Tag: nanowrimo

Still on Track

Laura Highcove

Okay, so it’s October 17 (when I’m writing this, not when I’m posting it) Meaning I have exactly two weeks and one day until Nanowrimo starts. I got a little behind with all the traveling I needed to do for weddings the past two weekends while on one of the hardest parts of the story, a very important fight/turning point scene.

I have now, gotten past that scene and am into the final push to the climax. There are seven chapters left. Which means a chapter every two days if I’m to finish on time. Not ideal, but I am going to get this done.

I feel like I should have more to write for this post, but a lot of what I’ve been doing has been traveling, so while it’s a lot of stuff, it’s not really good material for a blog post.

I have also started a youtube channel where I talk about the plants (mostly succulents) that I have. It’s a fun little side project for me because, well I love showing off my plants in case you’re interested in that.

Other than that, it’s a countdown to Nanowrimo, which is exciting, as I hope to finish the draft of the Wizard, or at least get about 50k words farther with it.

Changing the List

Laura Highcove

Last weekend I went to Otakon with my husband and two of our friends. One of these friends I will refer to as ‘The Cheerleader’ and they drove up with us. The Cheerleader has been beta reading for me since LotPC because …well they’re good at stories and good at encouragement. Anyway, we all ended up talking about LotDK for a good portion of the trip up. I had lined up questions to ask my Hubby and the Cheerleader and I got a lot of good answers.

Not only that, but I was able to just talk about my story and hear what other people thought about it, which is very valuable. I know how the story goes in my head, and it’s interesting to see if that’s translating properly, and if it’s not, where the disconnect is and why. And even, if sometimes the way someone else takes it is even better. Or if I get to be all superior in thinking that my ideas are better and I can’t wait until they get to read it. Mwahaha!

As such, once I got back I was able to finish writing up my List of Revisions for LotDK, which after a few passes turned into a chapter by chapter list. I also managed to make a schedule for how many chapters I need to get done per week in order to be done by November (for Nanowrimo). I start out with four chapters per week and eventually end up at two a week. Obviously because the later chapters are far messier and will need much more help.

I have already started, and so far things are going well. I do anticipate problems, but every bit I get done is still done, even if Wildrose and Gabir continue to give me problems. I feel like a lot more things are starting to come together though, and that’s good. And I’m still enjoying the story, which is also good.

Finally Back to Productive

Laura Highcove


Got back from my vacation in Williamsburg and had a ton of fun. This was Argon’s first time going to the condo, but as expected he spent maybe an hour slinking around before he was perfectly fine. I played a lot of Hyrule Warriors, went to Busch Gardens, bought clothes, ate food, and ended up writing a decent amount while I was at it.

I also used the vacation as a reset point for my writing. I didn’t record how much writing I did while on vacation. I just ended up with 8k words written on my phone by the end of the week. But when I got home, I just accepted that I was back on schedule, and I split my time between two stories: Blessings of the Neriel, which I realized I needed to keep restarting from the beginning because my characters weren’t solid enough, and a new story I started during vacation that I ended up tossing aside because the idea isn’t developed enough yet. (Oddly enough, the characters are there, the story just isn’t.) And I ended up working more on a story I had started a while ago, with the working title: Kirin.

As such I’ve been getting work done while I’m waiting for my alpha readers on the Huntsman. I keep having an urge to work on it, but I’d like to 1) wait until the alpha feedback is back and 2) read the short stories my husband wrote in the Storyteller world for Nanowrimo, but we’re having some trouble getting that formatted right so I can read it. I might lose patience before July and start working on it anyway, but for now I’m just happy to be writing again.

And After NaNoWriMo

Laura Highcove

So a few days out from Nano now. It’s time to sit down and analyze how Nano went for me this year and the lessons I can take away from it.

Starting NaNo
I had little to no anticipation about NaNo itself. I’ve been doing NaNo consistently since 2008 and getting words down has never been a problem of mine. I knew I would be able to produce the needed words. My worry was more that I wouldn’t write anything of substance, or that nothing would work with the story. I went in with my goal of 2k words every day but Fridays.

Ending NaNo
By the end of NaNo I could feel my pace slowing along with the ideas for new scenes to write. I was able to tell I was about a week into needing to revise. It’s something I recognize about my process, the need to go back to the beginning of my story and smooth before I can push forward again. I actually tried for a few days to do this while keeping track of the new words I wrote toward my daily goal. Unfortunately this is more difficult than writing straight up, and by that point I was into the black hole surrounding Thanksgiving. So I shifted back to just getting my 2k words a day through brute force. I finished three days early then stopped writing. I’m pretty sure I was just on the very edges of burnout.

Post NaNo
I gave myself several days off. I was planning a few weeks to work on a different project, but Monday morning, ideas were literally shoving their way out of my head. I had to pull over on the way to work to write one down. I poured out two new scenes (1.2k words) in 42 minutes this afternoon.

When I look back at the numbers on my excel spreadsheet, I noticed I had never spent more than two hours a day getting the needed 2k words. Usually it was closer to 1.5h. 7.5-8.5 hours a week in order to churn out 12k+ words. Not too shabby. And there were good ideas in there as well, even if the prose isn’t all worthwhile. The week of Thanksgiving and the week after were a bit of a wash in terms of total hours spent on writing stuff. I got my Nano words, but I did little else. I’m a bit disappointed in that.

From Here
Part of my path forward will be giving myself more than the one goal. It’s possible my lack of output was simply due to my whole focus being getting Nano done, so I didn’t really put effort into working on anything else.

I also have a few more things I want to play around with: How many words can I write easily in one day, knowing I need breaks in between writing sessions? What do I need to do in order to recharge my ability to write during a single day? (ie, what refills my creative well) I also want to figure out if there is some way to tell how long I can write new prose before I feel the need to smooth, or if it’s just a feel thing.

Goals for the Week
Writing 30 mins/day assuming I have a scene idea I want to write (which so far I have).
Revising and eventually Smoothing the Huntsman for an hour/day.
Keep track of my actual words/hour because numbers!

Finishing the Race

Laura Highcove

So I just finished NaNoWriMo on Tuesday. With where I am in my writing life, finishing NaNo is really sort of a given, at the same time it is great to look back over the month and be proud of all the words and ideas that have poured out over the month. Of course I also have a lot of questions about what the heck this story is still going to do, or how it’s going to fit together. Still, forward is forward.

Still anticipatory about ending this trilogy. But that’s to be expected right?

I think I’m going to take a few weeks and organize in general, my life and my writing. I’m still feeling off since Nickel died, and I figure that’s normal since my normal has shifted. Plus we just got a new kitten, so that’s another shift. Lots of traveling for the holidays (past and future), the house is a bit of a disaster, there are presents to buy for Christmas, and normal demands of the season (fricking cold).

So no pressure on myself for a while. Plans in the future involve smoothing the Huntsman and then what I have written for the Wizard. Hopefully that will give me more insight and ideas. I’ll make a more solid plan sometime soon. Goal from where I’m sitting now …I’d like to have beta readers for Huntsman in …six months? That will be pushing it a bit with how rough some of the rough draft is, but we’ll see. It also depends on how the Wizard develops (or doesn’t) in that time.

But one thing I am oh-so super excited about is that I have been keeping track, well as best I can, of the amount of time I spend on my writer job in an excel spreadsheet. It started out because I was curious how much time I was spending, and then continued on as a way for me to motivate myself when I was slacking, and give myself a rest when I had worked enough. I started in January of this year, which only *feels* like a million years ago. As such, I am coming up on a year’s worth of data to look at. It’s so beautiful and organized. /dreamy eyes

Full Speed into NaNoWriMo

Laura Highcove

Well I’m what, two weeks into NaNoWriMo for this year? It’s going well. I am actually rather surprised at how easy getting 2k words a day (with Fridays off) actually is. It’s taking me, on average, less than an hour and a half to write 2k words. However part of this is that I am writing the words in two or three chunks of no more than 45 minutes. Once I get around there, I start to get antsy and very easily distracted. Not a lot of information about how much time I need between sessions since right now I write before work and then again after lunch, so there’s a pretty big break, and between those two sessions I generally have my 2k words.

Today I pushed for 2.5k since I did a surprising amount of writing at work. I just kept having ideas that I needed to write down, so I pushed for a little more. It does mean, that it’s possible I’ll be able to crank out more words if I learn what I need to do to refill my self for more words. And the fact that my ability to write new story prose takes a sharp nosedive in the evenings.

I might try 2.5k words for a few days and see how it feels. But I had some major breakthroughs with the overall story today at work, thus why I had to write it all down. Can’t really be very specific, which is one sad thing about not having any of these books published. If you were all fans and had read the previous books I would hand out hints and tidbits. But alas. Most anything would be a spoiler.

I have come to the conclusion, however, that I need to cut off my desire to draw out mysteries through the book. The Wizard needs to hit the ground running if I’m going to have any time to actually address the mysteries that need to be addressed. I’m pretty sure I know what the book’s halfway point is now and it’s far earlier than I was thinking it would be. Knock on wood, but I am not stalling out on this book the way I was expecting. Every time I think I have, I get another new idea. The book is, however, coming out very weird. Lots of scenes that are going to need to be stitched together later, there’s almost no flow right now. But I’m not letting myself worry about that, for now I’m just getting the ideas out and letting myself shift what I need to shift to keep going forward. I’m getting so excited about where I’m seeing this book going.

NaNoWriMo 2018: The Wizard

Laura Highcove

I’m finally able to say that I have a complete rough draft for The Huntsman. Turns out I lied to everyone on Facebook though. I apparently started on the Huntsman (according to my blog) for NaNoWriMo of 2016, meaning it’s only been two years, and not three. Sorry for the confusion, but I’m far happier to realize that it only *felt* like it took a million years to write this book.

I struggled a lot with this book, as most people do with sequels, but knowing other people have suffered like you have only helps but so much when you’re in the depths of your own suffering. However, in September of last year, when I was feeling particularly panicked, I decided to write a note to myself that I wouldn’t look at again until I had finished this book. It is as follows:

Sept 27, 2017: I am so beyond stuck with this story that I don’t even understand how any of it is going to work. There’s so much that needs to go on, none of it is flowing. None of it works. I am sitting here terrified, going to through the story trying to find something that will work to make this story make sense.

So when I do make this story work, I am going to look back at this moment and remind myself that I can make anything work. It might not look pretty between here and there. I might have to change or completely rewrite a bunch of stuff, but there is a way that this story works and makes sense, and I just have to get out there and find it without worrying about what it looks like now or how long it might take. If I can make this story work, then I can make any story work.

I’m so proud of me for making it through. All it took was stubborn refusal to give up on my story. Well and support, breaks, some wins, and a whole lot of words. But mostly not giving up. 🙂

And now, on the 31st of October, NaNoWriMo looms. I am immediately launching myself into The Wizard, which is book three of this trilogy. I figure there’s little point spending time polishing book two before I finish book three. Mostly I want to see if I can create something resembling a satisfying ending on a book three. Plus, there’s a high likelihood of something needing to change in book two anyway. I changed quite a few things in book one while writing book two, and that one I had polished.

I’m a little anticipatory (Huh, spelled that word right on the first try.) about NaNoWriMo this year, but I think it’s mostly surrounding starting on the third book of my trilogy. If a book two was uncharted waters, then book three is so far off the map I can’t even begin to wonder what it will be like. But then being a discovery writer, to me, is all about having faith in your ability to eventually figure out wtf is going on. Writing, keys flying over the keyboard, and suddenly your characters are doing something you didn’t expect, the plot is going out into left field, and that moment when suddenly it all works and makes sense? Oh man, it is pretty great.

I’m sticking with the standard 50k words for my NaNo goal. I know I won’t be able to get much past that without going through and smoothing a few times anyway, so trying to push for more words will just burn me out like it did two years ago. (Yay, learning from my mistakes.) So 2000 words per day (Fridays off). No big, it’s just NaNoWriMo. If you’d like to follow my progress: This is me.

Feeling Productive

Laura Highcove

From the past several posts, you can probably see that things have been rough for a while. Yep, it was. And I kept going because, well there wasn’t any other option in my opinion. I can only hide under the desk for so long before writing calls me back.

And these past two weeks I’ve really been tearing it up, writing-wise. Part of its is inspiration from the Wxr cruise. Another part is I am rewriting the Law of the Prince Charming to change the tense because I realized it worked better. And part is giving myself the goal of having an actual rough draft of the Huntsman finished before NaNo so I can start in on the Wizard. But I’ve put in more total hours this past week than I have in any previous week this year, and I still didn’t record a lot of the reading I was did. (Reading is still hard for me to chalk up toward career time, even if I am paying attention as a writer too.)

So I’m feeling very productive, and that is a nice place to be in. The plan is to carry the momentum forward. I have a list of the scenes I still need to write for the Huntsman, and I’m hoping to get those done in time to do a smoothing pass before November. I am trying to kick up the speed at which I am rewriting the Law of the Prince Charming. I seem to be at about 2 chapters a week, but even in just changing the tense of the words I already have written, it’s taking far longer than I expected. I also have an idea for another story that is literally trying to chew its way out of my head. Not sure if this is just a result of my anxiousness about trying to get the Huntsman done, or if the idea really warrants some attention. Either way, I’ll be doing a lot of writing for a while.

Quick pitch: “Dragons ride the elemental storms and Ryo was trained to fight both.” Yeah, I wrote it just now. It’ll be better when I spend time on it.

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.

Making it Fun Again

Laura Highcove 2 Comments

I’m starting to think that two weeks between journal entries might be too long. A lot happens in two weeks, a lot of things can change. I’m not going to make my deadline. I’ve been moving forward pretty steadily, I just seriously misjudged where I was with the Huntsman when I made my goal.

I spent much of last week beating myself up the fact that I’m failing to meet my deadlines and that I’m not working on my story 24/7. But at a certain point I just had to stop and realize I wasn’t having fun anymore. It was a chore and I can’t write like that. I reminded myself that whether or not this story ever gets published isn’t what matters. It’s writing a story that I enjoy and that I want to read over and over, just like The Law of the Prince Charming. I’m still having a little trouble letting go of my attachment to my deadlines, but at least now I’m focusing more on writing something I enjoy. But this is only the second book I’ve worked on this seriously, so I can only be so surprised when I wildly misjudge how long things will take. I’m sure it’s something I will learn with time, just like everything else.

That being said, I went back and smoothed out the beginning of the story and am pushing my way through Wildrose’s arc. It’s been difficult and it’s been fun. My plan now is to push through to the middle of the book in the next two weeks, both Wildrose and Tabitha’s arcs. The only way to go is forward after all.

However, it’s also time for me to admit that I’m not doing NaNoWriMo this year. Now I’m obviously still going to write, I’m just not throwing my hat in the NaNoWriMo ring. I love NaNoWriMo and I have learned so much about myself as a writer from it, but I keep reaching the point where I feel like NaNoWriMo is getting in the way rather than helping. This year, in particular, for several reasons. I’ll be going into more detail about those reasons in this month’s newsletter, so go ahead and sign up so you can stay in the loop.

See you in two weeks.