesn’t mean you don’t remember what you remember, it just means you have your own spin on what happened. This is why you can argue with someone over what happened and both of you be so convinced you’re right. Heck, you might both be right. Because it’s very rarely ‘what happened’, but more often how you interpreted what happened…ie your ‘story’ of what happened.

And this is true for almost everyone in the world. We use stories to learn, and to plan, and to make sense of the world. Stories we internalize from events, daydreams, and actual stories from shows and books and anecdotes.

Stories have always been a big part of my life. My writing mentor once asked a group of writers, ‘when did you tell your family that you were a writer?’, like when did you admit that this was something you were passionate about and something you were pursuing? And I remember that my answer was, I never did. I was telling stories from the time I had the language to do so, and my family was just aware of it. I wrote, I created, I was a writer because I literally didn’t know any other way to be. Even now that I’m working toward being a professional and being seen on a wider scale, there was never a serious question of whether or not I would stop writing. I couldn’t stop creating stories any more than I could stop breathing.

And if you’re a writer like me, consciously making stories, it’s good to also be aware of how often you are unconsciously creating stories about everything. It’s what the brain does. Some people never acknowledge this, they assume their memories, their experience of life is the be all end all. As a writer, you want to be aware of this, both for yourself and in others.

Not only will it make you a better writer, but it will make you a more understanding and accepting person, which is never a bad thing. AND understanding how you create stories that influence your world will help you to create more believable and real characters for the intentional stories you’re writing.

The Point of Art

Laura Highcove

I’ve been thinking about creativity and art a lot in general recently. This came mainly from an interview with Neil Newbon while he was at EGX. He was, of course, talking about Astarion, the arrogant elf vampire he voice acted and mocapped in Baldur’s Gate 3. A character I latched onto very strongly (along with most other female presenting gamers I’ve seen) while the male presenting gamers I’ve talked with generally stabbed him the first scene they found out he was a vampire.

And Neil said he was happy whenever people had any kind of strong reaction to the character, good or bad. Because art is supposed to make people feel things. It’s not up the artist to dictate what that is.

Now as a writer of fiction, I do try to dictate, but I also understand my intention is not going to be everyone’s interpretation. Eventually my novels will be released for public consumption (not that I have experience with this on a large scale yet) and then it’s for those public to decide.

I saw the above interview around the same time as one of Chuck Wendig’s posts, referencing a piece of ‘fanmail’ he’d gotten about a recently published book. The email, among other things, complained about the ‘politics’ in the book, to which Chuck replied, “Anyway, this is your reminder that all art is political and who gets to write the art and who is included in the art and who gets mad at the art — that’s all part of the politics of a piece. Like it or not. Thinking you can keep politics out of art is like thinking you can keep a fish alive out of water. It has to swim there even when it doesn’t realize it’s swimming there. Just because the fish doesn’t know what water is doesn’t mean the water doesn’t exist.”

All art is a reflection of the artist. I remember as a child hating when my English teachers would demand I see a certain message in the ‘classics’ we read. That stories should just be. What I didn’t realize at the time was that just the fact that certain books were considered classics, and certain books were read in school, and the messages therein were pushed, was all a part of the politics. I mean how many ‘classics’ did you, going to school in America, read that were written by someone other than a white male?

Now that I’m older, more experienced, and am paying attention, I can’t not see it. And I know my own politics and opinions and morals come across in my own books, because I’m human. The novel I finished most recently was very influenced by COVID and American politics (mainly 2016-2022). Both of these things have had a severe and lasting impact on the way the world occurs to me.

And part of that was an awareness, an actual understanding deep in my soul, that there are some people with whom I will never get along and never agree, even if I believe the basic nature of humans is good. This means that attempting to please everyone is impossible, and that most definitely includes with my chosen art, writing.

Because one of my main goals, when it comes to my writing, is to interact with people’s interpretation of my stories. Like I am super excited about the idea of fan fiction/fan art of something I’ve written. I’ve actually said before that if my work ever got adapted to film or TV, I would be fine with them changing things, because it’s basically just another fan fiction. And I want to get that first review or piece of mail that hates my story too. I mean I’m sure part of me will be crushed by it, because I have a fragile artist’s soul, but at the same time, it is still a strong reaction to art that I have put out there in the world. And that’s what I want.

How Baldur’s Gate 3 Changed my Life

Laura Highcove

Baldur’s Gate 3 is an amazing game, I don’t think that’s really in debate within the gaming community. But I’ve played a lot of video games, and some of them were even very good. I mean I finished Tears of the Kingdom earlier this year and that was pretty wow. But for a video game, or any other source of media for that matter, to change my life is a high bar.

Talking just straight game-play, BG3 is a masterpiece that breaks new ground and then smashes it to bits with a hammer. The ability to play through the story basically any way you want to, to have your decisions have a lasting effect on events, people, and the world is just ‘mimics brain exploding complete with sound effects’.

None of which would matter if the story you were playing through wasn’t any good. I’m a writer. Story is important to me. I want my horizons stretched, I want surprising, yet inevitable, I want characters that I care about. That game gave me all of this. It also gave me something I didn’t know I wanted, which was to questions my choices, to agonize over decisions, to make mistakes. That is something that no other game has really ever let me experience, or at least not to nearly this extent.

The wildly divergent paths you can take also allows for another unique opportunity, besides just experiencing things differently, it also allows you to see, for the first time what a person’s response would be to different inputs in the exact same situation, allowing you to experience more story/reactions/emotion than would otherwise be possible.

It’s likely no surprise that I identify female and am head over heels for Astarion. But before my mind had really grocked the insane branching paths that were possible through different dialogue choices, I had gone through a good portion of my first play-through, choosing options and getting responses. On a second play through, I knew to dig deeper into the different options, and some of the responses gave such nuance to some of the things Astarion actually said.

As a writer it is impossible (and really, not advisable) to have a character to say everything they’re feeling. If they are even aware of all their feelings in the first place, it’s still just not efficient. But the ability to see deeper into dialogue and motivation by being able to look through the branching dialogue paths was just amazing. I’ve romanced Astarion in two different play-throughs, and both of them felt completely unique.

The branching story lines also allow each character to be that much more developed as a person, and not just a character in a particular story. Shadowheart can kill or spare the Nightsong. Astarion can complete the ritual or not. Lae’zel can remain brain-washed by her cult leader. Wyll can break from his patron. Gale can blow up the world. Karlach, well she’s a sweet cinnamon roll and would never do anything to hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it.

Normally we don’t get the chance to see characters go down these different paths, and it made the characters that much more real (as well as increasing the game’s re-playability) because there isn’t just one ‘right’ path. (Except making sure Karlach’s engine is fixed so she can touch people again.)
All this to say that my expectation of games is forever changed. There will always be something in the back of my head resenting the ‘movie’ style video game story. Whether or not anyone will ever hit anything close to it again, who knows? But now the meta has been changed.

In addition, because of this variability of people’s motivations and actions and such, I have a new appreciation for heroes who are not 100% good. I mean you get anti-heros in stories, but there’s still only that one path. I have been so inspired by the story and the characters in this game that I have written over 90k words of fan fiction, and by allowing myself to write around and be influenced by story and dialogue I did not write, I have felt myself stretching, growing, and changing as a writer.

And I will forever be a fan of this game and the people who put it together with such dedication and love.

My BG3 Characters

Laura Highcove

This is a quick introduction to my current Tavs and how their games went/are going. I have gotten credits, so there will be spoilers.

Avi

I started off my first play through with Avi. He comes from a different story, but I made him a warlock based on story-Avi ’s abilities. I also designed the Dream Visitor off his story-otp. Avi is a tiefling, fae-pact warlock with the criminal background. Since he was my first play through, I had no idea of the storyline, and role-played him as close to himself as I could get while still exploring the game.

Saved Arabella and the grove, killed all the goblins. Basically he did good, but was sarcastic and rude about it, and always asked for compensation. His party consisted of Astarion, Shadowheart, and Karlach.

I used tadpoles on him and Astarion, who he was romancing. Avi trusted the Dream Visitor and passed some hidden checks (with no clue what that even was) to be affectionate with the Dream Visitor.
When the Emperor revealed himself, Avi trusted him and took on becoming half-illithid, but when Astarion had such a visceral reaction against it, he didn’t have any of his companions take it on. Also romanced the Emperor. (eyebrow waggle)

I screwed up the Astarion romance at a critical time (again, didn’t know what I was looking for on a first play through), though still role-played a romantic relationship.

This is the only game I’ve gotten credits on, and I chose to save everyone from the Absolute. I ended up skipping a lot of content for various reasons, one was because I just wanted to get credits, but I still spent an amazing amount of hours on this game.

Annalisa

I started Annalisa, drow paladin oath of the ancients before I was done with Avi’s game.

She purposely does good and is kind to everyone, but on seeing the goblins, I role-played her once being a worshiper of Lolth and she told Minthara where the Grove was with the intention to save it all at once. This broke her oath but then I role played that killing the Hag and saving Mayrina allowed her to get her oath back.

Romanced Gale, who is just a super great guy, even if the romance is a little slow cause he has the whole orb thing going on.

Works with the dream visitor because he is a good ally, but refuses to eat any tadpoles or give any to her team of Gale, Karlach (ranger), and Wyll (bard).

Currently in Act 3 finding all kinds of things I never did with Avi. Plan is to still work with the Emperor, but perhaps trying to free Orpheus will ruin that. Might actually take the deal with Raphael, though that will ruin her oath, but if Raphael gets the crown Gale can’t be tempted, which she’s worried about.

Gabriel

My third game is the Dark Urge, which has its own little story-line baked in where you want to kill everything and take joy in it and you can either go with that or resist. I was gonna play it straight bad but realized that wasn’t fun for me, to I restarted with Gabriel, a Dragonborn storm sorcerer who is disgusted by his Urge.

He kills Gale on accident, but saves Arabella as kids and animals are a nono for violence. Then he starts to fear his violence more after killing Alfira without realizing.

He ends up being friends with Astarion through their similar undesirable urges, which turns into a romance. Gabriel is not against the evil option against those that deserve it, but is working really hard to not hurt any innocents.

He is all about the tadpoles and has convinced his companions to use them too. He was super against the Dream a visitor , but is coming around to trusting him.

Now in act 2 he’s learned more about himself, with scant memories about the ’before’ and his allies, Astarion, Lae’zel, and Shadowheart who all trust his judgement. The plan is to actually steal the hammer from Raphael. Though that might change when I see how the Emperor responds to freeing Orpheus in my paladin game. I, myself, love the Emperor and how he will stay loyal to you as long as you stay loyal to him, so I don’t want to piss him off.

And Beyond

I have a lot I still want to explore with this game, but now that we’re two months out from release and I’ve wracked up over 300 hours of play time and 81k words of fan fiction, my obsession has slowed down a bit. I still want to do an evil Durge play-through, another run of Avi where I actually know what I’m doing, a tactician run, and playing as Astarion. I’ll get to them eventually. I also want to get some pictures done of my three Tavs, and I’ve already started designing minis that I might get printed. This game has changed my life in so many ways that I feel like I need another post just to cover it all.

But here’s the briefest of overviews. I hope you enjoyed.

Preparing for NaNoWriMo 2022

Laura Highcove

Here I am, five days away from NaNoWriMo, and for the first time, I’m not sure what I’m doing. Usually by this point I know definitively whether I will or will not be participating and what I will be doing as my project and what my goal(s) is/are. Those sometimes differ from the “rules” of Nano, but I make it work for me, and I stick to the rules I set up for myself.


This year I am at the end of Draft 0. So close that using Nano to finish it would be a waste, but far enough that I’m not convinced I’ll be ready to move onto another project. Add to that the wrinkle that Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are coming out on November 18th, and let’s be honest, if I get any real work done in the month after that game comes out I will be very surprised.


The plan right now is, Nano or not, to get Draft 0 of this book finished and then turn it into a First Draft which can be beta read. The current word count is 97k. That does include some notes and such.


And I just went and made an outline (omg discovery writer writing an outline!!!) of what needs to happen from where I am to the end and I think it actually makes sense. I was rather surprised at how well it all came out. It took me forever to get a handle on this story and the characters, and I think I managed it. So now I just have to write the scenes I don’t have yet. It’s close enough to the end that I don’t think there will be many surprises, at least not big ones. (Please, please no huge surprises that require a reworking of the entire book.)


Now the question is, “Do I think I can get this written in a week?”


I think it’s possible assuming none of these scenes just wipe me out emotionally. I had a scene with Jen that I just finished that did that. Hard to write but totally necessary. There might be a few, but with a week to do it …of course I have lost all sense of chapter breaks after Chapter 12. Truthfully, the chapter breaks in this book suck in the first place, but I digress. This made it hard to plan out the rest of my schedule based on chapters. So I had to do it scene by scene, and let me tell you, judging how long it will take to write a scene from just a few sentences of ‘this is what’s going to happen in this scene’ is not a skill I have yet. If I push hard, I can get Draft 0 done by November.


Then I suppose the idea for the first half of November, not necessarily Nano, would be to read through and write down allll the plot holes, and try and get those finished before Pokemon comes out. Would be nice to be able to throw out the story to my beta readers when it’s time to play Pokemon. Let’s see.

2018 Timesheet

Laura Highcove

So one of my long term projects for this year was an excel spreadsheet that I recorded the hours I spent toward my writing career. I’ve heard the advice over and over that if you want to be a writer you need to treat it like a job. So one of the things I decided was that I needed to spend 20 hours a week on my writing. The spreadsheet was to help me track when I’ve done that. It also helped with the times when I felt like I haven’t spent enough time writing, since if I have the actual numbers, then I know. And when they’re low, I knew I needed to spend more time on it. Plus I love organized data.

I was still getting used to the idea and figuring out which things I was going to keep track of. By the end of January I settled on the basic DIY MFA sections of Writing, Reading, and Community with several subsections, and here’s the summary for the year:

Feb-April I was super on point, with hitting my 80 hours a month (20 hours a week) goal, with a solid 50% spent toward writing and ~25% ish toward the other two.

I was on vacation the first week of May and while I did some writing, I did not track the hours. The middle two weeks were less than productive due to making up hours over the weekend and then some depression.

June-August were Nationals as well as the beginnings of Nickel getting sick. I’m not really surprised that my hours plummeted. It was probably one of the worst periods of consistent depression I’ve ever had. I’m actually proud I got as much done as I did.

Sept and October are a little nuts. That is almost entirely due to the Writing Excuses Cruise. I chose to count the entirety of the time spent on the cruise on my timesheet, since I was technically there for my writing, but I didn’t want to spend time nickel and diming each little thing I did. This encouraged me to add an ‘event’ section to next year’s timesheet for things like writing retreats and conferences. Anyway, that retreat lit a fire under my butt for the next month to get the Huntsman draft done and do some heavy rewriting.

My November hours were curious to me, because I did NaNo, and I did it very well, but I had a sad dearth of hours. I think that since I had given myself the NaNo my goal, as soon as I had the words needed, I didn’t really push myself to do anything else. Two of my weeks were nothing but writing. Something to keep in mind for next year. Perhaps there’s a place between 50k and 90k that I can hit without burning out, or perhaps I just need to give myself two goals for November. There was also Thanksgiving travel, of course.

December was going great until my cat Copper got sick and had to be hospitalized for three days. That really killed the week. She ended up being fine, a known issue that likely flared up due to the stress of the new cat. I also did nothing while traveling for Christmas. Sort of sad to end the year on a down-swing, but such is life.

After looking this over, I’ve decided to take into account vacation time and ‘rest’ days (for sickness or depression) so that I don’t just look at my lack of hours and feel bad. I also noticed that overall, I am not happy with the lack of time spent on reading and analyzing what I read. I might give myself some sort of goal there.

I’m super excited to see what next year will bring. I already have the new timesheet made up, with some cool excel tricks to make the sheet itself less time consuming. Yay data!

What I Learned on the Wxr Cruise 2018

Laura Highcove

So I already did a post about what happened on the Wxr cruise, in that I really feel like I found my writing tribe. That is wonderful and amazing, but beside that, I also learned a ton of writing skills as well as learning a few new lessons about myself.

The first lecture of the cruise was from Brandon Sanderson on Characterization. It was a more fleshed out version of something he’s spoken on, on the podcast before. It came in handy already as a diagnostic tool for a character people were having a hard time connecting with. It gave me a solid way to look at why people might not like said character, and thus, how to fix it.

He also said something during the Q&A session at the end that really struck me as well. Something like: “As you get better at writing you will try harder things, and as a result, you’ll think you’re a worse writer than you are.” I had been struggling with this rather hard for the past two years, while working on the Huntsman. I remember how easy writing used to be, where I would sit down and pump out words, and yet I had to fight for every inch on the Huntsman. But since hearing the above, I was able to put my head down on the Huntsman and get to ‘The End’ on my rough draft.

Some of the lectures were interesting, but not immediately relevant. More of a ‘file away for later’, like Mary Robinette’s ‘How to Read Outloud’, and Dongwon’s three part lecture on ‘Surviving the Books Business’. There were others that I incorporated into my writing asap like Tempest’s talk on inclusively in writing, Piper’s ‘Writing Romantic Elements’, and Sandra’s “Setting up your Life for Writing”, which went wonderfully into the mentality around writing and how to protect your writing time.

The one lecture that caught me most by surprise was Amal’s lecture on writing poetry. I have never been a fan of poetry. I just never got it, and the people who do are so passionate about it, it’s almost a turn-off. However, the way Amal explained the difference between poetry and prose as the way singing is different from talking really clicked with me. And when she had us try writing some poetry with that distinction, it just …worked. And from what others got up and read in front of the class, it seemed to have worked for a lot of people. It certainly gave me a new appreciation for poetry, and so the exercise she gave us for using poetry to get past ‘stuck spots’ is certainly something I can see myself using.

I also got something very important impromptu critique group that I got into by chance. It was my first time critiquing (and being critiqued) in person, but I was riding high on the safety of the whole Wxr space and so it went really well. Apparently the narrator problem I’d had in the Law of the Prince Charming, that I thought had been fixed was, in fact, still a problem.

And since I was stuck on a boat for several more days with little else to do, I decided I was going to go head down on this problem and figure out how to fix it. Long story short, I realized the problem was with tense and I experimented with switching the prose from past to present. After much reluctance and knashing of teeth on my part (because I hate reading present tense in books), I realized that I was much happier with the way it sounded in general, and got enough feedback saying it did feel better than I am currently in the process of rewriting the book.

But, I think, the most important thing I learned on the cruise happened at dinner on Friday night. I was in a bit of a depressed state because this was right after I had figure out that present tense for my novel sounded better, but before I reached acceptance of the idea, and was ready to leave the table when Mary Robinette came to join us. I stayed because, well, she’s a highly intelligent writer and I like the sound of her voice. At one point she started talking about how she finds the guest speakers for the cruise, and how she has to tell them that they can’t give the 101 or 201 versions of their talks because the Writing Excuses listeners have such a high level of theory already. She says she has to inform her speakers to think of it like they are giving a lecture to their peers, who just happen to be still early in their careers.

It was the first time I thought of connecting myself to published authors with the word peer. I mean I know I’ve gained a lot of skill over the past four or five years, but it wasn’t until that moment it really dawned on me that the only thing standing between me and publication could be that I haven’t found an agent. Not that I’m at the end of my learning by any stretch, but it was certainly a context shift. And, on top of that, I had access to all the other amazing people of the same level who were on the cruise with me.

During the final party, Mary Robinette did warn us that after everything we had learned on the cruise, that writing might be difficult for a while. But I found a new groove since the cruise. The newfound confidence in myself and my skills carried me through a lot of things I had been having difficulty with before the cruise. And that’s how I know this retreat was so successful, because I met so many amazing, wonderful people, and because it inspired me to write better. Totally have to go back again next year.

A Personal Essay on Personal Essays

Laura Highcove

I had a rather interesting revelation the other day. I was listening to one of the DIY MFA Radio Podcasts, Episode 198 to be exact. Gabriela and the guest, Will, were talking about personal essay book, and how there doesn’t seem to be as large a market for personal essays on the Internet because everyone is more focused on throwing their opinions out there.

I’m listening to this and thinking about how I am no good at writing posts for my blog that state an opinion. In fact I just recently wrote an article about how I decided to avoid doing just that.

As I was listening to how they define a personal essay, I came to the realization that what I prefer to write are, in fact, personal essays. I look back at the articles I’ve written that are my favorites and they are basically me saying ‘here’s my experience, get what you can out of it.’

I have no desire to push my opinions on other people, and I am well aware that even the life changing experiences I’ve had for myself won’t necessarily mean anything to anyone else. My opinions are formed by my experiences, the same way yours will be. No one can tell you what those are unless you choose to let them.

If I want anything for you, it’s just for you to be more aware of yourself so you can figure out what is important to you and how that looks. And the way I do that is to be as authentic about my own experiences as possible, and let you glean whatever it is you want to out of what I’ve written, even if that’s nothing at all.

That’s just what feels right to me. I’m not sure I’ll change anything in the wake of finding out what I’m writing are personal essays. Maybe I will. My biggest takeaway from this is the label so I can speak and learn about it more intelligently.

Working on Vacation

Laura Highcove

So this past weekend I was in Williamsburg for vacation (Yes, Williamsburg, because I’m old.) and I can still remember the stresses of the up-coming vacation. Trying to get everything done in prep (I didn’t) hoping things would be calm at work (they weren’t) not forgetting anything important (we did).

The first morning I sat down in front of my computer, entirely intent on writing something, as I usually do on vacation because I just love to write. I realized about ten minutes in that I didn’t want to write. I forced myself to anyway, because what is vacation for if not having time to get things done?

And after I had finished I looked at it. Why? Why was I forcing myself to work? Yes, I got something done. Something that wouldn’t have gotten done otherwise. I had filled my head with idea that since I had written on vacation in the past, I should do it now. Because this was time I could spend writing …why wouldn’t I?

And I think we humans do this a lot. We convince ourselves that it’s not a good time to take a vacation. That there’s more that needs to be done! Right now! Can’t wait! I was able to turn something I generally enjoy into work. (I mean and it normally is work, but I was on vacation.)

The truth of the matter is yes. There is always going to be something to do. All. The. Time. That’s never going to go away. It’s important, I think, that when you do set aside time for yourself, whether it’s a whole vacation or just relaxing in the evening, that you don’t convince yourself somehow that you should be working. Take that time to relax. Yes, you could be getting something done, but relaxing is getting something done as well. It just doesn’t always feel like it. There is a time to get the job done and there is a time to sit back and relax, and you’re never going to relax unless you make that time for yourself.