Category: journal

Gender Bending

Laura Highcove

One of the things that I am playing around with in The Storyteller are gender roles, because it’s something I’m interested in. I’ve always been a tomboy and unlike many girls, I never really grew out of it.

Both of the main characters in The Storyteller do not conform to standard gender roles. Tabitha was raised as a Prince Charming. She is dashing, brave, and kind, the ideal prince. She just happens to be a girl.

Wildrose is In Touch with his Feminine Side. He is a man who does not play to typical masculine traits, and is just as comfortable playing the role of a woman as a man.

Wonderfully enough, TV Tropes (which I introduced you to last week) has a page for discussing gender roles. (It is a long read, just warning you.) The article exists to help people write characters of opposite genders, and as such is a neat compilation of the differences between genders, with the necessary disclaimer that it’s hard to make blanket statements about genders.

What gender roles do you like to bend or break, and which do you tend to conform to?

Getting Tropey

Laura Highcove

It occurs to me that since right now I don’t have any writing stuff to talk about, that this is a perfect time to talk a bit more about the story I’m working on itself, as opposed to the process.

If you’ve visited the “The Stories” link over on the right, you may have noticed the line under The Storyteller heading: “I have always wanted to do a story in a fairy tale world where the characters are genre savvy (ie, they know the fairy tales are stories and respond accordingly.)”. Being genre savvy involves a knowledge of expected outcomes based on stories similar to the current situation. These expected outcomes are also known as tropes. Click on that link. I’ll wait.

Back so soon? I’ve been known to get lost for hours on that site.

Basically, all of the things that you expect to happen in tv, movies, books, etc. because you’ve seen them before. You know it is a bad decision to go down into the basement when there’s a serial killer or scary monster somewhere in the vicinity, but the person in the situation has no idea that they’re in a scary movie.

Part of what I’m playing around with in The Storyteller is that the laws of magic in this world are tropes, and fairy tales happen over and over in different places to different people. These people have no idea they’re in a story. My main characters are Storytellers, and it’s their job to be Genre Savvy. They have to know the laws (tropes) in order to make sure the world stays stable through the successful completion of the tales.

Think for a moment about Cinderella. It doesn’t matter if you think of the Disney version, or any other version. There are certain things you associate with the story. Cinderella is treated as a servant. Her ball. She meets a prince, loses her slipper, and is identified by it.

There are many tropes associated with this story, and tons of re-tellings of the Cinderella story that use different tropes. Some tropes are less necessary than others. Would it still be a cinderella story if she started out rich? If her stepmother loved her? If there is no prince? What about if there were two princes?

In The Storyteller, the Storytellers have to make sure that certain tropes (laws of magic) happen properly within the tale or the magic can go completely wild. As such, I’ve had a lot of fun playing with what tropes I can put into stories, and which I can take out without losing the essence of the story. And that doesn’t mean that my Storytellers don’t have tropes of their own.

Tropes are not good or bad on their face, they’re just a tool. A way of creating and possibly subverting expectations in the reader quickly and easily. If you find any tropes on TV Tropes that you particularly like, feel free to share them in the comments section or post to my wall.

Retrospective

Laura Highcove

So here I am, after spending a week not working on The Storyteller. That doesn’t mean I don’t have anything to write about for this post, however. I figured this would be a great time to sit down and figure out what it is I’ve gotten out of the past five months. I just went back and read all of my posts, and I cannot even believe the ups and downs I managed to get through. It’s sort of mind boggling that I got anything done.

Major things I learned:

1) I am starting to hammer out what my process is.

I am not a writer who pounds out a rough draft and then edits it a few times. I’m not convinced I pound out a rough draft in the first place. I don’t do much planning at all before I sit down and write, so all of my planning is done as I write. That makes me believe that my first and second drafts are nothing more than active planning.

I always assumed that the way I used to write (writing until I had a new idea, then going back and editing and writing a little more, then repeat) was no good, mostly because I rarely had the discipline to stick with one story long enough to actually finish it. I have now accepted that that is likely part of my process. My first ‘draft’ is more ‘getting all the ideas on the page’ (whether I get to the end of the story or not), I let it rest, then sit down with everything I wrote and expand on the characters, the magic system, the world, etc. Then I write another draft, which is still not a completed rough draft, but at this point I should get through the entirety of the story. (So I have a legit ending.)

This is as far as I’ve gotten in the process thus far with The Storyteller. I know I am missing at least one subplot and many more details that need to be fleshed out. After this rest period, I will likely hammer out a few more details, and then turn the draft into an actual rough draft. As much as I want to compare myself to people who can just hammer out beautiful rough drafts ~cough~ #branderson ~cough~ I’m just going to have to keep working on what my own process is.

2) I am not as much a beginner writer as I thought

I am finding that I actually do have processes and good habits as a writer that I just didn’t recognize. SUBLIST!

a) I can hammer out words. I mean like seriously.
b) I can write most anywhere with most anything. Laptop, desktop, notebook, back of an envelope, whatever.
c) My ideas develop as I write them. I can only do so much sitting and thinking. (Not that it doesn’t help)
d) I am hella stubborn. As many times as I have thought about abandoning my story, I really am more stubborn than I thought. It basically comes down to the fact that I know I’m never going to stop writing, so abandoning a specific project is just losing a way to improve.

3) Other writers suck too

I have had a lot of problems with comparing what I write to other amazing stories out there. (This includes novels, movies, tv shows, webcomics, etc.) And I am actually starting to take a step back and look at the fact that everyone has stuff that is trash along with the stuff that is good. Or they started out and weren’t all that great and developed over time. Even well-written stuff can drop the ball in a serious way.

So as I work my way through my two months of not working on the Storyteller, it does allow me to take a step back and look at things objectively. I made a deadline and I met it. I succeeded at some things, failed at others. I even have comments on my last two blog posts! I want to thank everyone who has followed me this far. I’m not done yet. Stick around.

Completing a Draft

Laura Highcove

As you may remember from posts past, my overall plan was to finish this write through of the story by June 6th, which is a Saturday, and when I would start playing my video game reward. I worked on writing the end of the story, while reminding myself it is all rough draft to keep from over analyzing, from the outline I made a while ago. I stumbled around the final fight scene, then I started in on the final scene and I just started writing and things were just coming together. It was making sense, and I was really happy with it. I tweaked the epilogue (which I had written before as a goal point) and then I sat back and thought ‘Wow, this might actually be good, like not just ‘I got through it’, but good.’

I gushed to my husband about how happy I was that the story was good, even though the first half and second half were not the same length. So my husband asked how long they were. I told him. Then he said, “You know that means your story is only 55k words, right?”

Of course I didn’t know that. Who the heck just adds two numbers together in their head? Suffice it to say, I very quickly went from being proud of myself to realizing I didn’t have a novel length draft. (Much less a fantasy novel length draft.) And while my draft is rather rough in some places, and will need some scenes added in and such, the idea of being able to add 35k words did not seem plausible.

This is what having a mentor is for. She suggested that after letting it rest for a while, I should read through it again and find a subplot that could be expanded on. That sounded like a perfect idea to me, reminding me that sometimes seemingly horrible problems have simple answers.

So since Wednesday, my draft has been sitting, and I keep feeling like I should be writing, and then I remember that I’m taking a break. It’s a surreal experience as always. Sort of like the first week after I graduated from college when I realized I would never have to go to school again. Like ever. 😀

Worry not, as I am currently alpha reading my husband’s book (which I’ve been promising to do forever) so I’m not completely out of the writing game. I also started playing my reward game.

Feeling Guilty

Laura Highcove

So this past week I was on vacation. I decided that I was not going to restrict the activities I would have time to do by scheduling more writing time than normal. Instead I gave myself a flat hour of writing per day on my current wip. I then found that with my extra time, I wanted to work on another story that has been poking around in my head for a while.

I still got a good amount done, but was glad I didn’t end up making my vacation feel like a job. Vacations are for relaxing and riding roller coasters.

I am now working my way through the ending of the story. I have an outline for it and am now just writing it out. I am, however, reminded of how poor I am at writing fight scenes. They usually end up no more creative than: “He swung his sword in a wide arch and his opponent blocked it.” unless I get my husband’s help.

I feel guilty sometimes in getting help with my writing. I’m not talking about the overall skills, or getting feedback from critique partners, but when I need help with specifics in the actual story itself. Such as when I (always) need help from my husband for fight scenes, or when I run into a plot hole that I just can’t fill and get suggestions from him. I mean I know I can’t do everything myself, but I always feel like I should be able to. I mean don’t ‘real’ authors just write rough drafts and then have critique groups and/or editors that help them tweak?

Anyone else out there feel guilty asking for help with things (anything, not just writing) that you feel like you should be doing on your own?

Drafting: Scene Roadblock

Laura Highcove

So first off is an assessment of my limiting my hours. First off, it did certainly help with my level of guilt. If I did my scheduled time for the day, then it was easier for me to relax and do other things. (like reading one and a half Brandon Sanderson books)

I also set a timer on my phone for the scheduled amount of time, which helps a bit in keeping me focused. Something about the time there actually counting down makes there be a sense of urgency that I don’t have when I sit down and glance at the clock and plan to write for an hour.

Of course travel for vacation is making my timing a little rough today and tomorrow, but I’m getting it in. It makes me realize that my plan on writing two hours each day on my vacation kinda puts a time crunch I don’t want to deal with on my vacation, so I’ll probably limit my time to an hour a day, meaning I won’t have the extra time I thought I might.

I don’t want to stress myself out during my vacation. That’s not the point. Even now I’m feeling a bit resentful that I have to spend time writing this post instead of relaxing.

Something else I ran into: A very important scene that exists to garner sympathy and connection with a particular character is a complete and utter roadblock. I basically had to skip it after spending two days on it with no progress. The story flows before and after it. I don’t know what to make of that. My first instinct is that the scene is in the wrong place, or unneeded, except I need it, and there’s really no where else to put the scene. No idea what to do about that yet.

And now I am on to new stuffs. I am going to plow through it even if it goes really slowly. I really want to get the second half of this book hashed out. I keep running into contradictions with my world or plot that grind me to a halt. It happens every time I get to this level of revision on a story and it’s quite the confidence killer. I am scared and frustrated and I have no idea if I’ll ever be able to fix the issues.

Yes, I’m ending on a down this week. May as well own it.

Drafting: Limiting my Writing

Laura Highcove

I have no idea if this journal is helping or hurting me. On one hand, I have someone to be accountable to, even if there’s only one or two people clicking through from my facebook, or coming here of their on volition. It also makes me look at what I’m doing on a weekly basis, so I don’t get stuck in stagnation.

On the other time, it’s something else to eat up time, and I feel much guiltier about not getting done what I say I want to get done. Then because I don’t have time and am more scared to fail, I am hesitant to make any changes to my plans.

I know focus is a hard thing for me. Even when I was in college and I would work on my programming projects, I had a habit of banging out a section of code, getting it to a working place and then getting up and taking a walk around before coming back. The nice thing about getting up and walking around in a dorm room, is there’s not much to it. It’s easy to land back in my desk and then continue with the project.

Now my ‘get up and walk around’ ends up being going to a website of some variety and then I look up a half-hour (or longer) later having not gone back. Barring that is getting up and walking around my house, where I get distracted by a messy counter, a dusty TV, or something else to procrastinate with.

For the second week I feel like I worked pretty hard on my writing, and yet I still didn’t get all the way through what I said I would. I guess I could blame it on my not being good at planning how much I can get done in a week, but I also worry that I’m just not focused enough on it.

I want to get through the rest of Bluebeard and do the Headquarters section, which will drop me out in front of new content just in time for my vacation. That will give me four weeks to finish off the book by my deadline.

I think I might even try and limit my writing this week. I know that sounds a little counter productive, but I have been in a state of near constant guilt. Any time I am not writing I am feeling guilty about not writing. So let’s see:

Sunday: 2 hours + 1 for blog/facebook
Monday: .5 hours
Tuesday: 1.5 hours
Wednesday: 1 hours
Thursday: 0 hours
Friday: 1 hours
Saturday 2 hours + .5 for blog

That is: 8 hours of writing a week. And 1.5 for social media. I think that’s pretty good.

Drafting: An Ah-HA! Moment

Laura Highcove

So I had a bit of a revelation this week. As my DIYMFA Mentor would say, an “Ah HA!” Moment. I was listening to a recent DIY MFA podcast on making plots without a formula, and it occurred to me that a lot of what the guest was saying was something that I was already doing in a form. It was a moment where I realized how far I’ve come from when I just wrote all day long, and figured out some things through trial, error, and grit, but never came out from under my rock.

My learning about new writing techniques and methods are now more about filling in the blanks, tweaking technique, and looking at things from alternative angles as opposed to filling in huge chunks. And that’s not to say that I don’t still have a ton to learn…

Like this week I learned that 19k words was a little too much to revise in a week. I worked on it for more hours than I usually do, but still didn’t get through everything.

I did, however, hammer out a much better ending to the Cinderella section than I had before. So it was still a productive week.

I also have a vacation coming up in the middle of may, which will allow for a lot of catch up, even though my husband has told me I am not allowed to spend the entire week writing like I did last time.

So this week, my specific measurable result will be finishing the next two sections. I don’t want to set myself up for failure by adding in that third section. It’s 15k words for editing.

Drafting: A New Step Forward

Laura Highcove

So things are getting back underway. I have a new plan (outline) that my husband helped me hash out. In addition to that I had a realization from the most recent writing book I have picked up Story Engineering, where the author said there is little difference between plotters and pantsers, just that plotters do all their planning by perfecting their outline and such before they start to write, and pantsers do all their planning in multiple edits while they’re writing.

In the past when I wrote, I started in on the story and wrote until I had this GREATNEWIDEA that I had to add into the story, so I started over. And I would do that over and over again. That in itself only got me so far because I didn’t understand story structure and I didn’t discipline myself to get to the second half of the book very often.

It did, however, make me realize that I probably will need to go through a few edits like I used to do, so I am starting over from the beginning of the story to add in all of the planning and world building I have developed since January.

Once I get to my halfway point again, I am going to push through to the end, using my new outline. I figure I may not need any more edits than that because I spent so long after my first draft just planning world, characters, and story, but I won’t know until I get there.

My deadline is June 5th, because starting June 6th, I am going to play Xenoblade Chronicles as my reward to myself for getting through the story.

As such, I have three weeks to get through what I already have planned out pretty well (which I think is actually past the halfway point, and to the Dark Night of the Soul (The absolute low point of the story.) <—Look at me embedding parenthesis.) And then four weeks to hammer out the rest of the story. So my specific measurable result is three sections a week. (It's 19k words.) I need to get through, probably two of them this weekend in order for that to work.

Depression

Laura Highcove

In the spring of 2003 I started taking medicine for depression. It wasn’t a huge deal at first, I would have a day or two a month where I would feel overwhelmed and cry on and off all day. I called this “crashing”.

The medicine worked well, helped to even out my moods. I would only have problems when I neglected getting refills, desperately hoping that this time I wouldn’t need it anymore. That this time I would be okay and that I was no longer dependent on some drug to make me able to live my life. Then I would crash again.

I remember hitting my low point, where I was at work, staring at the computer screen, trying to figure out how many more hours I had to work until I had another sick day accrued.

I wondered what the hell was wrong with me, that I had a wonderful husband, perfect job (with great pay, coworkers, doing work I loved to do), financial stability, and I was still depressed. I was so depressed that I quit my job and my husband and I moved back to Blacksburg, Virginia.

When I think back on those times, it just feels so different from how it is now. I was blessed by God’s grace to stumble on Advantage Ranch, just a few miles from my home, and that the people there (and horses!) helped me learn to better control my mind, and the suffering I was causing myself. Three years ago I realized that this time, I no longer needed the medication.

This change was brought into stark relief as I mentioned in last week’s post, I fell back into that depression. For three weeks I struggled against the helpless feeling that brought me to tears in seconds and made me despair that I had broken and that I was going to have to go back on depression medicine.

But even from the depths of that hell I knew I had people that I could trust with anything and so I put my pain out there. I was able to put it out there because there was no judgment, because these women have made it their life’s work to make the barn a safe environment and because they could still see the beautiful person I am, even trapped as I was.

They helped me realize that I was caught in an immense trap made from the guilt I feel over my cat’s coming surgery. A feeling that my mind had buried to where I couldn’t see it, but it could torture me. And as soon as I knew where the pain was coming from, I cried for maybe a minute, and then I was fine.

I went from wanting to bury myself in a dark corner to being back to normal in minutes. Now, I admit, it took me years of work prior to this, to get to the point where I knew myself well enough and I trusted the people enough for the change to come that easily. Even in this case it took me two weeks to realize something was actually *wrong*.

But it was a reminder of what my life had been like, and how different it is now. For a while I actually doubted that what I had gone through was depression. I never struggled with suicidal thoughts, I only had certain days that I was depressed enough to crash, and even the fact that I was eventually able to come off the depression medicine made me think perhaps I had never been that bad.

I was wrong. I was depressed. There was no ‘faking happy’ in that place. There was only my mind turning me against everything that was good in my life. My mind, but not my soul.

I’m left wishing there was some way for me to let everyone who suffers from depression know that you’re not broken. You haven’t failed. And yes, there are people out there who can function without medication; and there are people who can’t. That is a statement of fact and nothing more.

I was able to better control my mind, and thus my depression, with a combination of the Landmark Curriculum for Living, Ashtanga Yoga, and coaching from the facilitators of Advantage Ranch (who I am lucky enough to call friends) over a period of three years. It is not a quick fix, and the study is ongoing, but I am convinced it is worth it and that anyone can do it.

Sorry for this interlude, I am back to writing. There will be an update next week.