Holly Lisle: Writer

Category: Dreaming the Dead

  • Finally rolled over 50,000 words

    I wrapped up with 50,176 total words in the story tonight—a nice milestone after the delay that had kept me at 49,590 for what… about two weeks? My revised plot cards are all in place, my arterial bypass grafted around the nasty clot of wrong turn is working beautifully, and the 586 words I got…

  • Mostly ‘Cause Tomorrow’s My Birthday

    I could have worked tonight. But I decided since tomorrow is my birthday to stay up late with my guys, watch the conclusion of “Life on Mars,” play Fable II, knit a pair of socks, and just have a good time. No words. No words tomorrow, though I’ll put up a post. No words Friday.…

  • Worrrds? We don’t need no steenking words!

    Yeah. Well. I got my big birthday present a couple of days early. A Sony Reader. Red. Spiffy. WAAAAY spiffy. And instead of being a good and faithful writer and getting my words, I’ve been sitting here working my way through the user’s manual and discovering that, yes, I CAN put the entire Think Sideways…

  • Better than yesterday

    No words on the page, but six new scenes figured out. Which means I’ve about finished my coronary bypass around the the clogged artery of those bad center scenes where I took the story over the top. Process is simple. Write one notecard for each scene that will replace a broken scene. DO NOT REVISE…

  • The Howling Redo of Despair and Agony

    It was an interesting night. First off and totally unexpectedly, I got 287 words of actual draft. So HAH! Happy about that. Second, I got out one of these neato little pre-ring-bound index card thingees I’ve had sitting in my office for the last few months after I found it at Office Depot—because I am…

  • Nailing my thumb to the wall

    So here’s the process I’m going through in order to skip revising the second section of the novel before I’ve finished the rest of first draft. Write a single sentence encompassing what I want each existing scene to become.  Try to match that sentence to the characters and action already existing in the story.  When…

  • Untangling

    As expected, I got no real words tonight. I did get several chapters of untangling done, in simple line-per-scene style. I’m going to have to toss stuff. I think I’ll have some I can keep, too, though. And I’m fried, so I’m going to go to bed. Hope your words are going well.

  • The Whisper of a Devil

    My red head dropped her bomb tonight, allowing me to sliver a bit of backstory and foreshadowing into a nice dialogue scene. And exactly 600 words later, she was out the door and on her way out of the country. I’ve run out of new scenes. I’m back now to the original beginning, and I’m…

  • Red-heads are ALWAYS trouble

    My spontaneously-generating red-head from a few chapters back walked into my scene tonight, suddenly making perfect sense in the story, and dropped a bombshell. Actually, she took a deep breath, I glance over at my word counter, and discovered that I’d hit 499 words. So she’ll drop her bombshell tomorrow night. But in spite of…

  • The Disappeared Friend

    Short night tonight. 279 words while I explored my surprise discovery last night—than one of my male MC’s dear friends had vanished. Because of who he discovered in town, and because of the horrible cases he’s recently been working, he fears the worst. I kept it short because I promised I’d get some links posted…