WXR 2018: Finding My Tribe

Laura Highcove

I started listening to Writing Excuses at the end of season nine, so 2014. And after getting part way into season 10, I went back and listened to the archives. All of them. I found out about the cruise in 2016, and I applied for the scholarship for the past two years, but finally saved up enough money to go this year. I wasn’t sure what to expect. I hung around on the Google group where everyone was talking for months ahead of time. I picked my roommate, Morgan, because she wrote fantasy and didn’t snore.

But it wasn’t until the Saturday when I flew into Houston that the people-interactions really started. I met Eric in the airport using the Discord app everyone was on for conversing on the cruise. Then, since Morgan’s flight was delayed, (There was rough weather, most people got delayed.) Eric and I met up with Michelle and we all shared an Uber to the hotel. Both of them had been on the cruise before, and Michelle let me tag along into the group of people she knew as soon as we got to the hotel. Everyone seemed really nice and entirely non-threatening.

After picking up registration bags, we went behind the waterfall where they had swag for us. I went up to a table with books on it, because of course I did, and the person behind the table began to describe the books. I had to reboot because the voice that was speaking was Dan Wells, and I was entirely unprepared to hear that voice in a non-podcast situation. Then Howard Taylor said something from the table beside him, which furthered the surrealism, and I had to ask Dan to repeat himself because I hadn’t heard what he actually said. He was very nice about it, which bolstered my confidence further, so when I turned and saw Mary Robinette Kowal at a third table, and walked over and asked if she could also speak for me to complete the blowing of my mind. She acquiesced.

I managed to work through the “getting to know you” sheet where you get people to sign your paper based on something about them, like what genre they write or what their job is, by actually talking to people. Though, in truth, I was given a task, and I am good at task completion. But it was also a very comfortable situation. Then those of us who went on the NASA tour further bonded by living through the torrential downpour on our cart train that had no sides.

That night was the cocktail reception, and oddly enough, I settled right into talking with people. Part of it was by that time I had bonded with my roommate, and I’m always braver when I have someone I know around, and part of it was that I sat at a table and almost everyone was a genre writer. Even if I do attend other writing events, I rarely find genre writers, and if I do, they’re all YA. (Not that I have anything against YA. I just feel like I never find adult fantasy writers.) So again, it felt a little surreal to ask what everyone was writing and have so many of them be my same genre.

At this point I was still rather intimidated by the hosts, but I still managed to get my books signed and to ask them to hug my stuffed animal gryffin (That I’ve had all the people who are important in/to my life hug). It was also the first time I was able to meet Brandon Sanderson. I cried a bit, I’ll admit it, but he was perfectly accommodating, and he signed my book and took a picture with me grinning like a silly fangirl. My one regret about the whole situation was that I was simply too overwhelmed to approach him as a writer. It doesn’t help that he wasn’t on the cruise, so while I got to see Mary Robinette, Howard, and Dan as real people, he’s still Brandon Sanderson. At least for now.

The introduction/instruction speech that came at the end of the reception really helped to settle things in my mind, and solidify the feel of what to expect from the cruise. All of the instructors and the helpful team were introduced, as well as the rules for how to treat each other. I know the Wxr hosts have always been pretty big on making a space safe for everyone there, and I was really starting to feel that.

The next day we got on the boat and that’s when things finally started to settle a bit in my mind. All of the Wxrers had red badges that hung from our necks, meaning we could spot each other through the, well frankly, massive crowd of muggles who were on the cruise as well. The classes were simply amazing, though that’s fodder for another post. We all ate dinner together rotating tables so we got to meet other people, as well as the hosts. Morgan and I sat with Dan, Howard, and Mary Robinette on various nights.

And I found the most amazing thing happening. I was interacting with people. People I didn’t know very well, but it was like that red badge was magic. As soon as I saw it, I would meet the other person’s gaze and wave, and they would do the same. Or I could just walk up and start a conversation. We were able to just be comfortable around each other, as people, because we had been brought together by this cruise.

I am not normally one to join in or participate in conversations. I like being on the sidelines, listening to other people say interesting things, but never feeling like I have anything to add to most conversations. And if I do, it’s usually a quick comment and then over. Only at the dinner table, I found so many people with topics they wanted to discuss that were interesting and that I had something to say about. One night I started talking about Supernatural and fan fiction, and I realized almost halfway through the night that I was actually having a good time participating in a conversation. That I had things to say, that these were topics in which I was interested. I have never before had such an actual lengthy conversation with people in a group setting like this, not even among my friends.

I also hopped into a discussion on magic system creation where I felt emboldened to add some to the conversation. And I jumped into a quickly created critique group that all looked at the part of my story, I’ve been trying to fix forever and thought was “okay”, and told me it still didn’t work. And I felt safe getting that feedback, and glad that they were willing to say something.

I had, for the first time, actually found my tribe. So much so that I cried when it was time to leave the boat. After my flight landed in Atlanta I found myself looking through the crowds for red badges and being sad when I remembered I wouldn’t be seeing any. I clung to Discord, that last connection I had to them, and I mourned not being on the cruise anymore.

For the first time I really understood Daisy’s reaction in Agents of SHIELD, after she’s freed from Hive’s control, and she throws herself at him again, begging for him to let her back in. I felt like I had been removed from a situation that felt so right for the first time in my life, that I wasn’t sure what to do without it. Maybe I’m being overly dramatic, and maybe I’m not. But I know I need to figure out a way to be able to go on the cruise again next year. And for now, I’m very grateful for Discord and for everyone involved with putting on and attending this cruise.

Gratitude and the New Normal

Laura Highcove

I’m going to start this post with gratitude. Gratitude for my friends, with whom I spent a wonderful week of discovery at a resort in the Dominican Republic. Gratitude for the Writing Excuses Cruise Team who put together a writing retreat so wonderful I cried when it was finally over. Gratitude for my husband who is so supportive of me and my pursuits. Gratitude for my boss (And friend) who worked with me so I could do these two events, even so annoyingly close together, and took care of my cats while my husband and I were away. Gratitude for my cat Nickel, and the ten wonderful years I got with him. And Gratitude for myself and my stubborn refusal to give up on me.

These past couple of months have been really tough for me emotionally, almost entirely due to Nickel’s rapid decline in health and final day last week. It was difficult for me to remember how many good things I have going on in my life and the amount of support that is readily available. But then that’s part of my depression.

I have been so out of my own normal habits that it’s been uncomfortable trying to go back to them. I didn’t have a weekend at home for a month. My writing has been ridiculously on and off again, and of course I’ve barely looked at social media outside of checking on the new season of Supernatural. Thus why this post is coming in on a ‘not Monday’. I realized I needed to just get something out. Just like I needed to just do my laundry on whatever day, and clean the bathroom finally. I had a lot of life changing experiences all in a very short amount of time and I still haven’t been able to sit down and fully process any of them. There might be no ‘returning to normal’ after this, because my normal has shifted so dramatically.

But even then, the laundry still needs to be done, the bathroom still needs to be cleaned, and I still need to write. So I guess enough has stayed the same.

There is a Way this Makes Sense

Laura Highcove

It’s funny, even though I know the only way I’m going to get past this stuck spot in the Huntsman is to keep writing, and even though this persistence has always worked in the past, I still find myself dreading the idea of working on my story. Being human is such a funny thing. It’s so easy to get bogged down in the present and somehow think things have always been terrible, and always will be terrible, but then if it’s going well we worry about how that will change for the worse.

It’s all a matter of perceptive. I’m really no more stuck with this book than I have been in the past. And truthfully, I’m farther along than I ever have been. I’m starting to figure out some things, but IDEAS! are easy, and bringing them together to make sense for the end of a book is hard. I always get stuck at this point of the book, and have for a number of trunk novels that never got finished. The Law of the Prince Charming, while not the first book I managed to power through, is one of very few. And it took six months of agony before I basically just popped out the second half of the book.

It’s been longer for this one, and I figure the reason is I just haven’t found that thing, that bit that ties it all together. It’s out there somewhere. I know it is. A thing I try to tell myself in times like this is: “There is a way that all of this (my story) makes sense.” That doesn’t mean things won’t have to change or shift around, but there is a second half of this book that is beautiful and wonderful and makes sense. I just have to tap into it …by continuing to write until I get past this stuck spot. Blargh. I mean: I know I can do it!

Put in the Work

Laura Highcove

Trying to write a new story hasn’t really worked out. I’m just not excited enough about any of my new ideas. I wrote on one for a few days, got words out, but just didn’t feel any excitement about where it was going. As such I went back to do a revision pass on the Huntsman while taking into account the notes my husband left and the conversation we had on the way back from Baltimore. Even that’s not going particularly well, but it’s at least better.

I’m trying to lean very heavily on this article that I luckily read last week. So at least I’m still moving forward. I got a good amount of hours logged compared to the last three weeks, so I’m celebrating that win. Or trying to.

I still feel like I’m whining, which is something I try to avoid doing, but I’m also not going to lie and pretend everything is okay. That’s part of what got me into trouble the past two months.

30 min

Laura Highcove

So it’s been a little longer than two weeks like I said, but I needed a little longer to get myself back together than I thought I would. I went through a really rough bit and I’m still climbing out of the hole on the other side.

Long story short, I found out Nickel has cancer and I hid from my depression by binging 13 seasons of Supernatural and ignoring the rest of my life. If you’d like the full story and the lesson I’ve taken away from it, you can sign up for my newsletter, since I’m not going to go into those details on the open Internet.

I did manage to get the alpha of the Huntsman up and I went to Otakon this past weekend. I even managed to have a pretty good time at the con and a great discussion with my husband about the Huntsman during the easiest (no traffic) trip back from Baltimore we’ve ever had.

Still struggling with the lingers of the habits I formed over the past two months, and so right now I’m rereading some old stories I’ve written, writing some on a new story and thinking through the ideas I got from my husband during our talk. I need to get back into the habit of writing. Motivation is low. Right now I’m going to be happy to spend 30 minutes a day writing new prose. I might check in more often for a bit so I can keep up with my goals.

Before the Shift

Laura Highcove

Didn’t quite make my goal of getting through Gabir’s turning point by Sunday, but I was pretty close. I had it done by Tuesday. All things considered, this first part of the story is starting to come together. However, this is the point at which the story really starts to fall apart. I have ideas of what I want to have happen, and some of them aren’t working, some of them feel forced, and others just aren’t good.

Part of what I want to get out of the alpha read is feedback and even suggestions for the story. At the same time, I feel rather icky with the idea of sending it out in this state. (Even to people I trust.) The Law of the Prince Charming’s story was solid all the way through before anyone but my husband saw it.

A few things happened since my last post. The Show Team is back from Nationals (they did very well) so I am currently enjoying my first full day off in two and a half weeks. However, two weeks ago Nickel, one of my cats, started having a health issue and while I don’t have a solid answer as to what’s wrong, the possibilities are rough. As such, I haven’t been in an entirely good mental state. I haven’t been able to go ‘head down’ on my story like I was planning once the Show Team was back. Nickel has an appointment with a specialist next week, and depending on the answers (or lack thereof) I’m not sure how things will be going forward.

I’ve been trying to get as much done as I can before the possible shift in my reality. But even on a good day it’s hard to slog through the story when nothing feels like it is coming together. Maybe I really do just need this feedback. While I was able to write the Law of the Prince Charming almost entirely off my own ideas, it’s a book two and I have even less skill with this than I have with ending a book. Maybe a little outside influence is exactly what I need.

Pushing Through the Huntsman

Laura Highcove

Things are a little rough right now. I’m in the middle of working the barn 7 days a week (with one coworker) for two and a half weeks. I’ve done a pretty good job of losing track of what day it is, and I’ve been grumpy, tired, and watching a lot of Supernatural.

As such, I’ve gotten very little writing done. But not none, because I like writing and I want to write. I made a bit of a breakthrough a week ago with the order of some scenes in a few chapters, and then hit the wall of the most underdeveloped part of the story. My brain’s a little lacking in the “organizing the overall plan” space right now, so it’s probably harder than it should be.

But, as you may have seen in my newsletter, my plan is to have some alpha readers look at the Huntsman at the end of July. Last time I had my hubby read it. He was able to give me some very good advice that cleaned up a lot of things and I’m hoping this time will do the same. It would probably really help for me to have writer friends who are willing to do critiques, but I’m not strong at making friends.

I still have work through this weekend, and then I’ll be back to my regular schedule. It’ll probably take me a day or so to get back into the swing of things, but after that the plan is to plow ahead full speed and get the Huntsman as ready as I can make it. Right now I have 11ish chapters left. (41k words) Things are rather haphazard at the end of the story, so I can’t really count on those to be anywhere near the same amount of words or work to bring them up to snuff.

My first job will be organizing the scenes I have written into a workable order, sight right now they’re mostly scenes I wrote totally independently of each other, all stuck into the same part of the story. Then I need to make sure all of the elements I need are in there, and then smooth it out a bit. That, of course, being the least important bit, since my alpha readers will know it’s a little rough. I actually left notes in the story when I had my hubby read it to warn him at two distinct points when the amount of polish took a moderate, then severe nosedive. He still got through it enough to help me out.

Anyway, so measurable goal: By the end of next Sunday I will organize though Gabir’s turning point, which is approximately three chapters. All scenes need to be orange, which means all of the elements are in the scene, even if it’s not perfectly readable.

Review: Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom

Laura Highcove

My Review of Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom

My summary: An RPG/Squad/Kingdom Builder/Idle Game blend about a young prince whose father is murdered, and is then saved by the President of the United States (not even kidding), and gathers a group of friends to create a new kingdom and unite the world in peace.

Why I picked up this game: Someone told me about the kingdom building aspect of it, and I was interested in that, plus I needed some sort of reward for finishing Camp Nanowrimo.

What I knew going in: Kingdom builder/RPG with Ghibli designs.

My response:

Positives:

This game is actually like three games in one.

There’s the RPG game, with free-moving combat a-la FFXV, only fighting felt easy and much more natural than FFXV. You level up, get new weapons and armor, and unlock and level up spells. There were also higglties. I didn’t use them the way they expected you to, but meh. My gear was so overpowered by late game that I didn’t need them.

There was also a …squad combat game, that you used to fight battles they they wanted to feel better than a party of three versus some monsters. You had four squads of people that would then fight other squads of people as you took territory and built structures. It was a ton of fun, but I don’t think I made it sound all that great.

And lastly, my main reason for purchasing the game, a kingdom-building idle game that I focused most of my attention on. The resource you needed in order to build up the kingdom was timing based. So even when I wasn’t playing the game proper, I would leave the game running and check back every half-hour or so to use the recources or finish research. You also recruit people from other kingdoms to yours in order to put them to work. I found out later that there were checkpoints in the main story where you were required to have your kingdom to have a certain amount of “reputation”. I wasn’t even aware of this because I was basically building up my kingdom as much as I could whenever I could. This is also why my gear was so boss by the end of the game.

An interesting feature was that every quest basically told you exactly where to go and who to talk to. There were even markers on your map telling you who had a quest for you. And when you were tracking a quest 90% of the quests showed you exactly where to go on the map. Part of me was annoyed that the game held your hand so tightly in this regard, but the other part of me was happy to not have to do much wandering around without purpose, or talking to everyone each time a major plot point resolved in order to find new quests. So in the end, I enjoyed it, but I could see some people being annoyed by the simplicity of it.

Overall, loved the game-play itself.

Negatives:

Not impressed with the dungeons or the so called “mazes”. Dungeons were stupidly linear (and bland looking), with no more than two paths at a time, one of which would either loop back in or end in short order. And then there were the Dimensional Mazes. I was terrified to go in the first time because they talked about how you couldn’t save, and there was no map, and over time the enemies would get stronger. They were stupid and not at all difficult, and the ones I found during the course of normal game-play didn’t even have good items in them.

Music: I started playing without sound on at all because the music in almost every place besides Evermore had this …urgency to it that made me tense. Like the kind of music that plays when you need to hurry up, only it was like that all the time. English voices weren’t bad.

The Story. Okay yes, there are spoilers from here on. You’ve been warned, but the story is so bad and literally nonsensical in places that I really have to make fun of it. Tuck yourself in, this is going to be a long one.

So the game starts in a motorcade in what appears to be the ‘real’ world. We zoom in on an older fellow in front of what is very obviously supposed to be the seal of the United States President. He is driving into “New York City” and a nuke goes off. Stay with me. The Potus, having survived, begins to glow.

Cut to Evan, the prince who’s father has just been killed because of course he has, with the bad guards are closing in and suddenly light! Out of nowhere, the Potus, Roland, who is now like 30 years younger (and hott for Ghibli), shows up, takes in the situation, and shoots the guards.

Eventually Roland gets decked out with swords and a weapon-holding magic armband that refills his gun with bullets … They escape, leaving Evan’s bad-ass nursemaid behind to fight a mouse centaur who looks awesome but who never shows up again!

We (the party) meet up with some air pirates, and then go find some unsettled land, fight off a few bandits, get their own Kingmaker (a magical animal you need in order to prove you’re a king) and establish Evanland. Okay, so now the Kingdom Building aspect finally starts.

Everyone goes to Dogland in order to have the leader sign our peace treaty to unite the world. (Evan is a cat from Cat/Mouseland) We discover a sinister snake-wearing man is controlling the Dogleader and using the country’s love of gambling to make things very uncomfortable (financially) for people. Snakeman steals the Dogland Kingmaker, but everything’s okay otherwise and we get the treaty signed. No problem with this story yet.

Then onto the water kingdom. We get there and there are all kinds of weird rules in place (like it’s illegal to fall in love and outsiders are shunned) and there is this creepy eye watching everything. We get the Waterqueen’s right hand man in our party, who swears the queen is good even though all evidence points to her being all sorts of insane.

After we finish this area’s dungeon, (and lose the Waterland Kingmaker to Snakeman) we learn that the Waterqueen’s rules are not insane. In fact this kingdom was blown up by a volcano some time ago, and she has been continually turning back time so the kingdom still exists, but for the spell to work the number of people on the island has to stay the same. So no one can move off or onto the island, nor can any new people be born. But it’s okay (and totally not insane) because she’s going to let the spell lapse since they’ve had enough time, but before that she wants to marry her right-hand man, but weddings take a while to plan so she tells him to stay in our party until the wedding is ready to take place, and of course she’ll sign our peace treaty. I’m not even making this up. This was literally the ending cut scene for this area. Not to mention immediately after this I started recruiting people from her kingdom to my own. The kingdom never blew up and the Waterqueen and her subjects helped in the final battle …

Next we headed to Techland, a kingdom where technology (and guns) exist. (So at least I have some sort of explanation for why the armband was able to create bullets.) Here, Techleader is working his workers literally to death, but turns out he’s also controlled by Snakeman who steals Blastoise, I mean the Techland Kingmaker. Once Techleader is no longer under Snakeman’s influence, he’s cool again. No matter those people who died. We’re all friends forever.

Brief interlude where Roland convinces Evan (and the rest of the party) that he’s betraying him so he can sneak into Mouseland and get an important artifact by buddying up to Mouseking. Only Mouseking was never fooled, Roland manages to get the artifact, and explains the convoluted plan to Evan after the fact …

Then we all go back to Mouseland, where the cats now live in the slums because they treated the mice horribly before. Was Evan’s father a bad guy? Turns out no, because we find his journal, which is holding his soul (or part of it?) and he was trying to fix the hatred between the cats and mice, but Snakeman messed things up. Oh, and Snakeman shows up and takes the Mouseland Kingmaker. But Mouseleader signs our treaty. Yay!

Now Snakeman has all four Kingmakers and brings back his lost kingdom, along with a huge Kingmaker, the Horned One, that starts sucking the souls out of everyone in the world (except Evanland, because we still have our Kingmaker)

All the kingdoms have united and go to fight this new threat. (All while Roland starts having dark energy fits.) We get to Snakeman who reveals his plan to us along with the fact that he is Roland’s soulmate! (!?? Literally the day before I got to this cut scene I was watching a speed run of Ni No Kuni the first, and found out a big part of that game is that there are two worlds and each person in one world has a soulmate (in that they share a soul, not they’re lovers) with someone from the other world. There was no mention or allusion to this in Ni No Kuni II until this reveal.)

Anyway, turns out this is why Roland was pulled to this world, and we can’t fight Snakeman because it will hurt Roland. We fight him anyway. Then we find out Snakeman is doing this because he fell in love with the Kingmaker of his own kingdom and the gods punished him by wiping out his kingdom, and turning the Kingmaker into the Horned One.

We eventually triumph only to find out Snakeman (and kingdom) was not cursed by the gods, but the Kingmaker chose to become human to love Snakeman. In doing so she released the energy that made her a Kingmaker, which then destroyed the kingdom, and (I think) in trying to stop the backlash of energy she released, got caught in it and turned into the Horned One? I kind of gave up on the story by this point. Either way, they can’t be together. But Snakeman is going to start over and build a new kingdom from scratch because Evan inspired him with 12-year-old wisdom.

Now at the end of each chapter, Evan has been meeting a “curious boy” in his dreams who often says something wise and/or hints at something that happens in the next chapter, leaving the player to wonder who he could possibly be! (Mostly I forgot about him until each chapter ended.) Well, turns out he is King Ferdinand, the king who, in the past, united the whole world. Only King Ferdinand is actually Evan’s son, from the future, but he has the ability to send his mind through time, and of course he wanted to go back and see his father as a child, because who wouldn’t? Oh, and why was Evan told King Ferdinand lived in the past? Obviously because the person who told us was a seer, but didn’t know she was a seer, so she thought King Ferdinand was from the past. I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP.

/sigh

And then, of course, Roland gets pulled back home, ends up in his motorcade again, heading into “New York City” when fireworks go off instead of a nuke.

Thanks for playing!

Do I recommend this game?: I highly enjoyed the game and feel I got more than my money’s worth of enjoyment, I just had to ignore the story to do so.

Keep Making Goals

Laura Highcove

Two weeks ago I went back to revise the Huntsman from the beginning, going much deeper than I usually do. I’ve been forcing myself to fix the issues and adding the descriptions I have marked for ‘later’. I don’t think any of the changes have seriously effected the story, but then that was why it was safe to leave them for later in the first place. However, I did this because now, the point at which I’m ready for alpha readers is coming into focus. ~cringe~ As such, the story will need to be as readable as possible for someone who is not me.

Now of course I don’t have the middle of the book solidified, and gosh darnit I still don’t know what I’m going to do with Tabitha. It has been very helpful to have The Law of the Prince Charming under my belt. It is good and it is done so I can convince myself that if I could complete that book, then I can complete this one. You know, eventually. I give myself goals only to realize a few days later they’re unobtainable. And the timeline to finish the book keeps stretching out into “someday”.

I wanted to try and get a pass of the story done before June 21, because that’s when the show team is leaving for Nationals, and I’ll be working full time + weekends while they’re gone. That means it’s unlikely I’ll be spending much, if any, time on my writing. While I realized about three days into that goal that I wasn’t going to reach it, I have been ridiculously productive this week. This is particularly helpful since I’ve had a string of less than productive weeks and I’ve been feeling crappy about that.

I’m not sure yet if I should attribute this surge of productivity to the fact that I restarted my yoga habit, or just the fact that I sat down and had a reset at the beginning of this month. For right now, I don’t think it matters. Productive is productive, and as time goes on I’ll evaluate and reassess. And then I’m sure I’ll turn it all into a post, because that’s what I do.