Category: journal

My Most Inspirational Quotes: #1

Laura Highcove 2 Comments

I see lots of inspirational posts on my Facebook feed, and not only because I tend to post a number of them. I like both the joy and inspiration they bring me and hope it brings a little bit of that to the other people who see them.

Most of the time I look at one of these quotes, it makes me happy, and I go on my merry way. The content of the quote usually does nothing further to effect my life. However, there are a few inspirational quotes that I have come across (or made up myself) that are a more constant source of inspiration for both my writing and my life in general.

The first of those is a quote I came across a while ago. I posted it on my Facebook feed, and then I found myself continually going back to it. So one day I pulled out a note card and I wrote that quote down so that it sits just beneath my monitor so I can be inspired by it daily.



This quote means a lot to me because I struggle daily with not feeling like I’m doing enough with regard to my writing. I rarely go a day where I don’t write at all, but I have a constant nagging that any ‘down time’ could be instead spent on my writing.

But when I see the quote by my monitor, whether I’m at my computer for work or pleasure, I can look at that and remind myself that I am still moving forward, that I am still going to come back and write more, even if I’m not doing it at that exact moment. This constant reminder is helping me to reprogram the habitual behavior that makes me worry that I’m never working hard enough. Such that I can remember the quote even when I’m not in front of my computer.

Do you have a quote or some other kind of reminder that you have posted in a place you see every day? I’d love to hear what those are in the comments.

Plan to Finish my Plot Draft

Laura Highcove

So for reasons I have been thinking about NaNoWriMo early this year. As such, I’ve started thinking about what I would do for NaNoWriMo. I have come to the following conclusion: I will write 65,000 words (2k a day with Fridays off) for my third Storyteller novel, working title: The Wizard, for NaNo, which means I need to hammer out the rest of my Plot Draft for the Huntsman before November. (A Plot Draft comes after the Rough Draft, it’s when I fill in enough of the plot that the whole story feels contiguous.)

As such, I have made a plan that looks like this:

July 30-Aug 6: Once over of what I have for the Huntsman right now and identifying/working on areas that are weak. Also hammering out scenes to fill any holes. (2 weeks)
Aug 7 – 13: Smoothing Pass (1 week)
Aug 14 – 27: Gabir’s arc (2 weeks)
Aug 28 – Sept 10: Wildrose’s arc (2 weeks)
Sept 11 – 24: Tabitha’s arc (2 weeks)
Sept 25 – Oct 8: Misc arc: Silver, Princess, Aladdin, Emelia, etc (2 weeks)
Oct 8 – 22: Smoothing Pass (2 weeks)
Oct 26 – Oct 28: Start NaNoWriMo early. (I’m going to World Fantasy Con this year. I leave Nov 1st and get back Nov 6. I know from experience that my ability to write new stuff is severely limited while traveling. As such, I’ll just plan to give myself 6 days in October to get started on my word count and then pick it back up after I get back from Texas.)

#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.

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.

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.

May Writing Plan

Laura Highcove

In April I got very little writing done. It was a busy month with lots of fun things to do that managed to all fall on consecutive weekends. It means I got to do everything, but it also meant that preparing for the Horse Show and the Spotlight MasterTreat took up most of my free time.

Over this past weekend I was in Las Vegas for the MasterTreat, and in an attempt to stay on east coast time, I was up at 4 or 5 every morning. I managed to get a lot of ‘writing’ done during these free hours before the actual event started at 9. I actually did a lot of smoothing. (Which is what I call organizing/rewriting the results of writing scenes multiple times and in random order.)

When I got home and synked my files from Dropbox, I realized that all of the organization I had done had been reset. The changes in the files themselves were safe, but whatever file decides how the files are displayed in Scrivener must have got screwed up somehow. I had to go into my project folder, pull out all the files I had edited this weekend, and then try and put everything back in order.

I was rather annoyed about that and it took me longer to do than I would’ve liked. Instead of being able to continue the momentum I had over the weekend, I had to stumble around in the dark. I’ll push forward again knowing that some of the changes I think I made may not be there anymore.

That being said, it is still my goal to have the rough draft of The Huntsman done by the end of the month. So I have made a schedule in the form of a list, as I love to do:

  • May 3 – 7: I am going to finish smoothing (or resmooth if necessary) what I need to smooth.
  • May 8 – 14: I am going to focus on writing the scenes needed for Tabitha’s character arc, which involve Wildrose and Snowdrop.
  • May 15 – 21: I will be on vacation, but I always like working on my writing anyway. This week I’ll work on Emelia and do any smoothing as a result of the previous week.
  • May 22 – 28: I will work on finishing up the story which is mostly Gabir’s arc, which will give the book an ending.

I am looking forward to being able to put a done stamp on this rough draft since it has taken me so much longer than writing The Storyteller. I’ll be posting again in two weeks with another journal entry.

What I Do Besides Writing

Laura Highcove

I have a number of other hobbies outside of writing. I work at a horse barn part time and I currently own two horses and ride somewhat regularly.



I am rather creative outside of writing as well, and I like crafts of various kinds including painting miniatures for my table top gaming (another hobby), crochet, and newbie attempts at creating gourd lamps.



I also play video games (though far fewer than I used to), watch/read the occasional anime/manga, and I love well-written TV and flashy movies.

I Went to Mysticon, But Not to Have Fun

Laura Highcove

So this weekend I went to Mysticon, a Science Fiction and Fantasy con that happens up the road in Roanoke every year. I’ve never been to Mysticon before, and like the title says, I didn’t go to have fun.

Why I did go:

I decided that if I’m going to be marketing my books at conventions, then I should get used to going to conventions as an author and not a fan. So, I went without my husband or any friends, which was a conscious decision. I went to watch other authors do their own marketing and see what I could learn from them.

Thankfully, since I’ve been going to Otakon for over a decade now, the convention space is comfortable for me, even without friends. This is my tribe so I am able to feel confidant in the space.

What I learned:

I went to a panel on marketing your book after release. This helped two-fold. One, I was helpful to hear authors talk about things they do to promote their books. I got notes on insights on ads, social media, reviews, going to conventions, and book signings and that kind of thing.

I was also able to watch the authors themselves. How they have books to display as well as having an ipad that scrolled through pictures of other books they either didn’t have with them, or left off so the table wasn’t too cluttered. They were also both engaging, helpful, and just friendly all around. That is the type of thing I want to be able to do, because when you are able to connect with someone who is just talking, you’re more likely to want to buy their books.

After that was a panel that I thought would be on Firefly because it was called Honor in the Verse. It ended up being a panel by numerous authors talking about honor of characters in books. So that ended up being even better than I thought. It made me realize that I’ll definitely have some ‘sit down and think’ time before I ever go on a panel. I’m not sure how good I’ll be at coming up with answers to questions on the fly. At the same time, it was a fun, comfortable atmosphere.

I also learned that while I have made leaps and bounds with being able to meet people’s eyes in the hallway and even make a little bit of small talk, I still shut down pretty hard when someone expects me to know something. I’m not sure how to work on that, but at least I’m aware of it.

What I plan to do better next time:

I should have stayed and talked to some of the authors after their panels. I am never good at coming up with clever/thoughtful questions to ask. If I had thought about it, I could’ve asked if I could follow one of them to their tables for book signings just to see the process, see how they interact with people and that kind of thing. I also could’ve asked how you get invited (or volunteer) to be on a panel at a convention. Slowly, but surely, I am pushing myself out of my comfort zone.

And, of course, I did still have fun at the con, even if it was not my goal. The more comfortable I get going as an author, the more fun I will be able to have.