Tag: blessings of the neriel

Christmas is Imminent

Laura Highcove

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

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

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

Achieving Goals

Laura Highcove

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

Making Plans

Laura Highcove

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

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

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

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

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

Draft 0

Laura Highcove

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

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

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

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

[SGC Week 5] Shifting Goals

Laura Highcove

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

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

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

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

[SGC Week 4.5] Finding Eira

Laura Highcove

This week got away from me a little bit. I had some doctor things going on, all good, but necessary and requiring time and attention. The SGC call on Monday was talking about agents and querying and so while there were no cool breakthroughs with my story, I started getting back into the idea of being able to query again. Obviously I still need to finish this book, which likely won’t happen by the end of the course as I’d planned because I had such a huge shift in Eira that I needed to start over. But that is my process. Trying to force myself to keep going when I don’t have what I’ve already written to a certain point doesn’t work, and I’ve proved that to myself enough times through failure that I’m starting to accept it.

That being said, I am much happier with the beginning of the story now. Eira and I are still working through some things where I think I want her to care about people more than she actually does, but there isn’t no care there, which is what I was always the most scared of. And I got really good feedback this Thursday from my group when I gave them the first chapter and a half (rewritten, though they’d never read the old version). I mean there was the fact that what I’d given them before was very ‘rough draft’ and this was far more polished, but I was surprised by how well they responded to it.

I had my first moment of real ‘impostor syndrome’ where they were praising things I’d done and I’m just going ‘I have no idea how this story plays out’ and ‘I don’t know how to carry that theme through the whole book’, but the encouragement was nice and, well, encouraging. And I do still feel like I’m making progress, and that’s the whole point. Right now I’m just going to keep going and when the SGC is over in two weeks, I’m going to reassess where I am and how quickly I think I can finish this book. I got very close to the end before I restarted this time, so I think finishing draft 0 isn’t too far off. Then it’s just a matter of finding out how many huge plot holes I have to fill.

Goal for this week is to keep rewriting a scene or two a day. Some are easier than others, it’s really not an exact science, so it’s more that I work for at least a half hour each day. Usually I go a bit over. Also, read my group’s submissions. Since it’s so late in the week that’s all I have. Hopefully I’ll get my next post up closer to the day I had planned.

[SGC Week 3] The Epiphany

Laura Highcove

I have been trying, when doing these blog posts, to write about what has happened with my writing/life in the past week, which means before Monday. But I was sick this week, the blog post got delayed, and on Monday I had an epiphany. Prior to Monday I am working my way into the ending climax part of the story, and some pieces of that are coming together, but Eira was still…not right.

So I have been writing Blessings of the Neriel for a while now and I have never really gotten Eira, the main character,’s personality down. I’m still writing the book because that’s how I work. I write until I find out what I’m supposed to learn about the story and then I go back and fix it. It was taking a long time with Eira, or really, not so much. See, I had a period where I thought Eira might need to be a narcissist or a sociopath, but on researching it, one of the main traits is a lack of empathy. They literally cannot care about someone emotionally. And so much of the heart of what I write is about emotions and how people connect with each other this was just not an option. I couldn’t have a main character who cannot feel emotions, so I pushed it away.

But the writing exercise we did on Monday’s SGC writing class was ‘What does your character want’, and then exploring that like what’s in their way and what are the risks/consequences of going for it and for failing to get it. So I started writing and it was pretty easy to see that when I was forced to think about her motivation in those terms, that the only thing she cared about was getting back to her former glory by any means necessary. So she’s doing all this stuff that seems ‘good’, but for entirely selfish reasons. She just wants to be awesome again.

And that upset me, cause I’m back in the ‘well she doesn’t care about anyone’ space. I cried as I explained it to the group. I was encouraged to read some books with antihero protagonists, and to look a bit more into narcissism. I will tell you, one of the problems with looking narcissism on the Internet is that most of it is for people who know/love/interact with a narcissist, and how to keep from being taken advantage of or losing yourself in their narcissism. This is important, to be sure, but most of the first results do not talk about what it’s like to be a narcissist from their point of view. I suppose because a narcissist wouldn’t care to look up ‘am I a narcissist and what do I do about it’?

But I did find one thing that gave me hope, a quote from this article.

Both past and current life circumstances can evoke multiple features, but may not necessarily be an ingrained part of who someone is (their personality).

A broad, general example of this would be someone who experiences a season of financial hardship after years of financial wealth. They may be preoccupied with fantasies of the wealth and power they used to have. They may also feel superior to others, become envious of those who are wealthy, and tend to gravitate toward people who make them feel important. This individual may present with features of NPD, but these features are connected to their circumstances and not necessarily their personality.

In other words, just because a person may possess features of NPD, does not mean they don’t have the ability to love. However, it is quite possible that their capacity to love may be limited.

Which basically describes Eira’s situation. She was top of the world, loved, praised, talented and then it was all taken away from her. So she could present with bits of NPD without the undesirable (to me the author) complete lack of empathy. Obviously I’ll need to do more research, not that I think if I portray narcissists incorrectly they’ll be all that upset about it, but still, it’s the right thing to do. And hopefully after this, the story will start to come together a bit better, including the opening scene that I knew was not the correct opening scene.

Goal for this week: Keep up 1k words a day. (I have been and it’s been so awesome.), read my group’s submissions. Get my next submission ready.

[SGC Week 0] Realizations and Goals

Laura Highcove

So today started out pretty good. I got a package that was a video game shirt my husband had ordered for me. I pulled out the women’s large, and put it on, and of course it was entirely too small, because ‘women’s’ shirts are always that baby doll shape that actually comes in one, if not two, sizes smaller than that shirt would be for the ‘default’ (ie, a man). I had been looking forward to this shirt and now I can’t wear it, and it put me into a bad mental place because this is again one of those micro-aggressions society throws out against women. ‘You need to be small and petite.’ ‘Your breasts are too big.’ ‘Clothing never fits you, because you’re not ‘right’.’ It is the reason I spent so many years feeling like I wasn’t ‘woman enough’ even though the main reason this shirt wouldn’t fit is because my chest is too large. I have mostly moved past that, but today it popped up in an unfortunate way.


Then I had the first group call for a Small Group Coaching program I signed up for through DIY MFA. It’s eight weeks of group critique and writing classes and I’m hoping to use the accountability of the group to finish the rough draft for my next fantasy project, Blessings of the Neriel, which is half done but has stalled a bit. While everyone was introducing themselves, I realized that ever since the first book I finished, The Law of the Prince Charming, only got generic rejections from agents, and even though I had mentality prepared for that, and expected it, and tried to challenge myself to get like 100 rejections, it hit me really hard, to the point where I’ve been subconsciously not wanting to write because …’what’s the point’? Even though I know the point is that I love to write and I want to tell these stories. It’s funny how you can know something logically so well and yet your heart can still effect you in the ways that it does. And there’s nothing to do about it except eventually realize it, and start working toward your goal again, which is what I’m doing now.


We did a worksheet that has to make your overall goal, and then break it down into smaller, more obtainable steps. My first goal was sending out queries for Blessings of the Neriel to agents, but that’s not something I could, or would want to try and, do in the next eight weeks. So I broke down the first step toward that goal into it’s own three steps for the goal of getting the rough draft of Blessings of the Neriel done. Since it’s about halfway done, it should only be another 50k words or so, which doing in eight weeks instead of the four for NaNoWriMo, should be easier to handle. And along with that I get two meetings a week, one for learning new skills, and one that is group/critique meeting. Those will help to keep me up on things.


And this blog is just because writing things out like this very often helps me get it not only organized in my head, but helps me to remember the stuff I know logically instead of always acting on my feelings alone. Plus, I like being able to look back and realize how far I’ve come from the beginning, and I think that will be cool to do with this class.


Goal for the first week: 7k words and get what I can from the group critique and the group teaching.

Timelines are for Wusses

Laura Highcove

Met my goal with the Wizard. I got through everything I had written and even started writing a scene or two that if beyond what I had already written. So I am super stoked about that. I really didn’t think I was going to hit my goal, but while there were some spots that really dragged when it came to fixing them up, there were even more places that absolutely flew by both because they were pretty tight already and I just enjoyed the scenes.

The timeline of this story is going to kill me, not only am I doing more povs than I ever have before (eight), but different Kingdoms have different day/night cycles that just don’t line up in many cases. I am not looking forward to having to hammer that out, but again, right now is about finishing the story. I certainly think I’m at the point now where I need to figure out what my ending is, and then write to it. I don’t want to accidentally write to the ending and then realize I left out a huge plot point. All the other books could end with loose ends, this one had to have most of those tied up.

And while I haven’t gone back to Blessings, I did have some nice ideas for the story that I was able to jot down. When I do get back into that story I think it will provide some things for me to aim for, and to help define some of the characters that are still up in the air.

Next step, write out the scenes in the Wizard that I know I need to write. Then I’ll probably go back through the story, and smooth it out some more before I make a master list of everything that needs to be done. I’m going to give myself a week to write out those new scenes, and then I’ll see where I am.

Going for the Goal

Laura Highcove

Progress since last entry. I’ve been doing more of my writing before I get out of my barn work clothes. It means I’m still dirty from barn, but it means I got through my two scenes every day which is really the most important thing.

I did, just yesterday, run into the part of the story that is the least cohesive. That means I had to basically rewrite the whole scene and add new stuff, still got two scenes done but I figure I might run into scenes soon that take much more effort. Still want to make sure I get at least a scene done a day. Not sure what this means about my desire to get done by March. I have another week and a full weekend, so I’ll still aim for it. I’m sure I can do it. It will just require a lot of focus.

I haven’t, however, done any more with Blessings recently. I’m not thrilled about that since I’m very close to where I would be writing new words, but that’s possibly the reason I’m slacking, cause new words are generally my least favorite part, especially at this part of the story. I love revision, when I have my framework, or when it’s all beautiful and new and I don’t have to worry about where the story is actually going.

Anyway, that’s my update. Still trucking along and I’m rather proud of myself.