Category: Mind/Body

  • Civilization Versus The Full-Body For-Keepsies Panty Raid… and The Survival Value of ADD

    Civilization Versus The Full-Body For-Keepsies Panty Raid… and The Survival Value of ADD

    When I was a kid and my family lived on the western tundra of Alaska, my dad took me hunting and fishing with him. We were bringing in food for the table in a place where agriculture was impossible. I loved tagging along and helping out. I was nine, so for hunting I was just…

  • So today I start the type-in of the Ohio 2 Revision

    So today I start the type-in of the Ohio 2 Revision

    I was up at six, (when you’re fasting, it’s weirdly easy to roll out of bed at the crack of dawn and be through the shower, done with the first cup of coffee, before seven AM… and at my desk and finished with necessary work emails and the one help desk ticket only I could do…

  • Character Paranoia, and the State of Revision

    Character Paranoia, and the State of Revision

    I’m past the halfway mark on the read-through-note-taking process on Ohio 2. I have a lot of the first draft that I’ll be able to use as is. That’s good. I have written novels where I discovered the first draft was The Story I Don’t Want To Tell (and could still run into that in…

  • Revelation Struck!!!

    Revelation Struck!!!

    You grind. You dig. You read with increasing despair through a manuscript that seemed while you were writing it like a thing of wonder. You wonder how you could have gone so far off the mark. And you think, “How did I think this was going to work?” and consider the possibility that you’re going…

  • Came up short… but landed well

    Came up short… but landed well

    Today’s scene was fun. I like what I got, I like the twist, I like the humor. I am, however, not feeling well, and at the point were I realized I’ve been circling the drain on the scene without coming up with a “what next”, or anything else that would let me hit today’s planned…

  • “Something wicked…” might be me!

    “Something wicked…” might be me!

    Mondays can be hard starts. You’re back into work after taking the weekend off, you’re a bit cold on the book because you spent the previous week re-launching your writing classes and your mind has been elsewhere… And the first hour, I did some gear-grinding and backing and filling trying to get back into the…

  • 300 words on Ohio Five… and the discovery of how something clever got done

    300 words on Ohio Five… and the discovery of how something clever got done

    Nice interplay today between my main character and someone important to her, as she discovers more about what her grandmother had been up to. 300 words exactly. I’m happy with that. The HWC site move/upgrade is now right on top of us, and we could get the “go” at any time. So the fact that…

  • 6:47 AM – Finishing Ohio 4, starting Ohio 5, while building the new HollysWritingClasses.com site

    6:47 AM – Finishing Ohio 4, starting Ohio 5, while building the new HollysWritingClasses.com site

    SO… My website over on HollysWritingClasses.com is undergoing a massive overhaul (complete site rebuild). And I anticipated the process taking FOUR months. Turns out… it’s probably not anything like that. My amazing community moderators over there have already finished building all the classrooms in the new software, and getting all the class materials into them…

  • “No plan survives first contact with the enemy…”

    “No plan survives first contact with the enemy…”

    Or second contact…  Or third… The quote may  come from Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, or Carl von Clausewitz, or Dwight D. Eisenhower… or just some dude who knew shit. But it’s true — and it isn’t just true about war. It’s true about any sort of creation that requires spontaneous adaptation to unknowable but…

  • When a house is not a home (and a READERS-ONLY request)… 1266 words, and 9439 total

    When a house is not a home (and a READERS-ONLY request)… 1266 words, and 9439 total

    I thought I knew what was going to happen today… and what happened did fit exactly inside my objectives for the scene, while at the same time turning everything I’d planned inside out and upside down on me and surprising me completely. And the cool twist of the day operated on the following writing principle:…