And on to saner things, plus Book Giveaway update

By Holly Lisle

The GREEN MAGIC I proposal left at the beginning of the week, unmentioned and unlauded, but done at last to my satisfaction. HAWKSPAR is unresolved–I won’t know anything more about it until I hear back from my agent, Robin.

And I am in the midst of happier–much happier–things. THE RUBY KEY, you see, felt short to my Scholastic editor, and since the thing I wanted most when I sent it in was more room to write it, and since all the things she asked if I could expand were things I had kept very tight for length reasons originally, I’m now coming up with cool, exciting ways to get all the stuff in there that I had to leave out initially.

BOOK GIVEAWAY UPDATE

Along with that, I got the last two US book boxes out the door this morning. My one paid-for foreign box will go tomorrow. The plastic things came in, finally. Turns out I had to have them, but because I do the postage online, I didn’t need the freakin’ forms.

ANYway.

FOREIGN SHIPPING

Deedlit
WritingAngel
lacysavage
shay

You can now use the PayPay button at the top left to pay the shipping on your box of books. Postage to England, Australia, and all other UK addresses is 36.15, which includes one dollar toward PayPal fees and tape and packing peanuts. Shipping to Canada is $22.85, also including one extra dollar.

THE REST OF THE BOOKS

I have boxes. But now I’m waiting for packing tape and a big bag of packing peanuts in order to get everything else out the door, so it will probably be next week before I get any additional boxes packed.

HOW MANY BOOKS ARE LEFT?

Maybe enough to finish off the first list, but probably not. Barring some loaves-and-fishes miracle, not enough to get anyone who isn’t on the first list.

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


HAWKSPAR problems

By Holly Lisle

Some significant editing problems surfaced during my revision of the copyedit of HAWKSPAR. I’m on hold on the revision while we sort them out. So this week I’ll be finishing the type-in of the GREEN MAGIC proposal, and getting back to the revision concepts for RUBY KEY.

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


Just about ready for send-off

By Holly Lisle

The GREEN MAGIC proposal is just about ready for send-off. Due to the ongoing stresses, I haven’t been pushing myself–I’ve just let myself get a little done each day and have been satisfied with that. Finished the revision last night, and am doing a read-through today. I’d say that I’ll do the synopsis tomorrow, but I’m not going to push even that hard. I’ll do as much of it as I can, going a little at a time. My expectations for myself right now are just to get some words on the page five days a week. That’s it. No counting, no timers, no goals.

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


Finally back to work

By Holly Lisle

Writing of any variety hasn’t been going too well the last few days. Stress doesn’t go away when things start looking better, because the possibility that they’ll get worse again always exists. But I’m making nice progress on the type-in of the Green Magic proposal right now. It feels good to be writing again.

I finally got a desktop client to work with my weblog, too–the WordPressDash widget. I’ve never bothered with widgets–always found them kind of silly and pointless. But WordPressDash makes it possible for me to post to the weblog without having to open anything or log in. The reason I had so many posts the first year I started blogging was because I had my desktop client open and I reported progress as I was writing. It was a lot of fun, and kept me going. I might find myself sliding back into that format.

Oh, and I know what next Friday’s Snippet is going to be. An excerpt from the Starving Rat Scene in HAWKSPAR.

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


Missing Time, The HAWKSPAR Copyedit, and a fine line-for-scene

By Holly Lisle

So in my revision of the Green Magic proposal, I discovered that, in ripping out the first version of the second and third chapters, I’d also managed to remove the hero and heroine escaping from the enemy prison. Yipes. I had about ten minutes of critical missing time while my folks get from inside the prison to the waiting rescue team. Problem is, I had limited space to fix the problem. I mean, chapter two is full and juicy, and chapter three is tight action and runs long anyway, but ends with the line “Then I killed myself,” and I’m not losing that cliffhanger at the end of the proposal because, well … would you?

I went over and over the material, and realized that I could cut about 3000 words from the rescued Version One chapter two down to about 600 if I just shot the hero (lethally) early in chapter two. So that’s what I did.

So we have the heroine breaking the hero out of prison, and the hero getting shot and being half an inch from death, and stuff I’m not going to tell you about, and more stuff I’m not going to tell you about, and then the heroine telling the hero that’s when she killed herself, and after that the synopsis. I’m feeling pretty good about the proposal now.

Got the HAWKSPAR copyedit today. Damn, that’s a tall stack of paper. Homework, has to be done and in by the 19th of next month. For once, I actually have time and don’t have to sweat how I’m going to fit it in. This is a wonderful feeling.

Finally, you have to go take a look at Jay Penney’s revision line-for-scene. It’s really impressive. Bigger than mine for HAWKSPAR.

Cheering you on, Jay.

Oh, oh! My sock recipient got her Serenity, Prosperity, Health socks, and they fit. Hah! That news made my day.

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


Finished the first draft of the proposal

By Holly Lisle

Last night the writing really flew. I finished the first draft of the revised GREEN MAGIC proposal, and managed to make myself cry, and was amazed by the surprise turn the story took. It all made sense, it all fit in with the background and the worldbuilding, but I never saw it coming until my fingers were putting the story on the page. I did about 2700 words in an hour and a half (a bit over 300 words every ten minutes), and they were keepers. Today and tomorrow I’ll edit the proposal, and Wednesday I’ll put together a new synopsis. Thursday I’ll revise the synopsis and send the package off to my agent.

I’m really excited about this story.

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


Headache Gone, Writing Diary Working

By Holly Lisle

The problem was that I had the widgets plugin sitting in the plugins folder. Didn’t have it activated, just had it there. As soon as I deleted it, the plugins and widgets automagically started working.

Couple little things added to the sidebar. I’ll probably add a few more now that everything is going smoothly. I want to redo the Login section to remove the advertisement for WordPress–have one of those at the bottom and don’t need another.

But I feel good today, and will get the words to finish up the Green Magic proposal first draft later today. Print them off and revise them on Monday and Tuesday.

Having no headache is a very good thing.

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


Words

By Holly Lisle

Got 2500 plus yesterday. Going for the same today. Starting now, new plot cards are helping.

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


WOW! Found a new Scrivener thing

By Holly Lisle

Took me a while to get a couple of plot cards I liked, and while I was working on them, I accidentally clicked a button in Scrivener that opened a whole panel I’d missed before.

Scrivener Inspector

The panel opens with the blue I button in the top righthand corner. Yeah, a little obvious. What can I say?

In this panel, you can see and rewrite your current plot card, decide whether the page will be exported, will retain formatting with export, and will have a nice little page break before (nifty for separating chapters but keeping scenes within chapters together). You can also make notes to yourself, the sort of revision notes I was going on about in Plot Clinic, for example.

The document is to the left, the entire plot outline is still to the left of that.

All I can say is, “Oh, wow!”

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


Like ripping off a Band-Aid

By Holly Lisle

Green Magic I stalled out on me on the second chapter. I blamed exhaustion. I blamed stress. And there’s certainly some truth in both of those things, but my number one adage remains true: If you’re stuck, you’re writing the wrong thing.

So today I ripped out the finished second chapter, watched my word count drop from 10,688 to 7091, put in two new plot cards, and as soon as I finish writing this, I’m going to figure out the new plot cards (I have some idea already) and see if I can’t do the version of chapter two that will let me move on to chapter three.

Will read the rest of the Friday Snippets later, and will comment.

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