Tag: christmas

The Christmas Break

Laura Highcove

It occurred to me earlier this week that I generally have a vacation around Christmas. Since we’re not going anywhere because of THE PANDEMIC, basically it’s been business as usual, which means the same work schedule as normal. Then I decided, screw that, I don’t have do anything! So I just played fast and loose with my schedule for a few days. In fact I clocked in 15.6 hours on a new game that I bought yesterday morning, in the first day. Excessive, but fun!

As for my writing, I’ve been jumping between Blessings of the Neriel and Jeremy Five-five, since my husband and I are trying out something new with the fight scenes. BotN I’ve been smoothing out pretty hard. Getting a few previously all over the place scenes much more focused, and trying to figure out where I’m going to go from here. I think I have a pretty decent idea, I just have to write it. J55 (which is my new favorite abbreviation for a story) is a story that I absolutely love and I want to write, but the plethora of fight scenes was really a problem for me. This is what I get growing up on shounen anime. My husband got back to me with the first set of bullet points for the first fight we tried, and it still wasn’t easy to write, but now that the rough draft of it is done, I’m hoping it will clean up nicely later. The one we did first was also a short fight, and there are some longer, far more important ones coming up. It’ll be a lot of fun.

I still haven’t gotten back to the Wizard. But my lackadaisical attitude around my writing this week didn’t really lend itself to diving back into that anyway. I want to at least touch base with it tomorrow, though technically the month break isn’t over until next weekend. We’ll see. This is the home stretch, the hard part, and I refuse to give up. I totally get the thing now that writers say about getting distracted by shiny new stories because the one you’re working on has lost it’s mystery. I basically know what I have to do with the Wizard, I just need to write it, and that’s not new and fun, even though I’m sure I’ll still discover new things about this story before it’s all over.

Thanks for continuing to root for me. You’re awesome.

My Holiday Break

Laura Highcove

I travel for holidays. I got all my files in dropbox, added tons of chargers, my DS packed some reading books, and, of course, clothing. Everything I wanted or needed. Got to my mother’s and realized I had left my netbook on my desk while it was syncing with Dropbox as I finished packing.

I was three hours from home with NO LAPTOP. Yeah, it’s probably a first for me.
I don’t really care about being unplugged from social media. No, my real concern was that I had planned to write the rough draft of my newsletter, this journal post, and get some revision done. Instead I had only the scrivener app on my phone (which is great, but I use it more for notes or quick things than sitting down and writing, and it’s not connecting to my regular dropbox anyway for reasons.)

Then my husband reminded me that I’m on vacation. That writing those things was akin to him checking his work email (which I give him hassle for). While the writing itself is not really work for me, writing blog posts and such is. So I decided to listen to his advice and actually take a vacation. As such there was no post last Monday.

In the future, I would like to get far better about being prepared for blog posts and the like ahead of time. (I could’ve done a cute little Merry Christmas post). I just find myself in the same rut of “Oh, I’ll write up the blog post and post it while I’m traveling.” And yeah, that doesn’t really work for me. I need to stop telling myself I will do it when I very obviously will not.

I did plenty of writing in the week before taking my holiday break. I’m still moving forward on Law of the Prince Charming revision (almost done now!) and re-writing the beginning of the Huntsman. Once I’m done with LotPC, I’ll be hammering a bit harder on the Huntsman. According to my own planning, I am waiting to see where I am with that story by the end of January. If I am *still* having trouble it might be time to consider some different options. After reviewing this last year I realized I’ve been struggling with the Huntsman for almost the whole year, and that just doesn’t work. One possibility is throwing it at people who have read the LofPC and getting suggestions/feedback on the rough draft that I do have. I dunno, I’ll see at the end of the month.

My holiday was tons of fun. Got to see my siblings, their significant others, and offspring as well as my parents. Since I don’t live nearby I generally only see them for these holidays though we keep in touch some through the wonder of the Internet. I got some good presents, I got to talk about my writing with a few different people. (That’s always nerve-wracking. :p) I also played a lot of Story of Seasons. And now we’re back to the grind, which really isn’t that bad. I missed writing.