Why Writing ISN’T a Waste of Time

By Holly Lisle

Just wrote and posted a fun little article on the economics of writing. Money From Nothing: The Economic Value of Writing Original Fiction — A Foray Even Your Mother Will Appreciate Into Why Writing Isn’t a Waste of Your Time

It provides answers to the family member, significant other, or friend who thinks you’d be better off doing something more valuable with your time than piddling around with that writing. Hope you enjoy.

Contents © Holly Lisle. https://hollylisle.com All Rights Reserved


Day Off to Let the Well Refill

By Holly Lisle

I’m tired. I need to just play around for a day and let my mind chew on things in the background.

Will start the HAWKSPAR stuff tomorrow.

Contents © Holly Lisle. https://hollylisle.com All Rights Reserved


A Little Inspiration

By Holly Lisle

Playing around with character background and cultural stuff for my female protag tonight. The whole focus of the book has shifted. Primary storylines have become secondary, secondary lines have moved to the forefront requiring deeper exploration.

It’s a big hairy hell of a mess, but it would be a lot worse without Inspiration. Excellent piece of software which allows clustering, mind-mapping very flexible outlining, a lot of visual connection-drawing. If you haven’t, the free demo will show you what you’ve been missing.

I hope I’l be able to get some good visuals on what I’ve been missing. Arg.

Contents © Holly Lisle. https://hollylisle.com All Rights Reserved


Hating to Be Right

By Holly Lisle

The SEAFOX problems were real problems, all right. Big ones.

When I started running the story in my head from her point of view, the voice fell into place. The first scene erupted almost whole-cloth, like freakin’ Athena from the head of Zeus. (Opening sentence: "I had a name once.") Bits and pieces that had been scattered over a rough landscape without any more connection than "I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it," suddenly slid together of their own accord.

So. My choices here are two.

One — reoutline the damned thing, salvaging what I can, and rework the first scene into third-person, and write a new first scene.

Two — spend a miserable few months writing the wrong book, and then club myself over the head through a nightmare revision, a probably-rough editorial request for revisions …. In other words, a bumpy road on a bad horse.

Yeah, that sounds like fun.

Oh, right. It isn’t going to be SEAFOX anymore, either.

It’s going to be — probably — HAWKSPAR, after a semiprecious stone native to the Fallen Suns region of Korre, and for reasons too hideously grim to contemplate at the moment.

Contents © Holly Lisle. https://hollylisle.com All Rights Reserved


Yeah. Okay. So I Can’t Resist.

By Holly Lisle

I went out yesterday and bought a copy of Romantic Times Book Club, because I found the reference to the review of MIDNIGHT RAIN on their site. (Of course I was looking. I haven’t been as excited about the release of any book I’ve written since the very first one.)

And the review was better than I could have hoped. You couldn’t pay for a review like this. … Well … You probably could, actually — somewhere — but what the hell would be the fun of that?

And I was going to put the last paragraph up in full on the front page, because it is just too damned cool. Only when I typed it in, I got a case of the giggles, and realized that if I put that quote on the front page of my own site, I wasn’t going to be able to look at myself in the mirror come morning.

But I can’t not put it anywhere. Tried. Can’t.

So here it is, where it’ll scroll off the page in a day or two and I can assuage my conscience, which is even now telling me that I should be ashamed of myself for posting this.

I probably should be, in fact.

But I’m going to anyway.


Lisle explodes onto the suspense scene with a book so chilling and a voice so original that she’s sure to become a major player. Creepy and thrilling, this book is truly unforgettable.


See what I mean? It’s a great review, and thank you, thank you, Jill M. Smith.

But now I’m going to have to go do penance for being so full of myself that I reprinted it.

Contents © Holly Lisle. https://hollylisle.com All Rights Reserved


No. No.

By Holly Lisle

This is a serious issue. Serious enough that I’m going to print out the 112-scene outline and rethink the whole POV issue.

I’m not going to write 110,000 words into this thing only to discover I did it all wrong. Measure twice. Cut once.

Off to print, and think, and worry.

Contents © Holly Lisle. https://hollylisle.com All Rights Reserved


And Back to SEAFOX, and The Agony of Indecision

By Holly Lisle

Starting into the first third-person POV scene this morning.

I am struggling with POV issues, actually. My male protagonist is outlined to be my first-person POV. My female protagonist is outlined to be my third-person POV. (This is the opposite of TALYN. I want to maintain a similar structure for the books because it worked so very well for telling the story I want to tell).

Solid reasons for having Riknir as first-person POV. He’s Talyn’s brother, he’s Tonk, he continues a direct connection with the world of TALYN. The female protag starts out way the hell on the other side of the world, in circumstances that are already horrific before they get worse, and I don’t want to do that in first person. There are a couple of scenes I REALLY don’t want to do in first person.

But ….

Can I carry off a male voice in first person through 1100 pages of manuscript?

Can I carry off a romantic fantasy with a male first-person lead and a female third-person lead, and not trend away from the romance elements, or turn Rik into a woman with a penis?

There is the part of me that’s screaming, "Bail, bail! Redo the outline and write the thing female first POV, male third POV! Save yourself before it’s too late!"

And I still don’t have a name for my female protagonist. Long, long story there.

And I have the worst damned headache all of a sudden.

Contents © Holly Lisle. https://hollylisle.com All Rights Reserved


Done on the Proposal for the Day

By Holly Lisle

Have spent the last hours dinking and tweaking the proposal, and somehow managed to rearrange damned near every word. What I have now is better. I’ll let it sit through tonight and maybe tomorrow, and have a look at it on Monday to see if it survives cooling.

If it does I’ll send it back to Robin then.

Contents © Holly Lisle. https://hollylisle.com All Rights Reserved


Starting Late

By Holly Lisle

Once more over the proposal to see if anything brilliant occurs to me.

There’s always hope.

Contents © Holly Lisle. https://hollylisle.com All Rights Reserved


Writing on a Potholed Road

By Holly Lisle

5808 words when I gave up. It’s starting rough. It’ll smooth out soon, but right at the moment, the sentences are jarring my teeth.

Thank God for revision.

Contents © Holly Lisle. https://hollylisle.com All Rights Reserved