Category: journal

I’ve Never Minded Spoilers

Laura Highcove

While there is a certain benefit to having stories not spoiled. I know there are a certain number of movies or books where the twist is just so brilliant and amazing that not having that ‘omg’ moment would’ve been disappointing. For instance, I still remember the feeling of realizing along with Bruce Willis that he was a ghost. The thing is, I have watched The 6th Sense multiple times since then, and I have enjoyed it every time.

The way that I judge my stories is a multi-step process. I consume the story for the first time. I take it in whole, in general I don’t try to figure out the twists before they come, I just enjoy what’s going on. I let the story do what it’s trying to do. If this is successful, then I say I enjoy that story, whatever type of media it might be.

One of the weirdest things I ever watched was a series on Netflix called Captain Laserhawk, a Blood Dragon Remix. Suggested by a friend, my partner and I binged it in one sitting and it was delightful. The aesthetic was engaging, the story kept pulling me along, I enjoyed the characters, all that. Then it was over, and I turned to my partner and I said. “None of that story made sense. This plot hole and that plot hole, and this other thing that happened but had no purpose except they were trying to fool the watcher.” An entirely enjoyable show with no actual substance or staying power behind it.

But the real test for me comes when (and if) I have a desire to re-consume the story, because, like this article says, after you know where the story is going, you can take in the sights. You can consider the details, whether the foreshadowing was on point, if the the vast amount of scenes/chapters/episodes hold up and contribute to the overall. If I consume a story a second time and still enjoy it, then I consider it to be good. There are movies I will watch over and over. There are books I can pick up, open to a page, and just read. This is just the way I enjoy my stories.

And while I wouldn’t want every story to be spoiled before I get to it, I can understand why knowing the twists of a story could help enjoyment of it. As long as the story is worthwhile in the first place.

Goals Achieved

Laura Highcove

Since my last blog post, I have achieved my specific, measurable goals! I have started doing 5 minutes of stillness before my yoga and I have been going down to my basement and actually working on writing for an hour, both of these six days a week. I was just going to do them every day, since I don’t have a job right now, but I ended up just giving myself Sundays off to sleep in and blah. I was also having real trouble sleeping for a while that has only just started to fix itself.

But either way, new goals are a success! I am going to keep up with them before I try and add anything new, especially since I’m not getting to the end of my revision of BotN, which means it’s going to be more of an emotional load to edit, and I don’t want to do that AND try and increase my time spent at the same time. But, making downstairs a working zone really has worked, and for the first time in …well ever, I actually have mornings open, which is when I am able to focus the best.

That may change when I get a job again, but for now I’m enjoying it and trying to solidify the habit so that if I have to start writing in the afternoon or evening, I can still keep it up. My goals remain the same, 1 hour writing and yoga/stillness 6 days a week. If I get through another week or so with this, I’ll think about increasing my goals.

New Year and New Goals

Laura Highcove

New Year today. 2023. In past years I’ve talked about how the new year doesn’t mean much for me in terms of goals, that I’m just continuing to do what I’ve been doing, etc. This year’s a little different as the end of the year was rather rough for a variety of reasons. And while I very regularly have times when I sit down and refocus, make new goals, this refocus happens to be on Dec 31 (when I’m writing this). So it almost seems like they’re New Year’s Resolutions. I could think about them that way if I wanted to. Either way, I’m making new goals while a number of things about the future are still undecided.


At times like these, it’s important to have overall focuses. The things I want to do more than anything else I could do. And I already have those goals:


One is to improve my health. I already have scheduled walking and riding times each week, and I also have started doing yoga every morning. Those are all pretty established at this point, though I would like to add some sitting in stillness. I like when my mind is quieter and more under control, and that takes practice.


The other goal I have is my writing. This one got put aside at the end of the year because of Christmas things and other things. Many things! But it is always at the forefront of my mind. One of the issues I have is that my ADHD makes it very difficult for me to sit down for extended periods and work on my writing. It’s something I’ve struggled with for years. I am working with my doctor to find an ADHD medicine that works to help my focus, but until then I have to soldier on the way I always have in trying to find techniques that help.


My latest idea is a new working area. I think my habitual behavior around my computer and computer desk are too solidified at this point, so I’m going to try and turn downstairs into more of a ‘focus area’. When I’m down there I do tend to be focusing on tasks like my plants or woodworking. It’s a new thing to try and I’m feeling good about it.


And because measurable goals are always important. I want to do 1 hour of writing a day, six days a week (not sure which days yet), and I want to do 5 minutes of stillness a day before my yoga.

Christmas is Imminent

Laura Highcove

I find myself with a sudden influx of time before the holiday, which is quite nice. Mostly because I still have woodworking projects to do for Christmas presents, and doing woodworking is hard when you have to go outside and it’s only 30 degrees. But, this also means I ended up with some extra time for getting through my BotN list. Again, I keep being surprised with how …together/neat, the end already is. I suppose part of it is the stories I’ve worked on most recently are the end of my Storyteller series where I had three and then like nine povs, and that tends to make things rather …complex. The end of the first book of the Storyteller was rather neat and only had one pov. This book has two, and really by the end has really drifted back to just one. Just an interesting thing to notice.

Plans for the coming week include Christmas, with a healthy dose of travel, and woodworking. If I have time I’ll get to some writing, but truthfully, I’m not going to push it. Honor your reality. At least out the window it looks like it’s shaping up to be a nice day, even if this weekend is going to be horrendously cold.

I wish everyone out there a Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday for whichever holiday you celebrate (or don’t). And in general, I hope you have a good time with family and/or friends. I’ll see you in the new year.

Achieving Goals

Laura Highcove

Did the list for chapters 6-10. There are some things to work on but that’s the next step, right now I’m still just taking stock of what still needs to be done. For the most part, the story seems really solid. I mean I’m not saying it’s perfect, but it feels far more together than I was expecting. Really, only the final two chapters are a ‘mess’, and I expect to have a little trouble when I get there. I think this story has just come together really well and that makes me happy. I’m feeling good about getting this Rough Draft done so I can get it out to beta readers and see what an actual audience thinks.

Making Plans

Laura Highcove

So I know a lot of you have been waiting for an update. Sorry about that, got a little distracted by things. I had to play the new Pokemon game after all. My husband and I managed to beat it in eight days, but we had some nice vacation time in there that really helped. I had Violet for anyone who was interested. Poor game was pushed out way too early, which is a shame because it’s such a good game despite all that, so it would’ve been so amazing if it were polished.

Also just finished 1899, a new show on Netflix, and I’ll be putting up a review for before too long. Short answer: Really enjoyed it.

And even with all that, I’ve been working my way through my BotN Draft 0, figuring out what things still need to be fixed to get a solid rough draft out of it. The beginning of the story is so polished so there’s not much to do there. The end will need a lot of work I’m sure, but I think I have a good structure.

For those of you who have been asking, yes, I am still going to be putting up Chapter 1 of BotN for your reading pleasure. I just want to get through this pass and make sure there shouldn’t be any major changes in chapter 1. I don’t think there will be, but such is the life of an artist. I’m going to tentatively say look for it at the beginning of next year.

I am also looking into restarting my visual novel adaptation of The Law of the Prince Charming. In case you forgot, you can go read it in full (or have me read it to you) here. Or you can wait and see when I get that up and running. My idea its to use some AI art, but I’m not sure how well that will work for consistent characters. If anyone has any experience with AI generated art and/or has any suggestions let me know.

Draft 0

Laura Highcove

I finished Draft 0 of Blessings of the Neriel yesterday. (For clarification, I define a Draft 0 as a draft that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Those are the only requirements.) I was having so much trouble making myself sit down and write, and when I did sit down I just didn’t know what to do.

I sat down and wrote out everything else that needed to happen for the book to be done, and it was like, not very much. So I opened a new document in Scrivener and wrote the following:

“I am so resistant to/terrified of finishing this story. That’s okay, be terrified and write anyway. Make this the absolute worst trash you’ve ever written, use psuedo code, use clichés, break the fourth wall. Do your worst and get it done.”

And that’s what I did. I wrote each scene I had in my list. When I had accomplished the thing I was supposed to and stalled in getting from place to place, or from scene to scene, I just put a line break in and started writing the next thing. I called out issues I’d have to fix later and ignored them. I ignored scene plot holes (A lot of stuff happens at the Kismet Building, let me tell you.) and just wrote. And I got to the end. Is it good? No? It it readable? I mean technically since I used English words, but in terms of story, no. But is it done? Yes.

Still Missing Goals

Laura Highcove

So it’s 10pm on November 2 and I still don’t have my goals hashed out. I wrote both yesterday and today, but the goal I set for myself this morning ended up not being possible. I went into a scene I thought would be an easy edit, and ripped it to shreds. The next scene I still don’t know what’s going to happen in it.


There’s a lesson in here somewhere about ‘keep at it’, and ‘keep revising your goals’, and you know what? Right now I am just over it. I put in my time today and I’m done.


I mean this isn’t given up forever, but while I could continue pounding on this for the next hour trying to finish it, I think that would do more harm than good. Done for today. There is tomorrow.

Tripping Before NaNoWriMo

Laura Highcove

My plans were very much affected by life. I started off alright, only I underestimated …well everything. First off, there are a lot more emotionally draining scenes at the end of this book than I thought. There’s a lot going on, and obviously this is the point where everything is going wrong in order to make things seem the most dire. In addition to that, I had two appointments on Wednesday, one for the dentist which is just never fun, and another one that I knew would be emotionally draining. So I took it easy Wednesday, planning on getting back to writing on Thursday. Only there are some things going on at work that either on their own, or in addition to the events on Wednesday, made it so by the time I got to Saturday I was so completely and totally out of fucks.


As you may have guessed, that means I got very little (I did get some) writing done. I am still in Chapter 13 in a scene that is emotionally difficult to write, followed by a scene that is technically difficult to write. After that maybe I will get to a few scenes that are mostly together and less draining.


However, you may noticed, as I have, that NaNoWriMo starts the day after tomorrow. And the free time I have Monday morning is taken up by a rescheduled horseback riding lesson. So the short of it is, I can’t finish Draft 0 by November and it would be irresponsible to try. I will get some done, obviously. I think I can get through Chapter 13. Right now, I think I’m going to just get what I can done today, since I have other things I want to do as well. And I’m going to spend my first day of Nano figuring out where I am and then making some new goals.

[SGC Week 5] Shifting Goals

Laura Highcove

As expected, I got super ahead on my word count due to rewriting scenes as opposed to having to write things from scratch, which means I kinda stopped doing some every day. One of the pitfalls of being me. The SGC call was a little less useful this week, it was basically to go to the point where your character makes the choice that kicks off the story, and to slow it down and get real close, try and stretch it out. I think because I already had it written, it was kinda hard for me to purposely stretch it out. I did realize that Eira could see going to the city as possibly ‘I’ll either find out we were wrong about the neriel, or that this city is also evil and will need to be cleansed.’ Instead of just wanting to find out she’s right as a Sinner. Which will add a little more nuance possibly.

I keep rewriting what I have and finding Eira to be too soft and passive. Which is part of the problem I had with her in the first place. I know more who she is now, but that doesn’t keep me from having to go back multiple times and make her less nice. There was a scene with her and Ruri where I had her apologize to Ruri for treating him badly when she was a paladin. I completely removed that. She wouldn’t think that, nor would she say it. She’s still convinced that Sinners are bad and that her being one is a mistake. She understands their struggles more, but part of her still thinks they deserve it.

Anyway, the group has two more meetings. This weeks will be the other two group members, and next week we’re all getting 10 pages. Not sure what I’m going to submit. I actually got out a decent draft of my YA Fantasy critique for the first time in ever. I almost want to hand that to them to see how it lands. Not like I need more critique on my story since it will only be a tiny bit more, I’ve gotten a lot of the benefit from the group already in helping with that.

Anyway, I think my goals will be one scene rewritten a day, to figure out and post what I want people to critique next week, and to organize the next month or so after SGC ends, as I would like to keep to momentum going.