Honoring My Reality

Laura Highcove 2 Comments

A prompt from the DIY MFA Book Club: Tell a story about a time when you had to honor your reality. Has there ever been a moment when writing felt completely incompatible with your real life–when it felt like there was just no way you could make the two exist together?

The problem I have with honoring my reality doesn’t come from a feeling of being unable to make my life and my writing coexist. Writing has always been a natural part of my life, completely intertwined. If life gets too busy, I stop writing and take care of it, and then I drift back to my writing naturally.

My problem comes from trying to determine the balance between my life and my writing now that I have a goal of being professionally published. I have a hard time figuring out how much time I “need” to spend writing vs how much time I “need” to spend relaxing.

When you have a boss who is not yourself, the appropriate amount of hours/effort is determined by someone else. You know that you work from 9 to 5, with a break for lunch, or that you have certain tasks that need to be done before you leave. You know (if your boss is any good) what is expected and how much of it.

My own hours/goals are defined by …whatever I think is manageable, or what I think I should be doing. Sometimes it’s reasonable, and sometimes I overestimate what I’m able to do. The variability and the fact that I’m the one that sets my schedule makes it very hard to be able to define the amount of work I do as ‘enough’.

There are certainly days where I convince myself that I’ve done enough when I really just want to read a new book, or play another level in a video game. There are other days that no matter how much I write, my mind tells me: ‘well I could be writing right now’ or ‘did I really get enough writing done today?’.

And at those times I try and remind myself to honor my reality. That I need time to write, and I need time to relax. It doesn’t always work. While I’ve never worried that I won’t have time for writing, finding the happy balance between work and rest is an ongoing struggle.

My Origin Story

Laura Highcove 2 Comments


A prompt from the DIY MFA Book Club:

Writing is a superpower and every superhero has an origin story. What’s yours? When did you realize that you wanted to write? What motivated you to get started?

I’m not sure that I can hone in on the exact moment where I remember thinking ‘Now I want to write’. I have just always written. It was as natural to me as breathing, and in fact it was not until much later in life that I realized other people *didn’t* write like I did.

However, the first memory I have surrounding writing, is about a story I wrote a long time ago called Cottontails Big Adventure. Why yes, I do still have the story and yes, you can read it. It has pictures!

Cottontails Big Adventure

Page 1
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The thing I remember specifically about this story is that when I killed off the antagonist at the end of the story by having him fall in a lake and drown, the wonderful teacher that I had praised my originality. She told me it was very creative that my characters didn’t just end up getting along for no reason at the end of the story. (Which apparently many of my classmates had happen. I swear I don’t remember what grade I was in when I wrote this.)

That praise is the thing I remember most. It’s possible that after that is when I started writing more stories, or maybe this was just one in a line of stories I wrote that didn’t survive until today. All I know is that this story helped to define a lifetime of writing.

Starting the New Year Cold

Laura Highcove

Hello and Happy New Year! I do not have any New Year’s Resolutions to report. I am, however, very glad that we are out of this cold snap. I am continuing on in my writing journey in much the same fashion as last year in that I and evaluating what is and isn’t working every week or so and changing things up as needed.

And this week is no exception. A few weeks ago I saw a friend post about a time tracking program she was using to see how productive she is. I decided it might behoove me to check and see how productive I actually am, since I often don’t feel productive just because I don’t spend every waking moment on my writing.

So for the past two weeks I’ve been just (trying) to record my time I spent on what. Part of the problem was remembering to write down my start and end times. This was the time between (roughly) 2 and 5 pm Mon – Thurs and /shrug on weekends. My plan was to do my best to not change my habits and to just record what I was doing.

First week:

19.5 hours
33% of my time was spent on “writing” activities. Either writing, revision, or smoothing. Anything that is actual work on one of my stories.
44% of my time was spent on “Professional development” things, this includes my social media presence, stuff dealing with agents, and any books that I read.
23% was “other” which is cleaning my house, taking breaks, and playing video games.

Yeah, I was rather disappointed with myself, even though this was supposed to be a fact finding mission. So this past week I tried to focus a little more on doing more writing/professional development, even though I still didn’t give myself any hard-set goals.

Second week:

18.5 hours
62% Writing
27% ProDev
10% Other

Which I am much happier with. And now that I’ve seen the general shape of my working habits, now I’m ready to start setting some goals for myself.

I would like to have is 20 hours a week (a part time jobs’ worth) of time spent on Writing, Reading, and ProDev. Not that I won’t take breaks in my day, but overall time spent should be 20 hours a week. That should boil down to 3 hours a day Mon – Thurs and 3.5 each Sat and Sun. At least approximately. It’s also possible for me to make up time on the weekends, most of the time, but any travel or events will throw a wrench in that. I’ll just have to see how it goes.

Goals:

1) I’ll be done with my last polish of The Law of the Prince Charming before Sunday. It will then be sent to my hubby for his read-through. Once I incorporate anything he finds, it will sit around waiting for some lucky agent to request it.

2) I am doing a smoothing pass of the Huntsman with the new changed beginning. I want to have that done by the end of the month in order to send to alpha reader(s). The goal for this week is just to get through a chapter a day., which could either be easy or hard based on how much I have to rewrite.

Review: Jade City by Fonda Lee

Laura Highcove

Jade City by Fonda Lee

My summary:

On an island nation where jade (the stone) gives magical powers to those sensitive to it, clans fight for territory, honor, and jade. Lan inherits the position of Pillar (Leader-man of his clan) from an ailing grandfather who has dementia and doesn’t want to let go. He’s supported by his brother Hilo, who is his Horn (Lead fighty-man for the clan) and a hot-head. His sister Shae comes back after time spent abroad (which was not looked on favorably by the family) and refuses to get involved in the clan and wear her jade. Lan struggles to earn respect in his position, and then he finds out his Weather Man (Business-man for the clan) may be conversing with an enemy clan.

Why I picked up this book:

Truthfully? I saw enough ads for it. And I read this which got me involved in the story around the book as well.

What I knew going in:

Asian style story involving family, honor, and magic. Which, let’s be honest, is all on the front cover.

My response:

Overall a good read, though nothing mind blowing. I gave it three stars. It has a steep learning curve (ie: There is a *lot* of vocabulary to learn.) and it took a while to get used to that, added to the fact that people can be referred to by first or last name. It has all the feel of a culture where family is *everything* and honor fills in whatever gaps are left.

I stopped to think about my favorite character in Jade City and in my mind I said: “Well I love Anden, and Lan, oh and Shae, and I really like Hilo …isn’t that like, all the main characters?”

As per usual, I love seeing strong relationships between characters and them being loyal to each other. There were enough un-reasonable people around to keep things interesting, but even the “bad guys” aren’t just bad. They’re all real characters and have legit motivations for what they’re doing, which I appreciate.

Will I pick up the next book:

I’m not waiting on bated breath, but I will if I see it.

New Challenge for December

Laura Highcove 1 Comment

The last two weeks have gone well. I finished up the revision pass of The Law of the Prince Charming, adding in the new plot lines I decided I needed after receiving feedback from an editor. That ended up going a lot more smoothly than I thought it would, and I’m happy with the way it ended up.

A side effect of this, however, sent the first 13k words of the Huntsman into the trash. This was both good and bad. It was good because it highlighted that a certain plot-line was superfluous and probably would’ve just confused things. I was also really having trouble with the end of that section and I’d just as rather not have to fix it. Losing the beginning of the Huntsman was bad because …well throwing away 13k words, and I actually really liked how it started the story. It gave legit reasons to explain what had happened in the last book without it just being the narrator telling the reader. I also loved a lot of the characterization I did with my main characters that, as a discovery writer, I’ll have to see if I can finesse into the new beginning.

And speaking of the new beginning, I was inspired by the DIY MFA Radio podcast to start trying to write every day. Not that I don’t, but I mean to actually write new prose every day. For some reason I assumed that if I was going to write new prose, it had to be as much as I possibly could manage in a day. And that would mean revising and working on my website would be left as daunting side projects. It was pointed out that even 100 words a day is 36.5k a year, nothing mind blowing, but I realized that it would be child’s play for me to write 500 words a day. That’s 30 min, 45 on a bad day. So I just make that a daily thing and that’s over 180k words a year.

As of right now I’m using that to rewrite the beginning of the Huntsman (the rest of the story was not much effected by the beginning being changed, which was part of the problem.) and I’ve also been throwing the occasional 500 words at a new story idea that’s been burning a hole in my brain. So for the most part, December is an experiment of whether I can polish a novel, write prose into a second novel that is on the edge of stepping out of rough draft status, and write prose toward a different project’s rough draft all that the same time. Sounds like a lot of fun doesn’t it? I know right!? So far I’m not having any trouble switching among them. My plan now is to see what happens and reevaluate at the end of the month.

What if I am?

Laura Highcove 1 Comment

Some of you may remember my trip to Vegas for the MasterTreat earlier this year. I got so much out of that weekend that it’s hard to even talk about it all, but one of the main things was that I felt a level of confidence there for almost the entire weekend, that I had never experienced before. As a result I was able to look at many of the feelings I have on a deeper level than I ever have. One of them was confronting more specifically what my fear of public speaking stems from. The another was my modesty.

One of the things that happened at the MasterTreat was that in my confidence, I was able to repeat some of the advice I had gained from the mentors in my life. The result of that is that the other women at the table seemed impressed, and one of them even called me wise.

My initial response to that was, of course: Well that’s not true. And I made the excuse that I was just repeating what other, smarter people had said. But after that gut reaction, I decided I needed to examine that feeling, so I sat with those compliments for a while.

I let myself think about what it would mean if I was wise. Not in the grand scheme of the world, or compared to other people, but in that moment, for those woman, what if I am wise? And you know, there is a fear somewhere deep-seated in me that believes that there is something truly wrong about being confident in myself. And once I was able to realize that, for a little while I was able to let go of it and see myself as other people do. And then I was able to be that wise person that they saw.

I didn’t suddenly crack under the expectation. I didn’t break under the weight of my own arrogance. I didn’t drive away the people around me with my ego, and I didn’t lose my sense of right and wrong. And while the confidence I experienced that weekend faded once I returned to the ‘real world’, I had certainly developed a bit of feel surrounding it, and I now find myself far more aware of when I’m brushing off compliments as a reaction and when I may deserve them.

So I want to give you a challenge the next time someone pays you a compliment. Instead of brushing it off with a dismissive comment or an excuse; actually accept it. For just a moment, allow that you are smart or brave or creative or attractive. And you know what? All life is are moments lined up one after the other.

Thanksgiving 2017

Laura Highcove

In the lead up to Thanksgiving I found myself swamped with things, and while I wrote a post, I didn’t have time to go through the 3+ drafts I need to do to get something I write ready to publish.

That post is now on the back burner because I wanted to talk about what I’ve been doing with my writing. And that is, I hired a freelance editor to take a look at the Law of the Prince Charming. One of the main results was that I put the Huntsman aside to come back to LotPC. Two major changes were that I took out a major plot thread that required some reworking and added in another plot thread that required more reworking. These changes ended up going more smoothly than I thought they would, not that there weren’t scenes I had to pull apart at the seams. There were also a number of smaller changes like shoring up Tabitha and her mother’s motivations throughout the story and strengthening the theme.

I made one pass where I added in the rough changes I needed to, and now I’m in the middle of a revision pass where I am smoothing out the sharp edges the additions created and seeing if there is anything else I need to add. I’ll be going into more detail about what my experience in getting more professional feedback was like in this month’s newsletter, so sign up here if you’re interested.

Thanksgiving also happened since I last wrote a journal post. I spent far more time visiting with family than I did working on my story. I only felt guilty some of the time. It was quite the enjoyable holiday. I ate way too much, enjoyed time with family, and avoided any and all political discussion at the table.

My plan from here out: Get this revision pass done by Sunday morning. Then I can spend the afternoon on the rough draft of that post I mentioned.

World Fantasy Con 2017

Laura Highcove 4 Comments

So a week ago I went to San Antonio for World Fantasy Con. It’s my first year going, and I basically decided to go because I heard it mentioned on Writing Excuses and I wanted to get some experience with specifically fantasy focused conventions.

I was rather apprehensive because, while I’ve been rockin’ the convention scene since 2000, with Otakon and a few other anime conventions, I’ve never been to one focusing on books and truthfully I didn’t know what to expect. Otakon is huge and so my biggest change in expectation is that I knew it wasn’t anywhere near that large.

On the first day I was able to talk to someone who had been there before over breakfast, and she told me a few things to expect, like there is very little cosplay at WFC, (which is a change from Otakon) about the con suite (where the serve you food), and the readings.

After I got my badge they directed me to a room where I got a shoulder bag full of books. I was pretty surprised and happy, even though I couldn’t take them all home on the plane. I read several of them before I left and had to leave the others behind. The ones I did keep/read were enjoyable, and it opened me up to some books I wouldn’t have picked up on my own.

I went to the Opening Ceremony Panel where they had their guests, Martha Wells, Tananarive Due, Karen Joy Fowler, Gregory Manchess, and David Mitchel, all talk a bit about secret history, which is the theme of the con. It was a good introduction.

I then went to a reading by Curtis Craddock, who read from a swashbuckling style book called An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors which was a very intriguing read. I went to his reading just because there wasn’t a panel I wanted to attend at that time and I wanted to experience some live readings so I have ideas for mine in the future. And now I am adding that book to my ‘to read’ pile.

There was a panel called Beards and Intrigue: Queering the Historical Fantasy where the discussion was on LGBTQ+ protagonists in fantasy. The panel itself was great and the panelists included in their introductions their gender and sexual preference and it wasn’t until question and answer time that someone pointed out how cool it was that they had done that, and the entire audience just accepted it.

But that really was an overall theme that I noticed for the weekend. Fantasy people …I dunno, we’re just hardwired to accept things. We’re so used to reading about protagonists that are different, if they’re even human at all, and then being drawn into a story where we sympathize with those characters. So it gives us a leg up on the ‘live and let live’ style of existence.

The next day there was Exploration of Gender in Fantasy panel, where I found out about the Tiptree Award, which is “an annual literary prize for works of science fiction or fantasy that expand or explore one’s understanding of gender.” (from wikipedia).

And there was a panel Hild and Hilt: the Female Monk, the Lone Woman Protagonist where they talked about what it took to be a ‘lone woman protagonist’ and how that was different from a male protagonist.

I went to a number of other panels and readings and really enjoyed most everything I interacted with. And at the end of it all, when I was at the Awards Banquet and I was listening to Martha Wells speak, I realized something about the weekend that had sort of flitted at the edges but not really hit me. Unlike writing conferences I’ve been to, these were my people. I could feel it in the air and in the way everyone interacted with each other. Everyone was interested in fantasy books, they read them and brought them up as examples, and talked about them with such fervor; unlike at conferences where I feel like genre sort of sits on the sidelines and sometimes gets mentioned and usually by lumping fantasy together with science fiction. (Not that I have anything against science fiction, but it is different.)

After the Con was over, I had some extra time to go around San Antonio and experience the Riverwalk, which was amazing. Unfortunately I got sick on the way home and I still can’t breathe through my nose, but it’ll pass. But all in all, I was very glad I went and experienced it, and not only because of the free books.

The Importance of Patience

Laura Highcove

Patience is something everyone needs more of. It’s a constant struggle in a world that moves so fast. Working with horses is a good, constant reminder of the importance of patience.

I was reminded recently how important patience is. We had a horse get cast at the barn where I work. For those of you not familiar with the term, ‘cast’ is when a horse rolls over in their stall and gets stuck against the wall in some way that means they can’t get back up. Horses are prey animals and survived for millions of years by running away from danger, so if a horse can’t get up, they can’t run, and so in this situation most of them will panic.

For the horse who got cast, this panic manifested as labored breathing, sweating, and thrashing, which was dangerous both to the horse and the humans (me and my coworkers) who had to flip over a thousand-plus pound animal.

Once we had successfully freed the cast horse and it had regained its feet, it stood there still sweating and shaking, (Thankfully it had not been injured.) and I was reminded of how important patience really is.

I have a gelding named Nick. He was born at the barn and has been trained since he was a baby to accept the confinement of a stall, or being tied to his wall. Nick used to cast himself a lot as a baby. He was still figuring himself out. His training in accepting confinement, however, taught him that being cast wasn’t a cause for panic.

In his world, he would bang a bit, realize he couldn’t get up, and then a human would come and see he was cast and flip him over. As such, Nick never got upset about being stuck. No elevated breathing or sweating and as soon as a person came into the stall he would lay there perfectly still. Even when we flipped him over, he would lay there and allow the humans to move out of the way before climbing to his feet.

It got to the point that when he got bigger and heavier, that he learned how to get himself out of a cast state. He could either flip himself back over, or push against the wall such that he was far enough away to then get up. It got to the point where I would hear him banging a a bit and I would walk up to his stall and tell him, “You can get yourself out. If you’re having trouble, bang around some extra and I’ll come help you.” I knew I could do this because he was not upset about his confinement. Nine times out of ten, he would bang around a bit more and extract himself. The other time we would come (because we were listening to make sure he was okay) and he would wait patiently while we extracted him from a particularly bad angle.

This makes me think of how patience works. Sometimes things happen to us as a human. Some circumstance pops up and we get all hot and bothered. We ‘sweat’ and ‘thrash’ and end up doing damage to ourselves and others, even if mostly mental.

When what we really should do is stay calm and ask for help, (We can do it more efficiently than a horse.) or have someone remind us that we can do it on our own. That person can even be ourselves when the situation calls for it. What doesn’t help is the thrashing and the worry which can often get in the way of getting un-cast.

So next time you find yourself somehow stuck, try calming down (feel free to cry a bit first if you need) and then look at the problem from a different angle. A lot of times you’re not as stuck as you might think.

Better Late than Never

Laura Highcove 1 Comment

So I had to work this weekend and I rewarded myself by playing some Terraria. As such I forgot to write my journal post for this week. On Monday I got hit by some depression and everything I tried to write came out sounding like I was a complete and utter failure, even though that certainly wasn’t true.

I made good progress these past two weeks, though it wasn’t all easy and smooth, and there’s nothing big in particular that I can point to and say ‘I accomplished that!’, so it’s hard to write a post about what I did accomplish.

Sometimes this is writing. It has nothing to do with how skilled you are as a writer and everything to do with whether or not you can keep going back to the page day after day. I know some people who, I believe, are far better storytellers than I am, but I’m the one putting in the work. And so there’s nothing exciting to tell you about except that I’m still going.

Though my husband did make this: