My new Free 3-Day Fiction-Writing Workshop just went live

By Holly Lisle

This free workshop focuses on three things:

  • Helping you build ideas — LOTS of them — that are right for your stories (instead of waiting around for ideas to come to you)
  • Helping you create the right characters for your stories (instead of using random walk-ons who then drag your story in directions you didn’t want to go)
  • Helping you build story settings that actually contribute conflict and plot elements to your story (instead of disappearing off the page entirely, or eating your writing time with massive overbuilding).

It’s designed so you can work at your own pace. It includes a forum for discussion, questions, and help.

IMPORTANT NOTE ADDED LATER

The workshop failed its beta test by being too tough for its intended audience. This link now goes to my free three-week short-fiction class.

Want to learn to write GOOD short stories? Free three-week class.

 

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


Do I have to go to college to be a writer?

By Holly Lisle

There are apparently 7000 different ways to ask this question, and since I have only answered a couple hundred of them in the past two weeks, I’m trying to get ahead of the curve here.

The answer is no. Not just no, but HELL, no!

No, you don’t have to go to college if you want to be a writer, and you could be a happier, more successful writer if you don’t. You certainly won’t start your writing career a “moderate” $25,000 to $50,000 dollars in debt.

You don’t have to have a master’s degree.

You don’t have to have a high-school diploma.

Having a high-school diploma, a bachelors degree, an MFA, a PhD in literature, or anything else will not improve the marketability of your work.

Publishers will not buy your novel because you went to Yale or Harvard or Podunk Community College.

They will buy your work because you have written a good story they think they can make a profit selling.

I’ve written a LOT about this.

Here’s what I have:

Do you need a college education to write?

And then everything else on the right sidebar of this page: Articles, FAQs, Quizzes, and Workshops About Writing and Being a Writer.

 

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


Yes, It’s Revision… But Is It DELICIOUS?

By Holly Lisle

Like other folks, lots of writers have pets.

And while it had been a whole lot of years since I had pets, for Christmas my guys got me a cat.

Sheldon.

Very cool cat.

Likes to help. Really likes to help with revision, which is generally not an area where I welcome help.

Here. Let me show you…

How about you? Have a picture or two of the “help” you get while you’re working?

If you have a photo-sharing service like Flickr (or whatever else is out there — I don’t keep up), post one or two images of your helper helping below.

I’d love to see. 😀

No more than two. My blog is set to mark as spam any replies that have more than two links in them, and I don’t want to accidentally lose your post.

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


Oops — a brief tale of Social Media fail

By Holly Lisle

So I’m working on the TalysMana revision. And because of the way I did the first draft of that story, I was looking for someone online.

By name. Had the WHOLE name. And the one place that name came up was in Linkedin.

Okay, I thought. I have a Linkedin account. I don’t use the damn thing, but I have one.

So I logged in. (Three cheers for 1Password, or my 600+ unique passwords, some of which I haven’t used in about a decade, would be impossible.)

And discovered that there was no more information on the person I was searching for when I logged in than there was from outside.

Which means I’m going to have to change the name and the character in TalysMana.

That’s fine. That character wasn’t fitting the story anyway.

But the other thing that I discovered, much to my horror, was that people I DID know had been trying to reach me on Linkedin — there are about a dozen post in there from 2012.

And those requests for help are in there now because?

Because I haven’t been in there since…no clue. But I now have proof it was sometime before 2012.

So if you were asking me for help promoting you through Linkedin back in 2012, I’m very sorry I didn’t.

I wasn’t there, didn’t know you asked.

And I don’t see myself becoming a Linkedin user now. I don’t have time for the stuff I’m doing as it is.

On the bright side, I might be overworked, but I don’t suffer from all those new stresses and anxieties psychologists and psychiatrists are attributing to the overuse of social media.

Yay?

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


Me, faith, God… and the good and kind folks who like me…

By Holly Lisle

I received today a truly wonderful email from a very kind woman with whom I had previously corresponded.

In it she talked about this being the year of Christian/Jewish Restoration, and about how we were both due, and about how “I know you don’t like God all that much…”

And she included a video to a beautiful Christian song, and words that she hoped would help bring me back to God.

I like her. I thought her letter was sent in a wonderful spirit of caring and compassion from a genuine, kind, and beautiful person to whom I matter.

And I sent her the best letter I was capable of writing.

I’m not posting her letter here because it was for me alone.

I’m posting my reply to her because this is something I need to say to the folks who are worried about me, my soul, my faith, my relationship with God… and I know there are a few of you who read me who are. From time to time you let me know.

Hi, Kate*,

It isn’t that I don’t like God very much.

I am incapable of belief. I tried. I spent all of my youth and some of my adulthood trying to believe in God in any form, and in religion in any form, and I simply don’t, and can’t.

I’m not an angry atheist, I’m not declaring God evil or dead or wrong, or the people who believe in God evil or vile or wrong.

I’m simply a person with a complete inability to ignore reality in favor of things people belief that fly in the face of reality. I am incapable of faith.

What I know of life and can prove is that what we have in this world is this moment and each other. While I would like to think there is something after death, and while I know that energy cannot be destroyed, I don’t believe that I will continue after death as myself. Wish it. Don’t believe it.

But in life, we have now, and we have our own brief existences,** and we have the people who matter to us. I have spent my life since I figured that out working to leave something important behind for the people who matter to me. My family, my writers, and my readers.

And I very much like the idea of a year of restoration. I’m due. So if you don’t mind hanging out with an atheist, I’ll be very happy to celebrate the year of restoration with you.

Cheerfully,
Holly

I am mindful daily of the life I am living, and I am living the best, most honest, and most creative and worthwhile life I am capable of living.

I choose my actions with care. I work daily to make not just my own life but the lives of the people who matter to me better.

I do this because I love my own life, and I want to help other folks find ways to love theirs.

And that’s it.

When I’m gone, I’ll be gone. If I’ve succeeded at the job I’ve chosen, the work I’ve started will spread out in ripples, and some small part of life and existence far into the future will be better because I once lived.

I think that’s enough.

 


*Kate is my fill-in name for folks I want to keep anonymous. Not a real Kate.

**Added in this version, but not the original letter.

 

 


 

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