Tag: wildrose

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.

Under a Deadline

Laura Highcove

This week I had a realization that I was glossing over something that Tabitha really should see, and that is the tale that her artifact sword is actually being used for. As a result I have, for the first time, rewritten some scenes that I think work perfectly well, because I needed to put in something that better works for the story. So I spent the past three days struggling how to not lose the important bits from the previous storyline into this new storyline.

It means pushing back the first occurrence of Rose actually telling a tale, and the town of Deerstep, which will be important later. But since everyone thinks Storytellers’ job is to kill mythics, having that be the first thing you really see them do probably works. I managed to keep in the fight, as well as introducing the concept of another Storyteller team, while also providing obvious proof of the tales and the artifact’s role in them.

Now I’m back in a little bit of panic mode. If I’m screwing with so much at the beginning of the story (It’s Chapter 2), I have no idea how I’m going to get everything sorted out in the second half of the book, which is still a good number of loosely connected points and a bunch of ‘hey, you know what would be cool’ ideas. At least it doesn’t seem to be adding too much to the ‘too long’ first half of the story.

I came to realize last night that I am feeling the stress from working under a deadline I don’t know if I can meet for the first time. I know I can work on my story until the cows come home. I love writing, I love working on it, but this is the first time that I am really expecting of myself to get something done. Now I mean I know I won’t have this publishing ready by January, that would be impossible, but even the idea of getting it ready for beta readers is massive.

At the same time, I will have a contract for a book one day, and then I will be expected to produce something. I need to learn how to deal with that stress, be productive, and not drive myself crazy while there’s no legal ramifications tied to it. I’ve never been the most efficient of people. I get things done, but it’s usually rather haphazard. I don’t know any other way to write though, so nothing to do but keep going. Like I said last week in my super short post, I either keep going or give up writing completely. I am going to get this story to readable by January.