Category: journal

Resetting

Laura Highcove

I came off of last week being on vacation where I really didn’t do much, if any writing. I came back and got back to work as I should finishing up rewriting a few Gabir scenes and then restarting the story to focus on Tabitha’s storyline. I put in a good number of hours through the week. Since I had last week off for Williamsburg, I agreed to work this weekend to give my coworker a nice long weekend. Oddly enough, despite that, Saturday I still got a lot done, and it wasn’t until Sunday that the extra barn work started dragging me down such that I told myself I needed to not push the writing too hard and just recover.

It’s a shame to lose the momentum I had, but I’ll get back to it tomorrow. I want to try and have Tabitha’s scenes done by June 3rd. I had to do a bit of a recheck into myself because I realized I was not enjoying the story because I was so focused on whether or not the story was technically ‘good’. One of the things I realize from writing this journal is that I keep having to come back to the same realizations, because it’s so easy to get caught up in life and goals and expectations that I lose focus on what’s important. Then I have to not beat myself up for having forgotten, because it’s just another one of those things. Every once and a while I just need to stop and reset by reminding myself of what’s important. And the ability to realize I need to do that is one of the most important skills I’ve learned. Anyway, I am back to feeling like I am making progress as I focus on writing a story I enjoy. Cause who cares if it’s technically ‘good’ if I hate it?

I’ve now pushed to the end of what I have so far for Tabitha, so I’m going to shift over to Wildrose and smooth through his scenes and see what comes out the other side. I’d like to get that done by the end of the week at the latest, and start trying to weave more Tabitha/Wildrose storylines together to catch up to where Gabir is. (By the end of the *next* week.)

It’s Vacation Time Again

Laura Highcove

So Camp Nanowrimo was both a success and not. I easily passed my word count goal of 20k. I validated with 30k, but I didn’t finish writing all the scenes I needed in the Huntsman. I did a lot of new ones, and then I went back and rewrote a number of scenes. I am certainly further than I was at the beginning of the April, but certainly not as far as I would’ve liked to be. Of course ‘doneness’ of a novel is not an easy thing to calculate, so it’s more like, my goal of having a draft 0 done has still not been reached.

I’m still moving forward, I’m still making progress, but I really want to hit some sort of milestone. Something I can point to and say, ‘I’ve finished x.’ I mean I gave myself a reward for reaching my goal in Camp Nanowrimo, but I feel like that was a milestone for Camp Nanowrimo, and not necessarily my book.

Of course this week I’m on vacation and I’m trying to give myself a break from having to work on Huntsman. I generally write for an hour or so in the mornings even when I’m on vacation because I love writing. I just don’t give myself any time or word count goals. I write for as long as I want to, on whatever project I want to. (I spent this morning on a scene from Blessings of the Nerial.)

I’m hoping that this more lax structure will help me to gather myself and be ready to move forward again once vacation is over. Short post, I’m on vacation.

Review: Dreaming Death

Laura Highcove

My Review of Dreaming Death by J. Kathleen Cheney

My summary: Shironne is able a very powerful sensitive, someone who can feel the emotions of others, and those powers have left her blind. She is able to tap into the dreams of someone in the city who experiences people’s deaths but can’t remember them afterward. She works with the army to use what she sees to help solve the murders.

Why I picked up this book: I actually don’t remember. I must’ve heard about it somewhere.

What I knew going in: I read the first chapter before purchasing the book because I wasn’t as convinced about it as other books I’ve bought. I found the main characters very comforting, and I liked how the author portrayed her pov when she is blind.

My response: Another very rough beginning to a book. This time it was because of an immense amount of world-building info dumps. I loved the main character Shironne, and loved being in her pov, but we very quickly shift to Mikael’s pov, as a member of the army, and the Family, and one race but looks a lot like another, and all of the people he works with and their races and connections and backstories. I found myself slogging through information about which I cared very little.

Once the two main characters meet, the story is a lot more enjoyable. The characters are all written very well and feel real and distinctive. I didn’t have trouble remembering who was who (though I threw what race everyone was out the window.) except one guy who had a name that kept making me think he was a girl whenever I read it.

The plot was sufficiently intriguing and satisfying at the end. It will be interesting to see if future books will be past the fact that the female lead is still 17 for four months so she can’t have any sort of relationship with the male lead because she is a CHILD. (I very much felt like that word was being said in all caps ever time it came up.) I almost feel like I want to read the next book just so the world building I managed to get through doesn’t go to waste. (Don’t get me wrong, the world building is very intriguing, it was just not presented well.)

Do I recommend this book?: Sure. I enjoyed it well enough. It was a rather good mystery, and the world is intriguing, and once the main characters meet, they’re very cute together.

What is My Greater Goal?

Laura Highcove

I started Camp Nanowrimo at the beginning of this month with a goal of 700 words a day, and actually challenged myself to get the typical 1,667 words required to win Nanowrimo Proper, on the days I had time. Turns out that was most days in the first week and a half. I had 14,871 words before I went to a horse show this past weekend, which created four days of no time for writing.

I had great success due to, before the month started, prepping by making a list of all of the scenes, situations I still needed for my novel. Each day I would take one or somtiems two if it was short, and write it.

Now on the other side of the horse show, I’ve found that I lost some of my momentum, and I’m trying to figure out if it’s due to taking so many days off writing, or if I need to revise for a bit to organize what I have and find the path forward.

I wrote 700 words yesterday and today, but I am planning to sit down and try and organize the scenes I have written and expand my list with other scenes that I will need. Once that’s done we’ll see if my momentum comes back. Getting my goal of 20k words is not going to be a challenge, so I’m just going to push forward with however much I can get done each day and not drive myself crazy.

I’ve also been inspired by a facebook post from Gabriela of diymfa.com and as such, I’m adding a little more to my journal posts. Gabriela posed three questions as a weekly check-in. The first two I already ascribe to: “What have you accomplished this week?” and “What’s on deck for next week?” But the question she posed that got me thinking was: “How do these activities serve your greater purpose?”

For the most part, I figure my answer to that last question is “So I can finish my book.” But I think that might be a little too broad. The same way as answering: “So I can become a published author.” That’s all well and good as a goal, but there are tons of smaller steps that need to happen.

I sat down to think about what my goal is for right now with this book. I feel like finishing the book is still a ways off, so I came up with a more specific goal: “To write all the scenes that need to be written to give myself a draft 0.” After that’s done, the goal will be to turn what I have written into a rough draft (which is what can be read by a beta reader.) I hope to have that first goal of a draft 0 done by the end of this month.

April, the Most Productive of Months

Laura Highcove

At the beginning of last week I got a new shipment of books. Reading and I have a strange relationship. I love reading, but not only do I have a hard time attributing something so fun to something I need to do for my writing career (and thus make time for it), but when I read a book, I am generally obsessed with finishing it to the detriment of all else.

As such, I have actually avoided reading in the past, because it ‘distracts’ me from writing. Now that is silly, because in order to become a better writer, I need to read. I managed to convince myself of that enough that I read four of the five books already. (I have reviews written that will go up in the next few weeks.) However, this did cut into my writing time so while I progressed with the Huntsman, it was less than I usually do.

That brings me to my next topic. During April (Which started yesterday for you reading this, but I am writing this on March 31.), I am taking part in Camp NaNoWriMo for the first time. I was a rather religious participate of NaNoWriMo (the original) until this past year when I was in the middle of a writing project I couldn’t put off. As such I didn’t get my NaNoWriMo fix for the year and since a friend set up a cabin, I thought it might be fun to give this a try.

Unlike NaNoWriMo, Camp NaNoWriMo allows you to set your own goal and then attempt to accomplish it during the month of April. (And it can be counted in word, hours, minutes, lines, or pages.) Now I’ve been playing around with the ‘rules’ of NaNoWriMo for years. And while I always hit what I consider the ‘main’ rule (the words I authenticate are written in the month of November), the idea of giving myself my own goals is not outside of my comfort zone.

Two years ago when I had just started the Huntsman, and I gave myself the lofty goal of 90k words for NaNoWriMo. My expectation was to burn through the rough draft like I had The Law of the Prince Charming two years before that. I failed.

But of course that didn’t mean I gave up. It just took me two years to come to grips with the fact that this book won’t be as quick and easy as the first one, and that there’s nothing wrong with that. At the same time, I want to push forward this dreaded ‘muddle in the middle’ that I always have trouble with.

So I’m going to use Camp NaNoWriMo to help with that. I’ve been wibbling back and forth about what kind of goal to give myself. I’m not sure I can realistically expect to make 50k words since my weekends are spoken for all month. So I’m going to go with 20k words which is less than 700 words a day, and hopefully a number I can keep up since there will be days where I simply can’t write.

I spent part of this morning writing out a list of scenes I need to write, so hopefully I’ll just be able to bang those out. Either way, I’ll have more words written by the end of the month than I have now.

I am also participating in #WIPjoy again. Those posts will be going up on my Facebook and Twitter feeds starting today, so you’ll get some more tidbits about the Huntsman if you’re so inclined.

And this month brings the last four parts of The Aesir-Vanir War short story that has been going since the beginning of March.

It’s going to be a productive month whether I like it or not.

Lack of Motivation

Laura Highcove 1 Comment

I have been suffering recently with a lack of motivation. Ever since I put the Huntsman in my hubby’s hands for an alpha read, I’ve been struggling to find another project that interests me as much. I was working on the rough drafts of two other novel ideas that sort of fizzled. I tried doing some prompts, but those ended up just flopping around and not feeling very effective. I also wrangled an idea for a short story where I tried to outline it before writing it, but I ended up with a story where none of the characters feel like characters.

There were brief moments for each of these that felt exciting. But it’s like the sparks that jump out from the fire. They burn brightly, and you wonder for a moment if they’ll really catch fire, but instead the light fades, leaving you with only a tiny sooty reminder that there was anything there at all.

This worries me. If I’m going to make a career at this, I should be able to sit down and write that needs to be written. What happens when I pitch a book idea to my eventual agent, and they get all excited about it, and then I get into this same situation where I can’t write it? What if more of my projects fizzle than catch fire?

Am I really getting better at this writing thing? Because I feel like my skill with actual writing may be growing, but at the same time I’m losing access to the things that used to come so easily. What good is it for me to be able to write a beautiful sentence, or have all my plot points in a row if I can’t come up with an interesting concept that can carry a book or a character that feels real?

I did, however, get the Huntsman back at the beginning of last week and I was finally able to sit down with my hubby and hammer out some plot points that should help with my muddled middle. I’m so still in love with this project, and though it still needs some serious work, I’m feeling much better about it.

I’ve also gone a long way toward accepting that writing a sequel really is that much harder than writing book one, so I’m feeling less bad about my ‘lack of progress’ on this book. It’s going to take however long it’s going to take, as annoying as that is, but I want this book. I want to keep following these characters and I want to know what happens.

It’s also the third week of the short story I’m publishing through my newsletter about a young Loki and a war between men and gods. If you’d like to read it, you can sign up here.

Still having doubts, still moving forward.

Gryffins: Oh God There’s More

Laura Highcove

Yes, this is the last installment of my collection of gryffins. For now …

Gryffins in Plush

My collection of gryffin stuffed animals, because of course I have some to snuggle with.

The biggest gryphon (back left) is actually a puppet my mother bought for me. The one with the wild eyes (back right) I saw at a store one day. The one that looks like it has a cutie mark (front right) is from Busch Gardens where they have the griffon roller coaster*. There is also the gryphon plush I bought for World of Warcraft (front middle) that came with an in-game pet (I just never got a screen-shot of while I was still playing the game.) The round one (front left) is a limited edition griffin from Squishables. I actually missed the first run of them and only managed to grab one from the second (and final) run.

*More on this later. 😀

Gryffins in Cards

Magic the Gathering has a good and fairly constant set of griffin cards that come out. While I don’t have all of them (I’ve kinda fallen off on keeping up with the sets.) I do have a good number of them. I even have some that aren’t considered griffin cards, but that have griffins features in the art.




Other Gryffins

I also have a mug. It is also from the Griffin roller coaster in Bush Gardens like the plush.

And this gryffin sconce was made by a local artist. It sits just above my bed. Yes, the colors don’t really go with the wall color, but there you have it.

Gryffin Sightings

And here are examples of gryffin sightings in the wild.

This is the rollar coaster from which come the gryffon plushie and mug. It is at Busch Gardens in Williamsburg and is my favorite rollar coaster because if you get in the front row, you really feel like you’re flying.

This is a bar I passed by while in Las Vegas. I don’t drink, however, I had to record my #gryffinsighting.

And there you have it. That is my collection of gryffin-related items. Thanks for putting up with a bit of my insanity.

Getting through February

Laura Highcove

I have 15k words on Blessings of the Nerial, though some of that was in trying to figure out which pov I was going to end up using on the story. Most of it was useful prose though. I like the idea of this story, but the world-building is giving me trouble. I believe I’m thinking about it too much at too early a stage though. I’m going to try and just push through for the rest of the week, and do whatever and tighten it up later. Either way, I got my goal.

My goals of writing four descriptions and doing some deep reading fell a bit more flat. I did post one description. (From the world of Blessings of the Nerial.) and I did some deep reading on the first chapter of Six of Crows by Leah Bardugo because I love how she introduces her two main characters in that book. No excuse, I just let them fall by the way-side.

I also worked on getting my short story, The Aesir-Vanir War promoted and out there. If you’re a member of my newsletter, you should already have part one in your inbox. If not, you can sign up to start getting it any time. I’m excited to get something new out into the universe, and something complete at that. Makes me wish I was a little better at writing short pieces.

By the end of this week I am planning on having The Huntsman back from its alpha read, at which point I’ll probably be diving head-first back into that. I’ve been a little encouraged by articles I’ve read that talk about how hard the second book in a series is to write, in general. Though most of them talk about doing it once you find an agent/have sold the first one and so then you’re under pressure. None of that for me yet, but I love this story and want to complete the trilogy. For now I’ll just be happy that I don’t yet have any kind of deadline besides those imposed on myself. I’m hoping that completing this series will just be a wonderful learning experience.

Anyway, I’ll be reading over the comments I get back, and likely doing some discussions with my hubby. What he says will have a large impact on what my next step with the story is, so I can’t really make a plan for that yet. It will be interesting for me to see, however, if my focus and feeling of purpose come back when I’m back to having that *one* story to work on. I’ve been feeling a little ‘all over the place’ since I stopped working on the Huntsman. Though it’s possible it’s also because it was February, which is just not a pleasant month in general. Yay for March!

Gryffins: In Solid Form

Laura Highcove

This is the third of a trio of posts showing off my gryffin collection.

Gryffins as Figures

A whole bunch of gryffin figures I have found in various places.

A rather typical looking gryffin (front left), a humanoid gryffin with a hammer (front right), and why yes, that is a humanoid gryffin riding a gryffin (back), thank you for asking.

Ignoring the little gold guy in front who should’ve been in the other picture, these are all pre-painted miniatures from Dungeons and Dragons. Flying gryffin (front left), stalking gryffin (front right), and lady riding sideways flying gryffin (back).



This guy is from Warhammer. Before and after pictures. I did all the modding to make it as High Elf as possible myself.

And this is Klesk, the mini for a D&D character from a 4th ED One Piece Campaign. This mini was modded pretty hard by a friend and painted by me.

I also got Sonic Boom from Skylanders. And Gilda, who was a character in the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic series.

I spotted these guys …I forget where, and while they remind me a bit more of a shisa with wings, I decided they were close enough to go in my gryffin collection.

This guy I bought a million years ago in 2003. He was meant to sit on top of your monitor. Yeah, remember when monitors wern’t flat? I do.

Gryffins in Stone

One Otakon there was a booth in the dealer’s room that sold jewelry, along with animals carved out of gemstones. I only picked up one at the time and later regretted it since the store wasn’t online anywhere for me to pick up more. It wasn’t until years later that I found them sold on ebay, so over time I collected a number of them.

I am very particular about the shape of the head. Sometimes there are ones for sale with huge bulbous heads, and I leave those ones alone. And the strawberry quartz one just ended up being bigger than the others. I didn’t realize it until it came in the mail.

And yes, that is just one more chunk of my collection. (You’re starting to think I’m crazy aren’t you? /cackles) Next post will show the rest of them.

New Timesheet Questions

Laura Highcove

Week before last I finished taking notes on the Huntsman. I organized what I had, wrote a bunch of new scenes (and rewrote old ones) based on what my notes had told me. I then realized I was still stuck. The idea that I had for the end of the story is just not coming together the way I want. So I did a quick cleaning and sent it to my husband for an alpha read so he has a better idea of the story to help with a plan. (He’s much better at outlines than I am.)

Since that is off my plate for now while the hubby reads it, I started working more on my Blessings of the Nerial story. I once again ran into the problem of being a discovery writer who now knows enough craft that I keep trying to put the plot together as I write. And right now I have no idea if it’s helping, or just stifling my writing. I talked out some of the ideas with my hubby and realized how little of my ideas are actually solid (ie, I can explain them successfully to someone else). It’s possible that it’s always like this at the beginning of a story and I’ve just never been aware of it before. I’m still on ‘vague feelings’ and ‘this is how it would look in a movie’ stage of writing. And who knows, it’s possible this story won’t stick at all. (It’s only at 13k words, so I’m not all that deep yet) But I’m going to keep working on it until I get the Huntsman back, barring anything else unforseen.

At the end of last week, I also noticed how little I had on my timesheet related to ‘reading’. I did finish my mushroom book, which is counted as ‘research’, but that’s all I had in the past month and a half. I think part of the problem is that counting ‘reading’ time toward ‘work’ time feels like cheating, since I enjoy it so much. Like yesterday I ready Dennard’s new Witchlands novella, Sightwitch. I put down the two hours it took on my timesheet and I feel weird about it.

And yet, I feel like I haven’t been reading much of anything because I’ve been so focused on getting the hours I want for my timesheet. I do want to work on doing more in depth reading, but in order to have fodder for that, it means I need to have read the story in the first place. Obviously this is just a timesheet I keep for myself and there are no right or wrong answers. We’ll see how the data pans out in the next month or so.

I also am working on making my descriptions more descriptive. My descriptions tend to come out rather …well like I’m writing code. (I have a BS in computer science.) It’s certainly a weakness of mine, so I’ve been looking for good examples in books I’ve read and trying to see how I can improve.

Goals for the next two weeks: Keep working on Blessings of the Nerial. I’d like another 7k words. I finally think I’m starting to get a handle on Eira’s (main character) personality. Write four descriptions that I’ll post on facebook and get some feedback. Spend at least two hours on some sort of deep-reading or analyzing. Man, I am being super specific this week. We’ll see how that goes.