Tag: Internet

The Year 2020

Laura Highcove

The first journal entry of the new year! Things were crazy at the end of the last year. Crazy! And now I want to get back to a normal. Not the same normal as before, since that’s impossible with my new houseplants and YouTube channel, but a new normal that I can be happy with.

So basically I “forgot” about writing for about three months and even now I’m having a little trouble getting back into it. I can give you all the reasons why I think this is, but after I wrote that long tyraid, I did what I normally do in a situation like this. I created a list!

This list is all the things I need to do to basically finish the Storyteller trilogy.

*Smooth what I have written
*Write the rest of the Wizard, draft 0
*Alpha read
*Fix major plot point through two books
*Fix minor points through two books
*Beta read
*Fix any problems
*Two-three final passes

Man, it looks so easy when it’s just a list like that. But once I had that list, I went through and guesstimated how long each step would take.

So I currently have seven more chapters to smooth. I’m going to give myself one week for that. I think that’s pushing it a bit, but it might just force me to get it done and over with. It’s not important that it’s perfect yet. *Jan 13-19*

Then I need to write the rest of the wizard. So I think what I need to do is once I’ve smoothed it, I’ll do another one of those “outlines” where I go through and outline what I have, then get ideas of where I wanted to go and scenes I still need to write. And write a list of all the things I want to have happen. Including the ending. *Jan 20-26*

Then I need to write them. I’d like to give myself a month, do a Nanowrimo type deal. *Jan 27-Feb 23*

Then I’ll need to smooth, maybe two weeks. *Feb 24-Mar 8*

Then I send out the Wizard for alpha reading. Hopefully they can get it done in a month. *Mar 9 – Apr 5*

When I get it back, go through the list, then go through myself and write down everything! *Apr 6 30- Apr 19*
-scenes that still need to be written/finished
-plot holes
-details to be done
-medium things
-minor things
-naming crap

Then I need to fix these problems. This is going to be the hardest to figure out the time-line of. For right now I’m giving myself a month. This will likely change. I’ll reevaluate the time-line when I get to the step above. *Apr 20- May 17*

Beta read: See, again, if it can be done in a month. *May 18- Jun 14*

Fix any problems, make a final list: one week *Jun15- 21*

Two-three final passes: ~month min *Jun22- July19*

Whenever I do one of these schedules, I’m reminded about *why* it takes so long to write a book. There’s just so many steps and there’s only so fast you can go over this many words. Still, I now have my goal set up in front of me. When I finish it this time, I can finally play Kingdom Hearts 3. :p

Warcraft Movie

Laura Highcove

So a few weeks ago I went to see the Warcraft movie. I knew it wasn’t going to be good and I knew it wasn’t going to have a happy ending (cause the whole Alliance vs Horde thing), but I was hoping that I could get some entertainment value out of it.

Now at one point I was a pretty big Warcraft lore buff, but it’s been three or four years since I played World of Warcraft, and so most of it has faded. The only name I remembered was Medivh, and that he wasn’t a good guy.

As for the movie itself. The script was pretty terrible, however the characters did a good job of showing what good friends they were with each other. I don’t know if that was the script, or just good acting, but it made the movie bearable.

The graphics were, of course, amazing. Especially the orcs and how they moved and looked. I was also pretty impressed with the magic effects. I could see people saying that the magic was a bit overblown, but after playing World of Warcraft, it’s exactly what you see swirling around a mage or a warlock when they cast.

Seeing the cities of Ironforge and especially Stormwind was just amazing. I enjoyed seeing Karazhan and Dalaran as well, though they looked a little less like their in-game counterparts. Also, kudoes to the Alliance’s armor, showing off the shiny and the bling. Not realistic in the least, but who the heck cares?

And the movie did bring up nostalgic feelings of playing World of Warcraft, which I did from 2006 through 2012 in a hardcore raiding guild. I admit, I got goosebumps at the end when the crowd was chanting “For Azeroth!” and then shifted to the one “For the Alliance.”

Overall, movie was not great. I’d probably watch it again, but I have a feeling this is one of those movies where I’ll skip a lot of it. If you loved World of Warcraft, go check it out for old times sake. If not, you won’t miss a thing.

Internet Distraction

Laura Highcove

So my husband and I watched the first season of Sleepy Hollow and then missed the second season. We decided we wanted to watch the second season before the third season starts October 1st, so we signed up for a free trial of Netflix, only to realize we couldn’t watch Sleepy Hollow on Netflix. So we went to Hulu and signed up for a free trial there, only to realize instead of a month, like Netflix gives you, we only get a week. So we hunkered down to watch 18 episodes of Sleepy Hollow in seven days.

All was going well until yesterday afternoon our Internet (and cable) stopped working, and I stopped to think about it, and realized that being out of Internet for a few days isn’t all that big a deal (granted if it hadn’t happened on a weekend it would be a bigger deal because my husband works from home) except that this happens to be the week that we were trying to watch all that Sleepy Hollow. What a bother.

I sat down last night to do my writing and had to stop myself dozens of times from hopping on the Internet to ‘real quick’ check something, only to remember I couldn’t. It didn’t occur to me that it was that big a distraction. I think I might start turning off the Internet during writing time. I have a little wireless button on my laptop that will work perfectly well for that.

That being said, I am getting back into the swing of writing. I think my plan from last week really helped. It surprises me how much I have done, and how much I still have to do. Like I think I can get it beta reader ready by the end of the year, but I can’t imagine how long the polishing will take. Still, even if the polishing takes a whole year, the book will have gotten done in less than three years, which I can be proud of.

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.

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.

Drawing my Own Lines

Laura Highcove

So I have always been creative. Besides the fact that I have been writing stories since I learned to write, I have always been interested in all manor of other artistic pursuits.

I had a Lion King coloring book when I was around 12 (since that’s when The Lion King came out) that I meticulously colored. I would carefully outline each section by pressing hard with the crayon such that it left a dark line, then I would lightly color in the inside of the lines, such that there was a nice contrast.

My mother also introduced me (and my siblings) to painting ceramics. Taking entirely white figures, usually four or five inches tall, and painting them with acrylic paints. This was also a hobby for many years.

There was also my deep interest in photography, though I don’t remember when I started taking pictures, I was in a class for photography in high school, which put me in the Art Honor Society. I even got one of my pictures published in the high school’s art book.
When I began hanging around online more, after high school, I had a friend who drew pictures and I taught myself to color them in using Adobe Photoshop. I got rather good at it.

These days my main artistic hobby besides writing is painting miniatures. Both Warhammer and Reaper. Some for fun, some for D&D. You can see many of my coloring jobs in my gallery and my mini paintings among my blog posts.

But I came to notice after all these years, that many of my artistic pursuits actively used something someone else has created as a base. My creativity was in adding my own touch to it. I, basically, am very good at coloring inside the lines.

However, my writing is born completely out of myself. Though I am influenced by the ideas all around me (as it’s impossible not to be), the conclusions I draw and thus the characters and worlds I create are entirely of my own making. Writing, I realize, is entirely about drawing my own lines.

A Kinder, Gentler Website

Laura Highcove

While I don’t have any books published yet, I am hoping that when I do, people will have a yearning to come to my website. That they’ll be interesting in knowing more about the story or even about me. So I want to have a website where people can come and do that.

I recently read Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’. I have never read any of Stephen King’s books before (I don’t like horror.) but I had heard that this book (which is a memoir + how to write book in one) was good, so I got around to it fourteen years later. Despite his rather haughty attitude and opinions, by the end of the book I felt a kinship with Stephen. Not that I thought we would get along and be bestest friends if we got together in a room, but I understood and connected with him as a writer.

In fact I enjoyed the book enough that I wanted to write him a thank you note. It seemed, at the time, like a good idea. I figured as a super popular author he would never reply, but I felt (as a writer) I would appreciate receiving such a note. So I went to his website to see if there was an email where I could send my letter. I hit a wall of stone and steel. His website is nothing more than a professionally made cookie-cutter front.

Now that’s not to say I blame him. He has a ton of fans. Like tons, and it’s not like he can interact with them all. At the same time, I will never quite forget the way I pulled up his website to see if I could thank him for a wonderfully written book, and I literally (yes, I mean literally) felt the warmth and appreciation sucked out of my body by the soulless website that represents him online.

I never want my website to be that, even if I become popular, I want people to be able to come to my website and find some of me there. Occasional blog posts, cute little stories, or tidbits about characters or story creation. My goal is to have that connection be available for the people who want it because it’s what I want too.

Frozen

Laura Highcove

So on Tuesday I walked into the back room of Fun N Games, now newly moved to University Mall, where we hold our weekly D&D session. Gloves immediately stood up, pointed at me, and said ‘You have to go see Frozen.’ Now if you know Gloves, you will know that this is very odd behavior for him, as he is the type of guy who is perfectly happy in his own opinions, but for the most part does not try to impart them on other people. Therefore, my husband and I knew that this sort of declaration warranted attention.

We proceeded to talk about how the commercials and advertising for the movie were horrible, or at least did not make me excited about going to see the movie, which is the point of advertising. At that moment of the conversation with Gloves, I knew two things: One: Frozen was based on ‘The Snow Queen’ fairy tale, and they had both an annoying snowman mascot AND another hoofed animal acting like a dog (A la Tangled) which is a pet peeve of mine, as I actually work with horses.

Then Blake brought up the fact that he had read a review that said the reviewer basically could not say anything about the movie, because it was all a spoiler. I thought about that for a moment. It’s a rather tall order. It also would explain why there was nothing other than joke scenes in the commercials, in addition to a line from the main!? character saying ‘That’s not a blizzard, that’s my sister’, which did not actually occur in the movie. Spoiler!?

After seeing the movie, I can understand why they decided that pretty much, the movie is a spoiler for the movie. I will now proceed to explain why I think the marketing was done the way it was, which is in fact spoiler. If you haven’t seen the movie, go patronize it with money. If you have, you have no worry of spoilers.

Reasons the commercials were horrible:

1) They did not want to show Anna in princess garb, that cut out a large portion of scenes at the beginning.
2) They wanted you to think Elsa was the villain and there are no real villainy scenes with Elsa, because she’s not a villain.
3) They couldn’t show the actual villain, because unlike most Disney movies, who the villain was is actually a surprise. And most of the rest of the time he’s on camera, he’s singing or with Anna in princess garb.

However, I was really happy with the way I feel they played with tropes in this movie. Elsa became a queen and then went rogue (not villain, but still rogue). The trope being Disney Queens are evil.

Also, I have a thing for fairy tail characters who know (to some extent) that they exist in a fairy tale world. (My top two favorite books ever are examples of this, ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’ by Diana Wynne Jones and The Fairy Godmother by Mercades Lackey) When they say ‘a supreme act of love’ and everyone goes right to ‘true love’s kiss’. (It’s a theme in ABC (owned by Disney)’s Once Upon A Time, which is also wonderful, go see it.)

Then there is Anna, who is an action girl, ready to go out there and deal with life on her terms, then becomes a damsel in distress. Sadface. They rush her back to the castle only to find out her ‘true love’ Hans is the villain at which point we assume she needs Khristoff to save her … only then she sacrifices herself for Elsa, which causes her to save herself! A wonderful break from normal fairy taleing, even if it makes Khristoff a rather handsome ancillary character.

So both girls had wonderful character development, the snowman ended up being rather perfect, and now the Internets have someone to pair Jack Frost with. Plus, the ice palace was rather spectacular.

NaNoWriMo 2013

Laura Highcove

http://nanowrimo.org/participants/pyropawz

So another successful NaNoWriMo. Much easier this year since my goal was not actually to complete NaNoWriMo, but to finish my entire novel, Shifting Winds, by the end of the year. I have my wordcount 50,921 from just this month. The novel right now clocks in at 116,414, though it’s still not finished. I am having some issues with the very ending section and how things come together, so working that out will be my December.

Updating the site

Laura Highcove

So almost a year ago, I spent a large part of the beginning of my vacation in Williamsburg, working on creating a gallery page of old pictures I had of characters in php. It worked wonderfully, but apparently between working on it, and loading it up again a week later, the version of MySql changed and the page no longer worked. I had no idea why at the time. Now I have it up again, and so there are now links to them under The Gallery.