Tag: tabitha

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.

Letting my Characters Go

Laura Highcove

I did a few smoothing passes on the Huntsman, each focusing on one of the main trio: Gabir, Tabitha, then Wildrose. I was able to push what I had written a little further with each pass.

Wildrose’s storyline is the one that needs the most work right now. I know where I need/want him to be at the end of this book, but he still has a large number of steps to get there. This is after I admitted to myself that the way I *wanted* him to get from here to there wasn’t going to work. I think the past two weeks I’ve repeated: “No, it doesn’t fit with my plan, but it’s what the character would do.” sooooooo many times.

Whenever I get stuck, like sit and stare at my computer screen for ten minutes without typing, stuck, it’s generally because I’m trying to force a character to do what I ‘need’ them to. (And I don’t always realize this right away.) When I release that expectation, they go off on their merry way, and while I have no idea if it will tie back into what I already have, it is much more natural and enjoyable.

I also made a list of the scenes that still need to be written. Not nearly as long as it was last time I did it which is encouraging. I wrote out two or three of those scenes and revised a few that I had previously written but needed to be updated. I had a few new things pop out that very possibly could lead somewhere nice in the way of tying things together. Still worried that I have too much going on, but I figure I’ll never figure out what’s the most important if I don’t write everything first.

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.)

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:

Work while on Vacation

Laura Highcove

So I was able to smooth out a lot of The Huntsman in the week of May 3rd. Had to rejigger some things, but that’s just part of the process. I’m actually fairly happy with how things are turning out.

Had a little more trouble working on Tabitha’s character arc, as I spent the latter part of last week depressed and decided I needed to take care of myself rather than try and power through it. I was still able to create an outline of what I want Tabitha’s scenes to be, so now I simply need to write them, and I have to get that done before Emelia can step into place.

But I am on vacation this week so I’m only spending a bit of my morning actually working. This is a short update for that very reason, and though I’m behind, I’m not yet worried about not finishing on time. It’s a rough draft, so the important thing is just getting it all out.

Character Creation

Laura Highcove

I don’t really plan my characters. I may have a vague idea that I need a character in a certain place and they might be kinda like this. But I never know my characters until I write them. I consciously put more of myself in Tabitha than any other character I’ve written in the past. And even that didn’t happen until I had written a lot of her already. In fact I remember the specific place where Tabitha shoved her personality in my face.

It was a similar situation with Wildrose, in that he ended up being a lot like my husband unintentionally, and later I put more pieces of my husband in there. At the same time he is himself.

And some characters come more easily than others. The Huntsman was the most difficult character for me in this novel. I literally did not pin him down until several drafts in. He was going to be the huge gruff guy, then the comedic relief, and who knows what else. He flopped all over the place until he finally settled where he is.

In general, I don’t think I ever look at a character or a person and set out to write any of my characters based on them. It just drifts that way as I go, but then I am a discovery writer. I am convinced that those characters just exist in my brain and I write until I pull enough of them out.

Awesome Writing Moments

Laura Highcove

I am a discovery writer. When I was young I would sit down with nothing but a vague idea and the world and characters would pop out as I wrote. Now that I’m older, and have more skill, I tend to have some of the story itself planned out, maybe vague ideas for the world and characters before I start, but for the most part I can’t plan too much or I flounder.

And I love being a discovery writer because of how those ideas seem to come from nowhere. I get ideas for stories from all over the place, but when I am in the process of writing, I just write my characters doing things or stuff about the world and that random stuff turns out to be super important later in the story. It basically feels like magic, like my brain is working on a higher level and puts things together without me realizing it. Moments like these are always awesome writing moments.

For example: I had Tabitha like apples. I’m pretty sure it started out that way because her kingdom is always in autumn, and apples are a fall crop. Later I realized the apples were part of a very important plot point.

It is this ability for my mind to make these connections that gives me a lot of comfort when I’m writing and feel like I have no idea where I’m going. I’ve learned to trust myself. One of my mantras is: “There is a way all of this will make sense, I just have to find it.”

Commission of Tabitha

Laura Highcove

This is a picture I had commissioned of Tabitha from my novel, The Storyteller. I love it tons. Not really much else to say about it. A picture is worth a thousand words after all.

Tabitha © Laura Highcove

If you want more information on Tabitha,
you can click here to get the first chapter of her story.

If you want more information on the artist, you can find it here.

Working on Random Bits

Laura Highcove

A very disjointed week in terms of what I got done.

I put in the artifacts in the places I wanted to put them. So that one is done.

I sat down and actually thought about the syntax for using remnants and tried to write out a few things, but I had problems just with some of it. It works to say “Tabitha used the hellhound’s law of fire.” But it’s a little more awkward when it’s “Tabitha used the stone ram’s law of charge.” It feels like it should be ‘charging’, but then that’s a verb rather than the noun. Anyway, I’m still working on it.

I thought about the syntax for the Storybook and had good reasons to have the command be both: ‘Identification’ and ‘Authorization’. Blech.

I now have a list of all of the important characters in the story. i.e. People who get their roles capitalized! I mostly made the list to figure out if I’m balancing the number of male vs female characters until I realized out in the world of this story, there wouldn’t be an equality. Still good info to have though. Also made me think about who is important enough to have a true name, and who needs to have a color.

This week I’ll make a list of the remnants Tabitha uses and how. And the things that people use the Storybook for. That way I can compare what I already have and then stylize them while they’re all next to each other.

Taking Stock

Laura Highcove

So this week I spent going through the story and taking stock of the progression of all of my main characters and their relationships toward each other while ignoring everything else. It actually gave me some good insights into Tabitha and Wildrose’s relationship toward the end of the book.

And it didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it would. Is everything perfect? Nope, but it is good enough for now. Then I decided to go through and look at all the comments I have and pull out the things that really need to be fixed. And I found myself able to pass over some things that weren’t all that important, that last week I would’ve stressed out over. The list that I have isn’t even that bad. I am feeling confidant about my ability to get this story out to beta readers before too long.

Tomorrow I plan on giving it a quick read through to find any problems I might not have marked with comments. Shouldn’t take too long as I know which scenes are lovely and beautiful and which are not. And that one pesky scene I am convinced I need but have still not been able to write. I’m going to have to nail that down this week for sure.

Also, in case you didn’t notice, I have a sign up for my new Newsletter over on the right hand side. If you sign up then you can get the current version of Chapter One of The Storyteller. Please sign up and let me know what you think.