DTD—286 words, and digging into the mystery

By Holly Lisle

My heroine, convinced that her apparent allies are in fact allied with her enemies, questions her captor.

Fun session tonight. Got to explore one of my important secondary characters on my way to the bigger surprise I have planned between hero and heroine.

If you’re playing the “write a book with me” game, post your own progress for the day in response to this post. And have fun. šŸ˜€

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


DTD—Night off with the AFK

By Holly Lisle

I took last night off. No words. The Air Force Kid is home on leave before going back to the desert for another 6 months, and we sat up and talked and played video games and just hung out together until about 3:30 AM.

If you’re playing “Write a book with me,” here are a few options for the occasional scheduled nights when I don’t write:

  • Write whatever you’ve chosen as your minimum word count.
  • Use the night for planning upcoming scenes (write out index cards, look over what you’ve already written and take note of where you left various characters you don’t want to forget, or whatever you do to plan what comes next)
  • Research some topic you’re going to need in your book, and take notes for JUST the scene where you’ll need it.
  • Go to a movie, read a book, or study something else creative that folks have done, and ask yourself “How well did the creator do this, and why do I think that?”
  • Take the night off, too.

Today is the AFK’s last night at home, but since he has to drive tomorrow, I’m guessing it’ll be an early night…and if it is, I’ll write. If not, I’ll post tomorrow so you’ll have a place to check in with what you did.

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


“Write A Book With Me” is a go.

By Holly Lisle

Look at the line of tabs right above the blog title (Pocket Full of Words). You’ll see a new tab there for Write A Book With Me. The tab includes the short list of game rules (mostly non-rules, frankly), the playing levels with explanations, and ways to keep track of what’s going on.

You don’t have to write at a particular time of day. You don’t have to get your words in one sitting. You don’t HAVE to do anything. Again, the point of this is for folks wanting to write who have been unnerved by my usual write-or-starve method of getting books done to discover that there is another way, and it too produces full-sized books regularly.

Small word counts consistently.

That’s it. You don’t have to post your progress. You can play and lurk. But feel free at any time to jump up and down and yell, “Yes! I have more words done than I ever thought I’d get.” It’ll happen.

On my end, I’ll include the Write A Book With Me category in my nightly wordcount-and-update posts, and you can use that wordcount for your next day’s writing, for the same day’s writing, or just as a reminder that you intend to write that day.

FINAL NOTE: This is intended to be fun. If it isn’t fun, don’t do it. There are a million ways to make a living on this planet and a million more to entertain yourself or someone else that will not include you being miserable, so if you discover that writing makes you miserable, stop. Life is too short to embrace misery out of some misplaced sense of obligation or duty.

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


Want to write a book with me?

By Holly Lisle

Got 506 words of Dreaming the Dead tonight, and put my MC in a situation where she’s not sure if she’s been captured by friendlies or enemies.

And I realized what I’m doing right now creates a perfect opportunity for folks who want to write a novel but who need a bit of a boost to get it done.

I’m doing between 250 and 500 words per night, Monday through Friday.

If you want to pace me and write a book of your own, I’ll set this up a couple different ways.

BEGINNER: You can do the minimum words every night I write. At 250 words per night, you’ll finish a 100K novel (normal length) before or at the same time I finish my novel.

INTERMEDIATE: You can pace me—get my word count from the blog every day and match that, take days off on the days that for one reason or another I can’t work. You’ll finish a 100K novel way before me.

ADVANCED: You can pick your own wordcount, and just sign in as often as you like to report your progress.

This is a low-pressure gig: The idea is just for you to get the feel of writing a book by doing small amounts consistently. I’ll finish novel, so I’m a good pace rabbit, and for this book, I’m not working at the insane high-pressure speeds that make people think “I could never do that.”

You can do this. So. Want to? If you do, just post a reply to this message, and I’ll set up a thread that you can, if you wish, subscribe to so you’ll get your next day’s word count as soon as I finish my writing every night.

Let me know.

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


DTD: 333 more words take me over 20K

By Holly Lisle

Good words last night, along with surprising action as my MC remembers something horrible that shaped her life, and decides to fight for survival.

I’m stunned to realized that working at this ambling, casual pace, I’m already over 20,000 words, and that if I were planning a normal-length book, I’d already be 20% done.

This is something I’ve forgotten over the years, and am delighted to remember. If you aren’t just teeth-grittingly desperate to get paid again, you can write even small amounts, and so long as you do it regularly, you’ll rack up an impressive word count in very little time.

What I’m doing now is amateur writing (amateur in the Latin root-word sense, amator, which means lover). I’m writing out of simple love of doing it.

This is the way anyone who loves to write can write a book. Last night I ended up working on website fixes, so only had about half an hour to actually write before I fell over in an incoherent blob right around midnight. There have been a couple of nights when I got my words in fifteen or twenty minutes, decided I liked my stopping place, and quit for the night.

Writing does not have to be an all-consuming labor of ten- to sixteen-hour days—something that’s beginning to edge its way back into my weary brain as personal truth, rather than abstract theory.

It can be play, rather than work. And you can still love the story that’s coming together.

And on that note, I have a long week planned next week. And my older son is on leave, and going to come visit for a few days before he takes off for another stint in the desert. So I’m going to knock off at noon and call it a day.

Have a wonderful weekend.

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


Men, Women, Writing, and Getting Laid

By Holly Lisle

Matt has assured me on more than one occasion that the reason men choose to do anything is, first and foremost, because they think doing it will get them laid.

Design the Eiffel Tower? Compose a magnificent concerto? Do a hundred pushups a day? Write a novel?

The man thinks “This will get me laid.” And he’s right. For a man, the secret to getting laid is to stand apart from other men—to be really good at something valuable, or admirable, or cool, to be competent, to be different than every other man a woman knows. Men don’t have to be young or gorgeous, to have great hair or a square jaw or a perfect body to get a woman or women. They have to stand apart.

If you’re a woman, on the other hand, breathing will get you laid, and sometimes even that’s setting the bar too high.

Doubt me? Think you aren’t pretty enough, young enough, whatever enough?

If you’re a woman and you’d like to test out this theory, walk with a female friend into any place where men gather to buy manly things (Home Depot, Best Buy, auto parts store). Carry a stopwatch. In an empty aisle, one of you will say, a bit too loudly, “God, I need to get laid. I want to meet someone.” The other one of you will start the stopwatch. I’m saying this line will bring at least one man into your aisle within thirty seconds. He’ll amble in casually, looking at something in your aisle…only not. He’s checking you out.

If he looks up at either of you and smiles, you have just met someone. Remember saying you wanted to meet someone? If he’s an employee and appears as if from nowhere, and asks if you ladies need help, you probably also have just met someone. (Well… he could just be the one guy working that day who isn’t avoiding working and who wants the challenge of figuring out what “one of those bendy thingees that go on the inside of the square thingee in the car” is. But what are the odds?)

Ball’s in your court.

A smile from a man is usually an invitation to explore possibilities (in public places, to smile back or to say hello), something women learn before puberty. Men smile when they see things they like. Doing so, they’re expressing interest.

The automatic female reaction to being smiled at by an unknown man is to look away or to frown. This is so automatic it’s almost instinctive, and if women don’t realize they’re doing it, they end up believing that there are no men in the world who would want them, because they’re turning down all sorts of invitations without acknowledging they’ve even received them.

Clearly, no matter who you are, not every man will test the waters with a smile because all men have different attractiveness filters… but as many men as can do so without getting shot or fired will find an excuse to amble over to the Romantic Comedy section where you’re standing to see if what they just heard might translate into something they might want.

The basic (not unbreakable) rule between the sexes is that men put together their best offer, based on their skills, talents, interests, and abilities, and they broadcast the offer—and women select from what’s offered. Women get offers by fitting into any given man’s classification of “Yeah, I could go for that.”

So what does this have to do with writing?

Men can get laid by pursuing writing and doing it well (or at least well enough to impress women.) God knows, it worked on me. I met not one but two future husbands because they wrote.

Women will NOT get laid by pursuing writing. No woman will ever get a man by casually mentioning that she writes novels. This is not a workable female pick-up line. The ONLY workable pick-up line for a woman is some variant on “I might consider sleeping with you,” or any action apart from words that would allow a man to think this.

Smiling. Blinking.

Breathing…

I need to take a moment to throw in a caveat here. Crossing gender attraction lines, I’ve noticed that in general, gay men seem to use the same filters for selecting men that straight men use for selecting women—appearance, not accomplishment. And that gay women seem to use the same filters for finding other women that straight women use for selecting men—accomplishment, not appearance. So a lesbian writer might very well attract a mate with the “I’m working on a novel” line.

This is an observation at second-hand, so I may be wrong. But I did not want to ignore this part of the discussion, and would be happy to entertain comments across the complement of gender variants in adult human relationships.

But. WRITING.

When we are sane and not self-destructive, human beings do things because they improve our chances of survival. For men, survival is wired to be broadly procreative, and while the male selection criteria for choosing a mate runs along varying lines of “breathing, healthy, would have sex with me,” attracting a mate or mates requires accomplishment. “I’m working on my next novel,” is a good line, better if you can back it up by presenting something you’ve written that’s really good.

For women, who cannot parent two hundred kids because women’s bodies devour themselves in the making of each one—Angelina Jolie being the exception who proves the rule—survival is genetically wired to being as narrowly procreative as possible—to having the best possible mate we can attract (by being young, pretty and healthy…or at least receptive), and then keeping him around for protection and to take care of food and shelter while making the occasional baby.

So writing does not fulfill the ‘attract a mate’ survival need in women—women don’t need to be accomplished to procreate.

What survival need does writing fulfill for us?

I didn’t start writing as a pursuit of self-actualization, that’s for sure. Or to find my inner self, or to change the world, or to find a mate. I wanted to write because my income mattered to our survival, and I wanted to find a way of making money that would let me stay home with my kids. I’d read that Anne McCaffrey had started writing for the same reason, and I thought, “I could do that.”

Writing for me was not a love-at-first-sight pursuit. I got to know it, and fell in love over time. Like the other relationships in my life that have lasted, there was an initial attraction, followed by a lot of work, with the big payoff (true love) coming only with knowing each other well. šŸ˜€

But how representative is my experience to the experiences of other women? To you as a female writer? How valid is what I’ve observed and been told about men to you as a male writer?

I don’t know. But I want to know.

Dig deep. Be honest. What do you hope the end result of your writing will be?

P.S. Why is this on my blog?

Well, I’m working on this novel…

Seriously, though, it’s topical to a part of the book I am working on, and something about which I’d really like to get other views.

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


Camel Coat

By Holly Lisle

Took myself by surprise when my villain (whom the heroine thinks of as Camel Coat) showed up without warning.

Got 439 words and an edgy bit of a tense scene—tomorrow, I’ll probably hit the part where the trap snaps shut, and catches more that it was intended to catch.

But for tonight, I’m done, and very, very happy with what I wrote.

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


You always kidnap the one you love…

By Holly Lisle

636 words tonight—they flew, and in the scene I called Razor Wire, Ki realizes that the thorn in his side is going to bother him worse if she’s dead than if she isn’t, and realizes he’s going to have to take some unsavory steps to keep her breathing.

Aleksa, meanwhile, gets her first sleep in 36 hours, and discovers on waking that the would has not improved in her absence…and that she’s in serious trouble.

I’ll find out more of what sort of trouble tomorrow night. For now, I got a lot, I love what I got, and the razor wire worked well.

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


THE WRITING CRAFT–Votes in, tallied, and studied

By Holly Lisle

I had a dickens of a time figuring out a way to get the survey results for THE WRITING CRAFT up in any usable, readable format.

So you can download the PDF and take a look, or open it directly and read it here.

871 people voted. I’m still analyzing all the comments, but for the courses I was already planning, a lot did not make the cut, and some are debatable.

You can take a look at the votes per module (based on the question) and see if there’s anything that’s in there that you personally really wanted.

Your comments are welcome.

THE PDF FILE (Right-Click to open without downloading).
Writing_Craft_Votes_And_Courses

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


531 Words, Nice little conflict

By Holly Lisle

My hero, having underestimated my heroine’s attention to detail, has just discovered that what he thought would be a comment of no importance has given her the ammo she needs to hunt him down.

Writing went beautifully tonight. And, fried, I’m going to call it a night on that progress.

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