Category: journal

Week 4 of April

Laura Highcove

Every once and a while, life happens. Well okay, you’re right, life is always happening, but now and again it really happens and you get swept up in just going because that’s all you have the time or energy for. That is the general explanation for the reason that I haven’t got much of anything done in the past month.

In a bit more detail: I had serious trouble with motivation on the Huntsman. Copper continued to lose weight. My new antidepressant suddenly made it so I could only get four hours of sleep at night and I had to deal with not sleeping and getting the medication changed. And I had a horse show and the practice and preparation for that.

As such, all of my writing goals fell by the wayside. I basically got next to nothing done. Luckily, despite the sleeping problems, the antidepressant was working and I didn’t fall into depression during this time. I simply decided I had to keep doing what needed to be done. (I did still get out my Newsletter, I was very proud.) And now that I’m on the other side of the horse show, and Copper has gained weight, and my sleep schedule is mostly under control, I was able to finally hit the reset button.

Because that’s the way I get back into the swing of my life when it’s gone off kilter, hitting the reset button. I basically had to let go of any lingering regrets about my lack of productivity (not easy) and just make a whole new plan. I joined up in Camp Nanowrimo for the encouragement of fellow writers that helped me push through finishing the draft of the Huntsman. I started working on a completely different story, to give myself a break from my Storyteller series. I wrote about six versions of this post that I was completely unhappy with before reaching the current version. I got my laundry done. (big deal after a horse show) And my hubby and I signed a design contract as the first step for finally getting our basement finished.

I went back and looked at the quotes that I put as the featured images for my writing journal posts, and I’ve noticed that a vast majority of them talk about doing things a bit or a step at a time, and just keeping that up as consistently as possible. I don’t choose those quotes at random, I look for something that speaks to me in the moment, so that’s just something at the heart of my outlook on life. And I think I’m okay with that.

My lack of achieving my goal does mean that I don’t get to play Kingdom Hearts 3 for a bit longer than I was expecting. My new goal is to reach my Camp Nanowrimo goal and see how far that gets me in my new story, and to get my April Newsletter out. Nothing huge, but for now, it’s enough.

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.

February Goals

Laura Highcove

Now that I’m into February and my first newsletter with a Chapter 1 has gone out, it’s time to shift focus to the next thing on my list. My current wips, the Huntsman and the Wizard. At the end of last year I vaguely told myself I was going to give myself until the end of this year to finish my rough draft. Now I’ve actually sat down to work out how long it will take me and it came out for 17 weeks, or four months exactly.

And, if I make my goal, I’mma buy Kingdom Hearts 3.

Measurable goals:

Make the Huntsman readable: There are a number of scenes that still need to be written. Bits of foreshadowing. And the ending needs to be solid. Basically I want it to readable straight through, even if it’s not polished.

Feb 4 – 1 week to solidify the ending.
Feb 11 – 1 week to fill in any big holes in events/foreshadowing with scenes.
Feb 18 – 1 week to smooth the whole thing.

Rough draft of the Wizard: I have only a basic idea of what this story is going to do, despite having 44k words written already. I want a beginning, a middle, and especially the end, so I know where this whole thing is going.

Feb 25 – 1 week to smooth what I already have.
Mar 4&11 – 2 weeks of 1.6k words a day (23.3k)
Mar 18 – 1 week of smoothing
Mar 25&Apr 1 – 2 weeks of 1.6k words a day (23.3k)
Apr 8 – 1 week of smoothing (Horse Show)
Apr 15&22 – 2 weeks of 1.6k words a day (23.3k)
Apr 29&May 6 – 2 week smoothing (Vacation here)
May 13&20 – 2 weeks writing important scenes
May 27 – 1 week final pass

New Year’s Projects

Laura Highcove

We’re into the new year and I’ve been using my new spreadsheet to keep track of my hours and so far! …well it isn’t much different, truthfully. The changes I implemented are more important for summarizing and ease of looking back, for now I’m working on a few new projects into the new year.

I did a pass through of the Huntsman and sorted through everything I’d written. When I finished writing the rough draft the ending was sort of all over the place in terms of order and all stuffed into the same folder. I have since pulled those pieces apart and reassembled them into chapters.

After I got that done, I sat down to determine what my biggest problem is right now. And I’m pretty sure it’s ‘what the heck is Rose doing!?’. I know what I want him to do, but the path there is a hodgepodge, so I did notecards of scenes to figure out what I did have, what I needed, and then I went back and started smoothing. I haven’t hit the “messy” place yet, but I’m trying to tighten his focus a bit. Not sure if I’m being successful yet, but as I try to remind myself I don’t have to fix everything in one pass, just made it a bit better each pass.

I also have a new announcement for my newsletter which disappeared in August of last year. I am going to be restarting that with a new focus. I’m still going to use it as a place to talk about the lessons I’ve learned from life’s difficulties, but I am also going to be posting the “Chapter 1” of stories I have written, a new one each month. I’ll also be including a quick (like only 1 question) questionnaire at the end of each chapter for feedback. I want to use this feedback as a way to gauge interest in my projects and use it to determine what my next project may be.

For the newsletter going out at the end of January, I am going to be sending out the first chapter of Angelic Links: The world is run by computer code and only heaven has admin access. If you’re already signed up for my newsletter, then you don’t need to do anything to get this chapter. If you’re not yet signed up, you can do so here, and you’ll receive my newsletter at the end of the month that will include the first chapter of Angelic Links.

As for my goals, I am hoping to get through to Chapter 15 in the next two weeks with a lot more focus in Wildrose’s motivation. If I can get through Chapter 18 without any major problems, that will be a huge success.

Headed for the New Year

Laura Highcove

Most of what I’ve been doing in the past two weeks is smoothing of the Huntsman in order to put into place what I can and see where the holes still are. The first 14 chapters went by very quickly, only needing some minor notes and fixes. At chapter 15 my progress slowed down considerably because, as I told my alpha readers, ‘that’s where things get messy’.

There is far more smoothing and straight up new prose that needs to be done in order to push forward. The other day I literally did nothing other than write out my thoughts on where the story should be going in order to try and figure out where the story was going. It was a bit painful, but it gave me enough to move forward.

I found that keeping track of word count is too difficult because of the way I switch from writing to smoothing and back. It’s disruptive to pay attention to the shift, and it’s not a clear enough divide to get any meaningful data from it. It would’ve been a different story if I’d done it during Nano, but alas.

I also created a timeline to keep track of the different plot threads during the Huntsman. Doing so helps to organize the shape of the story which allowed me to find a hole. It also encouraged me to write out the timeline of the Law of the Prince Charming, so I know how much time the book took. It is 30 days.

My goal is to push through the Huntsman. Wildrose is giving me the most trouble. I’m trying to give him some direction, but mostly I just need the most basics of what is going on. I’d love to try get through the rest of the novel this week before I go away for Christmas. However, I’m not sure how realistic that is. I might need to take off the writer gloves and just do nothing but reorganize what I have and write down what I don’t.

I’m also planning on overhauling my newsletter some. It sort of got …ignored for a while, and part of that is that I think something needs to change. Expect some news on that by the end of January.

And After NaNoWriMo

Laura Highcove

So a few days out from Nano now. It’s time to sit down and analyze how Nano went for me this year and the lessons I can take away from it.

Starting NaNo
I had little to no anticipation about NaNo itself. I’ve been doing NaNo consistently since 2008 and getting words down has never been a problem of mine. I knew I would be able to produce the needed words. My worry was more that I wouldn’t write anything of substance, or that nothing would work with the story. I went in with my goal of 2k words every day but Fridays.

Ending NaNo
By the end of NaNo I could feel my pace slowing along with the ideas for new scenes to write. I was able to tell I was about a week into needing to revise. It’s something I recognize about my process, the need to go back to the beginning of my story and smooth before I can push forward again. I actually tried for a few days to do this while keeping track of the new words I wrote toward my daily goal. Unfortunately this is more difficult than writing straight up, and by that point I was into the black hole surrounding Thanksgiving. So I shifted back to just getting my 2k words a day through brute force. I finished three days early then stopped writing. I’m pretty sure I was just on the very edges of burnout.

Post NaNo
I gave myself several days off. I was planning a few weeks to work on a different project, but Monday morning, ideas were literally shoving their way out of my head. I had to pull over on the way to work to write one down. I poured out two new scenes (1.2k words) in 42 minutes this afternoon.

When I look back at the numbers on my excel spreadsheet, I noticed I had never spent more than two hours a day getting the needed 2k words. Usually it was closer to 1.5h. 7.5-8.5 hours a week in order to churn out 12k+ words. Not too shabby. And there were good ideas in there as well, even if the prose isn’t all worthwhile. The week of Thanksgiving and the week after were a bit of a wash in terms of total hours spent on writing stuff. I got my Nano words, but I did little else. I’m a bit disappointed in that.

From Here
Part of my path forward will be giving myself more than the one goal. It’s possible my lack of output was simply due to my whole focus being getting Nano done, so I didn’t really put effort into working on anything else.

I also have a few more things I want to play around with: How many words can I write easily in one day, knowing I need breaks in between writing sessions? What do I need to do in order to recharge my ability to write during a single day? (ie, what refills my creative well) I also want to figure out if there is some way to tell how long I can write new prose before I feel the need to smooth, or if it’s just a feel thing.

Goals for the Week
Writing 30 mins/day assuming I have a scene idea I want to write (which so far I have).
Revising and eventually Smoothing the Huntsman for an hour/day.
Keep track of my actual words/hour because numbers!

Finishing the Race

Laura Highcove

So I just finished NaNoWriMo on Tuesday. With where I am in my writing life, finishing NaNo is really sort of a given, at the same time it is great to look back over the month and be proud of all the words and ideas that have poured out over the month. Of course I also have a lot of questions about what the heck this story is still going to do, or how it’s going to fit together. Still, forward is forward.

Still anticipatory about ending this trilogy. But that’s to be expected right?

I think I’m going to take a few weeks and organize in general, my life and my writing. I’m still feeling off since Nickel died, and I figure that’s normal since my normal has shifted. Plus we just got a new kitten, so that’s another shift. Lots of traveling for the holidays (past and future), the house is a bit of a disaster, there are presents to buy for Christmas, and normal demands of the season (fricking cold).

So no pressure on myself for a while. Plans in the future involve smoothing the Huntsman and then what I have written for the Wizard. Hopefully that will give me more insight and ideas. I’ll make a more solid plan sometime soon. Goal from where I’m sitting now …I’d like to have beta readers for Huntsman in …six months? That will be pushing it a bit with how rough some of the rough draft is, but we’ll see. It also depends on how the Wizard develops (or doesn’t) in that time.

But one thing I am oh-so super excited about is that I have been keeping track, well as best I can, of the amount of time I spend on my writer job in an excel spreadsheet. It started out because I was curious how much time I was spending, and then continued on as a way for me to motivate myself when I was slacking, and give myself a rest when I had worked enough. I started in January of this year, which only *feels* like a million years ago. As such, I am coming up on a year’s worth of data to look at. It’s so beautiful and organized. /dreamy eyes

Full Speed into NaNoWriMo

Laura Highcove

Well I’m what, two weeks into NaNoWriMo for this year? It’s going well. I am actually rather surprised at how easy getting 2k words a day (with Fridays off) actually is. It’s taking me, on average, less than an hour and a half to write 2k words. However part of this is that I am writing the words in two or three chunks of no more than 45 minutes. Once I get around there, I start to get antsy and very easily distracted. Not a lot of information about how much time I need between sessions since right now I write before work and then again after lunch, so there’s a pretty big break, and between those two sessions I generally have my 2k words.

Today I pushed for 2.5k since I did a surprising amount of writing at work. I just kept having ideas that I needed to write down, so I pushed for a little more. It does mean, that it’s possible I’ll be able to crank out more words if I learn what I need to do to refill my self for more words. And the fact that my ability to write new story prose takes a sharp nosedive in the evenings.

I might try 2.5k words for a few days and see how it feels. But I had some major breakthroughs with the overall story today at work, thus why I had to write it all down. Can’t really be very specific, which is one sad thing about not having any of these books published. If you were all fans and had read the previous books I would hand out hints and tidbits. But alas. Most anything would be a spoiler.

I have come to the conclusion, however, that I need to cut off my desire to draw out mysteries through the book. The Wizard needs to hit the ground running if I’m going to have any time to actually address the mysteries that need to be addressed. I’m pretty sure I know what the book’s halfway point is now and it’s far earlier than I was thinking it would be. Knock on wood, but I am not stalling out on this book the way I was expecting. Every time I think I have, I get another new idea. The book is, however, coming out very weird. Lots of scenes that are going to need to be stitched together later, there’s almost no flow right now. But I’m not letting myself worry about that, for now I’m just getting the ideas out and letting myself shift what I need to shift to keep going forward. I’m getting so excited about where I’m seeing this book going.

NaNoWriMo 2018: The Wizard

Laura Highcove

I’m finally able to say that I have a complete rough draft for The Huntsman. Turns out I lied to everyone on Facebook though. I apparently started on the Huntsman (according to my blog) for NaNoWriMo of 2016, meaning it’s only been two years, and not three. Sorry for the confusion, but I’m far happier to realize that it only *felt* like it took a million years to write this book.

I struggled a lot with this book, as most people do with sequels, but knowing other people have suffered like you have only helps but so much when you’re in the depths of your own suffering. However, in September of last year, when I was feeling particularly panicked, I decided to write a note to myself that I wouldn’t look at again until I had finished this book. It is as follows:

Sept 27, 2017: I am so beyond stuck with this story that I don’t even understand how any of it is going to work. There’s so much that needs to go on, none of it is flowing. None of it works. I am sitting here terrified, going to through the story trying to find something that will work to make this story make sense.

So when I do make this story work, I am going to look back at this moment and remind myself that I can make anything work. It might not look pretty between here and there. I might have to change or completely rewrite a bunch of stuff, but there is a way that this story works and makes sense, and I just have to get out there and find it without worrying about what it looks like now or how long it might take. If I can make this story work, then I can make any story work.

I’m so proud of me for making it through. All it took was stubborn refusal to give up on my story. Well and support, breaks, some wins, and a whole lot of words. But mostly not giving up. 🙂

And now, on the 31st of October, NaNoWriMo looms. I am immediately launching myself into The Wizard, which is book three of this trilogy. I figure there’s little point spending time polishing book two before I finish book three. Mostly I want to see if I can create something resembling a satisfying ending on a book three. Plus, there’s a high likelihood of something needing to change in book two anyway. I changed quite a few things in book one while writing book two, and that one I had polished.

I’m a little anticipatory (Huh, spelled that word right on the first try.) about NaNoWriMo this year, but I think it’s mostly surrounding starting on the third book of my trilogy. If a book two was uncharted waters, then book three is so far off the map I can’t even begin to wonder what it will be like. But then being a discovery writer, to me, is all about having faith in your ability to eventually figure out wtf is going on. Writing, keys flying over the keyboard, and suddenly your characters are doing something you didn’t expect, the plot is going out into left field, and that moment when suddenly it all works and makes sense? Oh man, it is pretty great.

I’m sticking with the standard 50k words for my NaNo goal. I know I won’t be able to get much past that without going through and smoothing a few times anyway, so trying to push for more words will just burn me out like it did two years ago. (Yay, learning from my mistakes.) So 2000 words per day (Fridays off). No big, it’s just NaNoWriMo. If you’d like to follow my progress: This is me.

Feeling Productive

Laura Highcove

From the past several posts, you can probably see that things have been rough for a while. Yep, it was. And I kept going because, well there wasn’t any other option in my opinion. I can only hide under the desk for so long before writing calls me back.

And these past two weeks I’ve really been tearing it up, writing-wise. Part of its is inspiration from the Wxr cruise. Another part is I am rewriting the Law of the Prince Charming to change the tense because I realized it worked better. And part is giving myself the goal of having an actual rough draft of the Huntsman finished before NaNo so I can start in on the Wizard. But I’ve put in more total hours this past week than I have in any previous week this year, and I still didn’t record a lot of the reading I was did. (Reading is still hard for me to chalk up toward career time, even if I am paying attention as a writer too.)

So I’m feeling very productive, and that is a nice place to be in. The plan is to carry the momentum forward. I have a list of the scenes I still need to write for the Huntsman, and I’m hoping to get those done in time to do a smoothing pass before November. I am trying to kick up the speed at which I am rewriting the Law of the Prince Charming. I seem to be at about 2 chapters a week, but even in just changing the tense of the words I already have written, it’s taking far longer than I expected. I also have an idea for another story that is literally trying to chew its way out of my head. Not sure if this is just a result of my anxiousness about trying to get the Huntsman done, or if the idea really warrants some attention. Either way, I’ll be doing a lot of writing for a while.

Quick pitch: “Dragons ride the elemental storms and Ryo was trained to fight both.” Yeah, I wrote it just now. It’ll be better when I spend time on it.