Tag: mental health

Week 1 of March

Laura Highcove

I swear, I have the hardest time with titles for these posts…

Had a pretty great weekend and was rather productive. This past week’s goal was smoothing the Wizard. I realized I had gotten a little caught up in trying to get to a revision stage instead of straight up smoothing, so I pushed myself over the weekend to work just on smoothing and it went a bit better. I also played some Hyrule Warriors because I love that game.

According to the plan I made for myself, I was supposed to finish a rough draft of the Huntsman, smooth the beginning of the Wizard. I was unable to get done with the Huntsman. There was simply more to do than I originally thought. Rose is still giving me trouble as well. This led to some motivation problems and low level anxiety. As such, I shifted to the next thing on my goal list, which was smoothing the Wizard.

The next two weeks are now going to be writing 1.6k words a day on the Wizard. And I seem to be perfectly ready for that. I’ve already done a lot of rewriting while smoothing, which has been enjoyable. I’m also hoping that exploring Rose in the Wizard will help me with the problems he’s giving me in the Huntsman.

So the current goal is: Two weeks of 1.6k words a day, with smoothing as necessary. AND I’m going through the Huntsman again to figure out what is actually there, and aim toward an alpha read. Last time I had an alpha read of the Huntsman, just the feedback and straight up talking about it helped me move forward, so I’m hoping another push will get me to the finished draft I’m aiming for.

What I Learned on the Wxr Cruise 2018

Laura Highcove

So I already did a post about what happened on the Wxr cruise, in that I really feel like I found my writing tribe. That is wonderful and amazing, but beside that, I also learned a ton of writing skills as well as learning a few new lessons about myself.

The first lecture of the cruise was from Brandon Sanderson on Characterization. It was a more fleshed out version of something he’s spoken on, on the podcast before. It came in handy already as a diagnostic tool for a character people were having a hard time connecting with. It gave me a solid way to look at why people might not like said character, and thus, how to fix it.

He also said something during the Q&A session at the end that really struck me as well. Something like: “As you get better at writing you will try harder things, and as a result, you’ll think you’re a worse writer than you are.” I had been struggling with this rather hard for the past two years, while working on the Huntsman. I remember how easy writing used to be, where I would sit down and pump out words, and yet I had to fight for every inch on the Huntsman. But since hearing the above, I was able to put my head down on the Huntsman and get to ‘The End’ on my rough draft.

Some of the lectures were interesting, but not immediately relevant. More of a ‘file away for later’, like Mary Robinette’s ‘How to Read Outloud’, and Dongwon’s three part lecture on ‘Surviving the Books Business’. There were others that I incorporated into my writing asap like Tempest’s talk on inclusively in writing, Piper’s ‘Writing Romantic Elements’, and Sandra’s “Setting up your Life for Writing”, which went wonderfully into the mentality around writing and how to protect your writing time.

The one lecture that caught me most by surprise was Amal’s lecture on writing poetry. I have never been a fan of poetry. I just never got it, and the people who do are so passionate about it, it’s almost a turn-off. However, the way Amal explained the difference between poetry and prose as the way singing is different from talking really clicked with me. And when she had us try writing some poetry with that distinction, it just …worked. And from what others got up and read in front of the class, it seemed to have worked for a lot of people. It certainly gave me a new appreciation for poetry, and so the exercise she gave us for using poetry to get past ‘stuck spots’ is certainly something I can see myself using.

I also got something very important impromptu critique group that I got into by chance. It was my first time critiquing (and being critiqued) in person, but I was riding high on the safety of the whole Wxr space and so it went really well. Apparently the narrator problem I’d had in the Law of the Prince Charming, that I thought had been fixed was, in fact, still a problem.

And since I was stuck on a boat for several more days with little else to do, I decided I was going to go head down on this problem and figure out how to fix it. Long story short, I realized the problem was with tense and I experimented with switching the prose from past to present. After much reluctance and knashing of teeth on my part (because I hate reading present tense in books), I realized that I was much happier with the way it sounded in general, and got enough feedback saying it did feel better than I am currently in the process of rewriting the book.

But, I think, the most important thing I learned on the cruise happened at dinner on Friday night. I was in a bit of a depressed state because this was right after I had figure out that present tense for my novel sounded better, but before I reached acceptance of the idea, and was ready to leave the table when Mary Robinette came to join us. I stayed because, well, she’s a highly intelligent writer and I like the sound of her voice. At one point she started talking about how she finds the guest speakers for the cruise, and how she has to tell them that they can’t give the 101 or 201 versions of their talks because the Writing Excuses listeners have such a high level of theory already. She says she has to inform her speakers to think of it like they are giving a lecture to their peers, who just happen to be still early in their careers.

It was the first time I thought of connecting myself to published authors with the word peer. I mean I know I’ve gained a lot of skill over the past four or five years, but it wasn’t until that moment it really dawned on me that the only thing standing between me and publication could be that I haven’t found an agent. Not that I’m at the end of my learning by any stretch, but it was certainly a context shift. And, on top of that, I had access to all the other amazing people of the same level who were on the cruise with me.

During the final party, Mary Robinette did warn us that after everything we had learned on the cruise, that writing might be difficult for a while. But I found a new groove since the cruise. The newfound confidence in myself and my skills carried me through a lot of things I had been having difficulty with before the cruise. And that’s how I know this retreat was so successful, because I met so many amazing, wonderful people, and because it inspired me to write better. Totally have to go back again next year.

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.

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.

Resetting

Laura Highcove

I came off of last week being on vacation where I really didn’t do much, if any writing. I came back and got back to work as I should finishing up rewriting a few Gabir scenes and then restarting the story to focus on Tabitha’s storyline. I put in a good number of hours through the week. Since I had last week off for Williamsburg, I agreed to work this weekend to give my coworker a nice long weekend. Oddly enough, despite that, Saturday I still got a lot done, and it wasn’t until Sunday that the extra barn work started dragging me down such that I told myself I needed to not push the writing too hard and just recover.

It’s a shame to lose the momentum I had, but I’ll get back to it tomorrow. I want to try and have Tabitha’s scenes done by June 3rd. I had to do a bit of a recheck into myself because I realized I was not enjoying the story because I was so focused on whether or not the story was technically ‘good’. One of the things I realize from writing this journal is that I keep having to come back to the same realizations, because it’s so easy to get caught up in life and goals and expectations that I lose focus on what’s important. Then I have to not beat myself up for having forgotten, because it’s just another one of those things. Every once and a while I just need to stop and reset by reminding myself of what’s important. And the ability to realize I need to do that is one of the most important skills I’ve learned. Anyway, I am back to feeling like I am making progress as I focus on writing a story I enjoy. Cause who cares if it’s technically ‘good’ if I hate it?

I’ve now pushed to the end of what I have so far for Tabitha, so I’m going to shift over to Wildrose and smooth through his scenes and see what comes out the other side. I’d like to get that done by the end of the week at the latest, and start trying to weave more Tabitha/Wildrose storylines together to catch up to where Gabir is. (By the end of the *next* week.)

Celebrating My Victories

Laura Highcove 2 Comments

This week, more on my new timesheets, because that is data and I love messing with data. I am really liking the effect the timesheet is having. It pushes me to do more work when I need to, but is also a way for me to sit down and say: “Okay, I’ve worked on my novel for two hours today, so no I don’t need to work on it more now.”

The other effect is that it lets me, definitively, see how long it takes me to do certain tasks. I find when writing new stuff, I tend to work better in half hour increments. When smoothing or revising, I can more easily work for up to an hour (or more).

It also lets me see what other things I did over the course of a week that I might forget I had done, like these past two weeks I went though my blog and re-jiggered the categories and tags. I now have:

Journal: Mostly talking about the writing I’ve been doing, but some of what’s going on in my life in general.
Blog posts: Which are posts that are meant to be more informational or topic focused than ‘what I’ve been doing’.
Reviews: Because I realized I really like doing reviews and talking about why I did or didn’t like particular media (tv shows, movies, books, and video games).
World of Warcraft: For all my old world of warcraft kill posts that I just can’t bring myself to delete.

It took some time, but it now means things are much neater, and that makes my heart happy.

Also, two great things happened this past week. First was that I reached the point in Huntsman where I *usually* bang my head against it, think nothing can be done, and become sad for several days. But this time I remembered my process after only one day, and went back to the beginning to smooth for a while. (I am also taking notes on the things I still need to do.) I am proud that I was actually able to look at my resistance and realize what it meant. It’s all part of getting comfortable with my process.

The second was that I got depressed (okay the depressed part wasn’t great) but I *realized* that I was depressed and gave myself the day off instead of beating myself up over the fact that I didn’t feel like working on the Huntsman. Instead I read more in my mushroom book (research for a potential story) and spent almost three hours writing the first drafts and taking pictures for the gryffin posts I have coming up. And those were both productive and fun.

So it was two wins in the “self-awareness” category and I am celebrating that fact. I didn’t try to force myself to feel the way I thought I should, I just listened to what I needed and worked from there and ended up more productive for it.

Added Feb 07: I totally forgot to make myself a writing goal. On Jan 21 my goal was to finish removing a character from the Huntsman and smooth to the end. Since then I got about halfway in, then went back to the beginning for another smoothing pass during which time I started taking notes on what I don’t like, or that needs to be fixed in each scene until I now reached the place where the book basically breaks down completely.

Plan for the next two weeks is now this: Finish off taking notes on the whole story (Wed), move the scenes around to try and make the story more whole (Thurs), write the new scenes I put in my notes as needing to write. (Sat/Sun).

Then the next week is another, heavy duty, smoothing pass. I’ll reevaluate where I am over the weekend and include my new plan in the next journal entry.

What if I am?

Laura Highcove 1 Comment

Some of you may remember my trip to Vegas for the MasterTreat earlier this year. I got so much out of that weekend that it’s hard to even talk about it all, but one of the main things was that I felt a level of confidence there for almost the entire weekend, that I had never experienced before. As a result I was able to look at many of the feelings I have on a deeper level than I ever have. One of them was confronting more specifically what my fear of public speaking stems from. The another was my modesty.

One of the things that happened at the MasterTreat was that in my confidence, I was able to repeat some of the advice I had gained from the mentors in my life. The result of that is that the other women at the table seemed impressed, and one of them even called me wise.

My initial response to that was, of course: Well that’s not true. And I made the excuse that I was just repeating what other, smarter people had said. But after that gut reaction, I decided I needed to examine that feeling, so I sat with those compliments for a while.

I let myself think about what it would mean if I was wise. Not in the grand scheme of the world, or compared to other people, but in that moment, for those woman, what if I am wise? And you know, there is a fear somewhere deep-seated in me that believes that there is something truly wrong about being confident in myself. And once I was able to realize that, for a little while I was able to let go of it and see myself as other people do. And then I was able to be that wise person that they saw.

I didn’t suddenly crack under the expectation. I didn’t break under the weight of my own arrogance. I didn’t drive away the people around me with my ego, and I didn’t lose my sense of right and wrong. And while the confidence I experienced that weekend faded once I returned to the ‘real world’, I had certainly developed a bit of feel surrounding it, and I now find myself far more aware of when I’m brushing off compliments as a reaction and when I may deserve them.

So I want to give you a challenge the next time someone pays you a compliment. Instead of brushing it off with a dismissive comment or an excuse; actually accept it. For just a moment, allow that you are smart or brave or creative or attractive. And you know what? All life is are moments lined up one after the other.

Better Late than Never

Laura Highcove 1 Comment

So I had to work this weekend and I rewarded myself by playing some Terraria. As such I forgot to write my journal post for this week. On Monday I got hit by some depression and everything I tried to write came out sounding like I was a complete and utter failure, even though that certainly wasn’t true.

I made good progress these past two weeks, though it wasn’t all easy and smooth, and there’s nothing big in particular that I can point to and say ‘I accomplished that!’, so it’s hard to write a post about what I did accomplish.

Sometimes this is writing. It has nothing to do with how skilled you are as a writer and everything to do with whether or not you can keep going back to the page day after day. I know some people who, I believe, are far better storytellers than I am, but I’m the one putting in the work. And so there’s nothing exciting to tell you about except that I’m still going.

Though my husband did make this: