Tag: the law of the prince charming

Never Give Up

Laura Highcove

Okay, so bear with me for a minute, I’m going to talk about professional wrestling. John Cena is a professional wrestler who has been a top guy in the company for many years. He has recently been on TV less because he is off doing other things like making movies, as such he missed out on getting a match at the upcoming Wrestlemania.

Cena’s storyline (because wrestling is scripted) had him repeatedly fail in attempts over the past few months to earn himself a match at Wrestlemania, but true to his catch phrase he has refused to give up. When he was unable to earn a match through tournament competition he began attempts to call out the Undertaker (an older, but super popular, wrestler who *should* be retired but often shows up for Wrestlemania). For four shows, Cena has come out into the ring and called out the Undertaker before getting the crowd to cheer for how much they would love to see the Undertaker again.

And every week the Undertaker has refused to show up or acknowledge this call out, yet despite this failure, Cena comes out the next show and tries again. What I liked about the Cena storyline is that he tried winning his way into a match at Wrestlemania and when he failed at that, he went and tried another way by calling out the Undertaker. And despite the Undertaker’s apparent apathy for Cena’s call-outs, Cena went out on four different shows and repeated a similar plea.

I think it’s important sometimes to remember it’s not about just throwing yourself at a problem over and over. It’s about having a goal and working toward that goal in an intelligent way. I want an agent, and while I am querying, I am also working on improving my book’s pitch. I am also writing another book because perhaps The Law of the Prince Charming will not be the first of my books to be published. I am also continuing to learn more skills, put my writing process to the test and help it evolve. I might even, at some point, stop pursuing traditional publishing and look at self-publishing. There are lots of different paths I can take to the eventual goal of getting a book out there in the world.

Now the Cena-Taker match happened (because wrestling is scripted) and ended up being what’s called a squash match, ie, Undertaker won decisively, very fast. Now Cena’s goal was not to get beat, but he did get the match he wanted, but he strove for it all the same. I know all I can do with my writing is keep moving forward by continuing to learn and remaining flexible. So if you have a goal, aim for it, but don’t be so focused on it that you don’t see other paths that will lead you toward your goal. And who knows, it might not end up looking like what you were expecting, but it could be even better.

Storytelling Superpower

Laura Highcove

DIY MFA Book Club, Prompt #3: What’s Your Storytelling Superpower?

Result: The Protector

Your superpower is writing superheroes! Your favorite characters see their world in danger and will do whatever it takes to protect it and those they love in it. These characters may not wear spandex and capes, but they show almost superhuman fortitude in their quest to prevent disaster, whatever the cost to themselves. From Scarlett O’Hara to James Bond to Iron Man, you’re drawn to characters who stand up to the forces of evil and protect what they believe in.

Yeah, it fits pretty well for me, the Protector, as well as what I like to write about. My current book series is about a prince charming, who is a girl, and she is always doing whatever she can to protect the people around her. (If you’re interested in reading more about her, you can get a free chapter here.) The theme has come up often in past book attempts as well.

I (the author) like other people and so my characters and themes in my story usually revolve around people all wanting to protect each other in some way. I don’t usually like stories where people betray each other a lot (not that my characters won’t ever do that) or tend to mistrust persistently. I love to see the interactions among people who love and/or trust each other.

The other results for the Storytelling Superpower (I keep trying to type storyteller, because my book has storytellers in it. :p), in case you’re curious are: The Instigator, the Underdog, and the Survivor. You can probably sort of guess as to their meanings from the names, but if you’re interested scroll down on this page and they’re all listed out.

I am also a survivor. Which comes in handy for being an author. 🙂

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.

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.

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.

My Most Inspirational Quotes: #4

Laura Highcove

This one is the quote from my pile of inspirational quotes that makes me feel the best. While the rest of the quotes are sort of for the ‘down in the trenches, let’s keep at it’-ness of life. This one has the ability to lift me up.

Because in my head, I can hear the lightness and wonder of the person saying that last time. If I am completely honest, it’s the voice of the Godmother from the Law of the Prince Charming. Something about hearing her saying it and having it be someone who is not me saying it, and believing in me in that way, never fails to lift me up.

This is a quote I’ve had forever, but it wasn’t until I did this post that I found out this quote is attributed to someone, and that there is actually more to the quote. While not entirely relevant, it was an interesting tidbit for me.

Do any of you have some sort of quote that never fails to make your day a little brighter when you hear it? I hope that you do.

Getting out of a Rut

Laura Highcove

So my goal for last week was to write 10k more words for The Wizard and to get through the halfway point of The Huntsman.

I did not get 10k new words for the Wizard. I ended up focusing mostly on The Huntsman, which I did get through the halfway point. I did a lot of new writing for the Huntsman, there was one scene that needed to be completely rewritten and a few scenes that I am now adding in. I’m not sure if that’s ended up being near 10k words. When I’m revising words get written and deleted and moved all around so it’s not really as easy as saying ‘Yes, I now have 10k more words’.

Setting a word count goal worked a lot better on The Law of the Prince Charming, which I wrote lineraly. On the Huntsman that is just not working because I jump around so much. So I’ll say half of my goal was not achieved, but the other half was. I got through to the halfway point of the Huntman.

After finishing through the halfway point of Huntsman, I went back to the beginning. The details of the ending are starting to come together more clearly now and I have an idea of how to better tie them into the beginning. But when I tried to change things around in the beginning, I was completely stuck inside this huge info dump that would logically happen, but that was absolutely no fun.

I struggled with it for a few hours before realizing I was stuck in a rut. I had these scenes and I was trying to move them around each other to fit together better and I just couldn’t do it. So I went to my hubby and told him where I was and he was able to offer a few suggestions of completely different ways to go, one of which sounded really good, so now I and rewriting the beginning and so far it’s going much more smoothly.

Goal for the next two weeks: rewrite the beginning so I’m happy with it, then go and rewrite the ending. Once I have those two things smoothed out I can start working on the second half of the book, which is the part I always have the most trouble with.

New Title for The Storyteller

Laura Highcove 1 Comment

For those of you who have been around for a while, you know I have a novel called The Storyteller. I never spend all that much time coming up with titles for my books. They’ve always just been a way for me to label my files and refer to them when I talk to my husband.

The Storyteller is the first novel that I have actually finished and polished to this level, so my mentor suggested keeping my mind open to ideas for a different title. It occurred to me that maybe I should think of a better title. They said on the Writing Excuses Podcast once that when you’re pitching your book to potential readers, you want to be able to grab their interest with the title of the book. Well The Storyteller isn’t really a title that jumps up and grabs attention. That’s why I decided to change the name to The Law of the Prince Charming. Overall, I think it captures the feel of the book as well as perhaps being better at grabbing people’s interest.

So I made a new cover picture for my facebook page. The ‘Sign Up’ button is a link to my Newsletter where you can get the first chapter of The Law of the Prince Charming.

As for my writing these past two weeks, I’ve been doing a bit of back and forth. I finished the rough draft of The Huntsman (still the working title) which means I have my beginning middle and end. I decided that it would be a good idea for me to start working on the third book (working title: The Wizard) instead of going through and polishing it all the way up first. That’s mostly because, as a discovery writer, I am still developing the ideas for these two books. I know mostly where everything is going, but there are a few pieces that I need to tie everything together and I haven’t been able to pull them out of my brain yet.

So I’ve been going back and forth between writing 1500 words a day into The Wizard, and revising my way through The Huntsman. And the story ideas are already starting to tighten up. I even went back and wrote a character (albeit, rather minor) out of The Law of the Prince Charming; giving his part to a different character that ends up working better. It’s a bit of a blessing that I can still go back and tweak things in that first book.

My goal for the next two weeks is to revise through the halfway point of The Huntsman. And get another 10k words down for The Wizard. My process seems to rely heavily on the back and forth from new material to revising the early stuff, so I’m going to see how well it works for the next two weeks.

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.