September Goals

Laura Highcove

I sat down to figure out what it is I have to do in order to finish the Storyteller trilogy. It was kinda a big (huge) long list that I of course had to break down into smaller steps in order to keep from driving myself insane. The basic gist of it is, however, to first finish reading through the Huntsman and writing down all of the major issues that I want to/need to address both in this book and the Wizard. Then I will do the same with the part of the Wizard I have written along with a list of everything I wanted the trilogy to do and loose ends for every character.

I can then sort though this list and look for the items that will make the biggest waves and start there. I’ll shoehorn in what I can, all while November gets ever closer. Once November and NaNoWriMo hit, I will pour myself into finishing the Wizard draft. Right now the Wizard is at 56k words, so maybe about half the book …ish. So 50k words for NaNo should get me to the end, or at least pretty close.

Of course my productivity has been rather low so the idea of doing NaNo right now is pretty intimidating. But part of sitting down and writing out everything I needed to do in order to get the trilogy done and approximate times of how long each step would take reminded me once again how long it actually takes to write a book. As such, I am kicking myself in the butt to move forward because despite appearances, I do actually want to get these books done.

So for right now, I’m reading through the Huntsman and making my list. My goal is to have it done by the end of next week.

Also, if you haven’t read The Law of the Prince Charming yet, it is completely posted here for free. Check it out. More views and comments certainly don’t hurt the motivation factor.

Working Toward Productivity

Laura Highcove

As per usual, I come back with a reset post after a time away. Not even blaming myself for this anymore. This year has been such that blaming myself would just be not only unproductive, but downright cruel. I’ve been struggling for months with the balance between self care and productivity. Luckily I have people and activities in my life that bring me joy and I’ve been focusing on them.


I think I’m to a point now where I want to try keeping track of what I get done in my time-sheet again. I pulled the old dusty file open (it was still sitting on my desktop) and saw that I had stopped tracking hours after April. Not entirely surprising, and probably good for my mental health. It has been so weird looking back, and actually really weird looking forward.
I go to the Kroger every week for grocery shopping and I look around at all the people in their face masks and just keep thinking ‘this is my life now’. Because it is. Even if we get to the point where the virus is under control and we have a vaccine available (that works?), it is still forever a part of the world’s ecosystem just like the flu. Our lives going forward will be (and already are in a lot of cases) be defined by this.


As such, we are slowly learning to function in this world, which is what I’m still struggling to do. It’s not easy, not even going to lie. Self care is very very important and as such I made a super important change to my time-sheet. I switched the ‘write’ tag to ‘create’ and ‘read’ to ‘ingest’. Because I want to encourage myself to do what I need to to be happy. Create can include writing, of course, but also filming for my YouTube channel, or even working on my cross-stitch, just putting some sort of visible product into the world. Ingest includes reading, watching TV shows, and working with my horses. Experiences that enrich my soul and give me a reason to keep going.
I also have a straight up self care tag.


Not sure how this is going to go, but I’m going to aim for 15 hours in the coming week. Just to see what happens. Right now I’m feeling encouraged, which is certainly a good place to start from. Especially since I wrote this post in the middle of the list of things I wanted to do today. Now back to that task.

Still Writing

Laura Highcove

Starting off this post with a reminder to be kind to yourself during the pandemic. This article was written at the end of March but it still applies. Now back to your normally scheduled post.

So my writing life has mostly gotten back to normal. I’ve been posting my chapters of the Law of the Prince Charming, which is continuing to do well. That is actually getting really close to the end. I think there’s a bit more than a month left.

I’m still pushing through the Huntsman. I’ve hit the chapters that have the timeline issues now. That’s a lot of fun to figure out. Not really, but it has to be done and I am figuring some of them out. Not that far from the end which is great.

The plan right now is to finish this pass, and then do a pass that is nothing but writing a list of everything that needs to be fixed/changed. I love lists, so this is quite fun for me. Once I have that list I’ll (probably) have a better idea of how long it will be until there’s a ready draft.

I’ve also gone back to Blessings of the Neriel and starting piecing together the scenes I’ve written. I figure since The Law of the Prince Charming is out there, the likelihood of it doing well enough that a traditional publisher will want to pick it up is rather low. As such I need to be working on whatever my next project is while I’m finishing up the Storyteller trilogy, and as of right now I’ve picked Blessings of the Neriel. I’d really like this book to be a standalone, mostly because I’m not interested in working through another trilogy right now. I have so many different ideas that I’d rather get to more of them than spend the extra time on the same idea.

Hope everything’s going great for you.

Time Has No Meaning

Laura Highcove

It’s almost June and I really can’t believe it. March took so long and now it’s going super fast. My husband and I went on a vacation to a family condo and now I’m back to my regular schedule, well as regular as it ever is.

I’m still getting up my Law of the Prince Charming scenes three days a week, along with the accompanying video. I’m super proud about the fact that I haven’t missed an update yet. If you haven’t checked that out yet, here’s a link. We’re less than a month out from the halfway point of the book. It feels a little weird. I’ve been living with this book for so long, as well as working on second two books of the trilogy, that I often forget that it’s actually out there in the world for people to read. But then that was always my goal, having people read, and hopefully enjoy, what I write.

I didn’t make a ton of progress on the Huntsman. What little I did on vacation got lost when my USB drive got corrupted. The hubby’s still trying to see if he can fix it, but I’m assuming the work is lost. I’d like to work on this a little more than I have been because it occurs to me that eventually the LotPC will eventually finish posting, and if it does gain a whole bunch of readers, they’ll want the second book and it’s certainly not ready to be published yet. So I should have some sort of goal toward getting it done around Septemberish when the LotPC will be done posting.

But I have 26 more chapters in the Huntsman. At a chapter a week that still puts me into November, and this is nowhere near the final draft. If I want to get this done this year, I’m going to have to put in some work. Well I suppose there are two options. I can panic at the amount of work and give up, or I can start working toward getting it finished. For now I’m going to choose option number two.

Being Gentle with Myself

Laura Highcove

Man, living through history is hard. Yesterday Georgia started to reopen. The general consensus is “are you f-ing stupid?”. Also, last night the store had toilet paper. Yay!

In regards to my writing, which is why you’re really here, I have been doing far better. I am giving myself less hassle for not being productive and I’m actually ending up more productive. How productive, I’m not sure since I stopped using my timesheet, but I am getting done what needs to get done and that’s the important thing. I am still moving through the Huntsman and enjoying the revision step as much as I always do. I am doing a last pass through the Law of the Prince Charming before videoing my reading each scene and posting that video along with the text on Wattpad for public consumption.

I am keeping up with my Stories & Succulent YouTube Plant Channel’s update schedule. I am also now on board with diymfa.com for writing a new series of posts on Writer’s Intuition the first of which will go up in June. All in addition to working at the barn in the mornings, keeping the house clean, and caring for a sick fish. (He’s doing fine, but I’m doing daily water changes right now.)

It’s a lot of stuff, but like I said, because I’ve been giving myself less hassle about it, things have been going pretty smoothly. I have no end goal for finishing the Huntsman, not that I’m going to let it go on forever, but right now I’m just going with the flow. I’ve also been playing video games, watching lots of Asian Shows, and caring for my plants. In general I’m just being gentle with myself. It’s an easy trap to get into right now that there’s so much free time and that I should be super productive as a result, but living during a pandemic on this scale is stressful. Low-key, all the time, you can’t get away from it, death is actually an option, stressful. Do what you can and take care of yourself. I’ll say it as many times as I need to.

Self Care

Laura Highcove

I wrote a big long post talking about what I needed to do, and the new plan I was going to enact, and then I sat back and thought about it. I think pushing myself too hard right now is just a bad idea. I’ve been low level stressed since this whole pandemic thing started and it’s just …it just is. There’s no getting away from it and sure, I could beat myself up for not being productive right now, but why? Why have we let this country tell us we’re only worthwhile if we’re producing?

I’m going to work on the Huntsman at least some every day. I’m not setting any kind of goal or limit except to take it out and type at least one word. And then I’m going to enjoy my plants, and straighten my house, and watch netflix, and play minecraft, and whatever else I want to take care of myself during this.

I hope you do what you need to and that includes taking care of yourself too.

Time, time, time

Laura Highcove

This post will be rather similar to my newsletter that’s going out tomorrow, since most of what’s going on in my writing life is what I’d put in my newsletter. I also talked a bit about the stresses of the pandemic, but I won’t discuss that here.

The Law of the Prince Charming is being posted on Wattpad on a MWF update schedule. The text along with a video of me reading said text. (I’m getting better at reading as I go, I think.) I’ve been keeping up well with that and it’s actually sort of fun to do, even if the reading, editing, and posting takes a decent amount of time.

I finally have my list of things that need to be fixed in the Huntsman. I think the first order of business is the timeline I’ve been trying to get around to making since …forever. I have all sorts of notes in these manuscripts that refer to an unknown amount of time passing.

I have no idea how long this timeline may or may not take, but for now I think I’ll give myself a week and see what happens. Man, I really should’ve made a list of all the events I need on the timeline. Yeah, that would’ve been smart. :/

After that I’ll probably dive into the actual list and start checking things off as I can. One of my alpha readers has gotten slammed at work due to covid-19 and so I’m not sure he’ll even get around to reading the Wizard. Have to play that one by ear.

Anyway, timeline.

The World is Ending and I’m Cleaning Stalls

Laura Highcove

Friday March 20, 2020

I post the new scene of LotPC and go to work. Coworker reminds me of a conversation from weeks ago when I said my memoir should be called “The World is Ending and I’m Cleaning Stalls”. I wonder if this means my psychic powers are developing. At lunch the hubby and I realize there are some things we need from the store, so we plan to go as per normal on Fridays.

The grocery store has about the same number of people in it. There are a number of people (I have no idea how to say they were Asian without it being prejudice) wearing facemasks. I understand, of course, having watched as much anime as I have that at least in Japan, it’s far more common in normal circumstances than it is here. Seeing it here seems perfectly normal to me. I am certainly within six feet of people at times but I am so hyper aware of it. I am conscious of not touching anything I’m not taking home.

There is still no potatoes, toilet paper, paper towels, dried grains, pasta, or frozen veg. They have clearly restocked though, because when I say “no” there are like one or two pieces here and there. Except the toilet paper, which annoys me greatly because of my looming period.

On the way home we stop at Wendy’s to get dinner. We were planning to take it home, but when we arrive we see that there is no other option. There are signs proclaiming “carry-out only”. The chairs in the dining room are stacked up. There are no lids or straws or ketchup out, we have to ask for them. The drink machine closest to the register is out of almost everything. We take our food home.

The rest of the night is per usual, watching youtube/netflix/vrv.

It’s Been a Week

Laura Highcove

Thursday, March 12, 2020: Not the first I’d heard of Covid-19, but certainly when it was clear that it hadn’t been contained. It was spreading, a lot, and there were rumors of things shutting down. Two days after my birthday. In retrospect I’m glad I was able to celebrate that before all this.

Friday, March 13, 2020: Verified rumors that things would very likely be shutting down. It started to become more real, but only just. I make the decision to start posting my novel, the Law of the Prince Charming. I mean if people are going to be stuck inside anyway …

Saturday, March 14, 2020: Still business as usual for me. Had my riding lesson at the barn, it went well. Went out to lunch for Pie Day at the local Your Pie. It was delicious, there were lots of people there. After lunch made a peanut butter pie and went to Pie Day at the barn as is tradition. We ate pie, and chatted. Virginia Tech had extended Spring Break by a week and was moving all classes to online for the rest of the school year. That’s the point at which it became real to me. Tech doesn’t close. I went there, and slugged to school through snow and storms and everything else. Tech doesn’t close. But it had. That’s the moment when this became real to me.

Sunday, March 15, 2020: The people across the street have a moving van. Possibly a Tech student decided to go home after the college made it’s changes. The hubby and I go to BDubs for dinner. We want to continue to support businesses if the college kids are going to leave town. There are a decent number of people there. Service is great, food is great, we take home leftovers.

Monday, March 16, 2020: Public schools are closed. Assemblies of more than 100 people are banned. There are other things. I’m questioned on why I’m giving my book away for free. An acquaintance is pissed off that we simply “gave up” our right to assembly. I wonder what they expected people to do? Riot in the streets? I go home after work and cry for a half hour and then nap for an hour. Then I get things done. I’m going to keep to my writing schedule, no reason to not. Ireland closed all bars the day before St. Patrick’s Day.

Tuesday, March 17, 2020: Our feed room a the barn is stuffed full. Concerns about a possible hoarding of horse feed, or a lack of supply at some point. My manager at the barn stays home to take care of her two boys who are out of school. I do barn chores with my coworker. I go home and work on my writing.

Thursday, March 19, 2020: My weekly D&D campaign finds out that one of our member’s roommates has gotten sick. Don’t know what it is yet, but we cancel the session. I am feeling the beginnings of cabin fever. Find out the roommate’s coworkers had traveled to areas affected by Covid-19. He is considered a “low” priority by the local hospital and sent home to self-quarantine for 14 days.

Friday, March 20, 2020: Today: All-in-all, my life has changed very little in terms of actual schedule. I work at a horse barn in the mornings, and horses don’t stop eating or pooping because there’s a pandemic. Some lessons have been canceled, others have continued. Long term effects of social distancing on this business in particular is unknown. There’s a lot that’s unknown.


I’ve posted the third scene of my novel on Wattpad. Some people have been reading it, friends I would assume. I’m going to keep putting it out.


Concerns over travel plans months down the line are now surfacing. We had, literally two weeks before this all really started, put in our payment for the Wxr Cruise. It would suck to lose that money.


I am stressed, a low level sense of worry that is making my depression worse. My period is two days “late”. I’m not on a rigid schedule anyway, so this is not unusual, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the stress is effecting it as well.


All anyone’s talking about online is Covid-19. How to deal with it, what they’re doing, what the world looks like without people in it. I saw a picture of the Bellagio in Las Vegas dark. I’ve seen pictures of clear water in the Venice canals. Of wildlife moving into the cities that have been temporarily abandoned. There are stories of people helping. Stories of governments bailing out their citizens. Not in America, but in other places.


There is fear along with the hope that perhaps, somehow, this could change things in the world. I mean it already has, but I mean that the good things it creates will somehow take root, real change made, a new outlook on how the world works during the 18-months they’re predicting before we get a vaccine.


It’s been a week.

The Law of the Prince Charming on Wattpad

Laura Highcove

Another week, another journal post. And this one’s a bit more exciting than normal. Firstly because last week I threw the Wizard at my Alpha readers, and then took a week off of writing to get my website moved over to a new home. There are likely still some broken links, but it’s working for the most part. Many thanks to my friend Matt for having hosted my site on his server since …well forever.

On top of that, this weekend I decided with the swathes of people stuck inside for Corvid-19, that I would be going ahead and posting The Law of the Prince Charming to wattpad. This was always the plan eventually if I didn’t find an agent, but I had planned on waiting until I at least had draft 0 of the Wizard done. And then we ended up in a pandemic. Like I said above, this just happens to be a time when an unprecedented number of eyes will be searching for entertainment, so I might as well put mine out there to be found.

I did decide, after some research, that I will be posting each scene separately on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule, which means the story will come out slower than when I was planning to put out a chapter a week, but not by much. This will also allow people who’d prefer the more frequent update schedule to have that. And someone who will only read every once and a while will still have plenty to read when they get there.

I choose wattpad for two main reasons, one it has a lot of features which make posting this story easier and more appealing to me. And two, and more importantly, it is possible for people I don’t know to stumble on it more easily than if it were just on my website. Thank you for your support in reading this, and I hope you enjoy the ride.