Tag: the aesir-vanir war

April, the Most Productive of Months

Laura Highcove

At the beginning of last week I got a new shipment of books. Reading and I have a strange relationship. I love reading, but not only do I have a hard time attributing something so fun to something I need to do for my writing career (and thus make time for it), but when I read a book, I am generally obsessed with finishing it to the detriment of all else.

As such, I have actually avoided reading in the past, because it ‘distracts’ me from writing. Now that is silly, because in order to become a better writer, I need to read. I managed to convince myself of that enough that I read four of the five books already. (I have reviews written that will go up in the next few weeks.) However, this did cut into my writing time so while I progressed with the Huntsman, it was less than I usually do.

That brings me to my next topic. During April (Which started yesterday for you reading this, but I am writing this on March 31.), I am taking part in Camp NaNoWriMo for the first time. I was a rather religious participate of NaNoWriMo (the original) until this past year when I was in the middle of a writing project I couldn’t put off. As such I didn’t get my NaNoWriMo fix for the year and since a friend set up a cabin, I thought it might be fun to give this a try.

Unlike NaNoWriMo, Camp NaNoWriMo allows you to set your own goal and then attempt to accomplish it during the month of April. (And it can be counted in word, hours, minutes, lines, or pages.) Now I’ve been playing around with the ‘rules’ of NaNoWriMo for years. And while I always hit what I consider the ‘main’ rule (the words I authenticate are written in the month of November), the idea of giving myself my own goals is not outside of my comfort zone.

Two years ago when I had just started the Huntsman, and I gave myself the lofty goal of 90k words for NaNoWriMo. My expectation was to burn through the rough draft like I had The Law of the Prince Charming two years before that. I failed.

But of course that didn’t mean I gave up. It just took me two years to come to grips with the fact that this book won’t be as quick and easy as the first one, and that there’s nothing wrong with that. At the same time, I want to push forward this dreaded ‘muddle in the middle’ that I always have trouble with.

So I’m going to use Camp NaNoWriMo to help with that. I’ve been wibbling back and forth about what kind of goal to give myself. I’m not sure I can realistically expect to make 50k words since my weekends are spoken for all month. So I’m going to go with 20k words which is less than 700 words a day, and hopefully a number I can keep up since there will be days where I simply can’t write.

I spent part of this morning writing out a list of scenes I need to write, so hopefully I’ll just be able to bang those out. Either way, I’ll have more words written by the end of the month than I have now.

I am also participating in #WIPjoy again. Those posts will be going up on my Facebook and Twitter feeds starting today, so you’ll get some more tidbits about the Huntsman if you’re so inclined.

And this month brings the last four parts of The Aesir-Vanir War short story that has been going since the beginning of March.

It’s going to be a productive month whether I like it or not.

Getting through February

Laura Highcove

I have 15k words on Blessings of the Nerial, though some of that was in trying to figure out which pov I was going to end up using on the story. Most of it was useful prose though. I like the idea of this story, but the world-building is giving me trouble. I believe I’m thinking about it too much at too early a stage though. I’m going to try and just push through for the rest of the week, and do whatever and tighten it up later. Either way, I got my goal.

My goals of writing four descriptions and doing some deep reading fell a bit more flat. I did post one description. (From the world of Blessings of the Nerial.) and I did some deep reading on the first chapter of Six of Crows by Leah Bardugo because I love how she introduces her two main characters in that book. No excuse, I just let them fall by the way-side.

I also worked on getting my short story, The Aesir-Vanir War promoted and out there. If you’re a member of my newsletter, you should already have part one in your inbox. If not, you can sign up to start getting it any time. I’m excited to get something new out into the universe, and something complete at that. Makes me wish I was a little better at writing short pieces.

By the end of this week I am planning on having The Huntsman back from its alpha read, at which point I’ll probably be diving head-first back into that. I’ve been a little encouraged by articles I’ve read that talk about how hard the second book in a series is to write, in general. Though most of them talk about doing it once you find an agent/have sold the first one and so then you’re under pressure. None of that for me yet, but I love this story and want to complete the trilogy. For now I’ll just be happy that I don’t yet have any kind of deadline besides those imposed on myself. I’m hoping that completing this series will just be a wonderful learning experience.

Anyway, I’ll be reading over the comments I get back, and likely doing some discussions with my hubby. What he says will have a large impact on what my next step with the story is, so I can’t really make a plan for that yet. It will be interesting for me to see, however, if my focus and feeling of purpose come back when I’m back to having that *one* story to work on. I’ve been feeling a little ‘all over the place’ since I stopped working on the Huntsman. Though it’s possible it’s also because it was February, which is just not a pleasant month in general. Yay for March!