Done, oh, done, OH DONE!

By Holly Lisle

The Revision that Would Not Die got a stake through the heart just a few minutes ago. I’ve finished it, got to keep the ending I loved, and everything came together.

Tomorrow, typing. But not tonight. Tonight I just get to be happy. And DONE.

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


A mere 30 pages from the end

By Holly Lisle

Never underestimate the power of pain, and having lying down hurt as much as sitting up. I’ve done an enormous amount of writing, rewriting, and revising today, and only have thirty pages of The Wreck of Heaven‘s manuscript left at this point — and most of those page, I think, are going to get the axe, since I let the book run on too long in the first draft. The end is in sight.

After this I have to type in all those revisions, of course, but that’s minor. I’m so excited. And relieved. I should finish tonight.

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


A Snippet

By Holly Lisle

The set-up for this — it’s just a transitional piece, but it shows the effects of big magic a long way away, and the way worlds in the Sentinels’ universe connect. And it was fun to write, so I’m posting it here.

The old gods had not gone to war with the dark gods in time out of mind. The worldchain had forgotten the price paid for wars between gods.

Abruptly, with huge spells of horror and death bursting on the Dalchi fields, rebound magic poured upworld, and …

#

… on Niiadaa, on a deliciously warm afternoon with the clouds towering like castles above the village of Iri, the earth rumbled without warning and ripped itself apart. Molten rock exploded upward. Fire rained up, spurted, gouted, and the village died in a breath, taking everyone with it. A hill bellied up out of the ground, red fire racing out in all directions, and a mountain shouldered its way onto the hill, shoving rivers of rock and crusts and scabs of lava before it. Poisons poured into the air, and the sky turned black, and still the earth kept shaking. The sun vanished, and the forests and the rivers all around with it — lakes sucked back into the earth as if they had never existed, and death spread out in all directions. Seas rose out of their beds and smashed shorelines, pounding them with forty-foot waves and tossing chunks of lava bigger than houses as if they were toys.

The sun would not shine again on Niiadaa for weeks — and the snow would start falling in mere days …

#

… while on Povreack, a hurricane that had been moving well off the shore of the most populated coastline suddenly turned inland. It crawled northward, strong and well-defined and vicious, and laid waste to whole peoples and the better part of a nation …

#

… clouds. More clouds. The peoples of the drought-stricken flatlands of Central Hwyr on Cadwa looked up in startled gratitude. Thunder rumbled, which had not been heard in those parts in a dozen years, and moist air curled the dust along the ground and touch cheeks with the gentle promise of rain.

The first drops spattered, big as fists, and people cheered, and stood with arms outstretched and faces upturned. Then the skies let loose.

But the ground, too parched to drink the bounty it received, filled fast, and flooded fast, and joy turned to horror as torrents ripped across the plains, taking topsoil and houses and livestock and people with them …

#

… across Oria’s northern forests, the sound of rattling wings, individually no louder than the crinkling of a sheet of paper, grew to a roar as millions of millions of cherik beetles hatched after a hibernation of twice a hundred years. Starving, they launched themselves into the sky and swarmed on everything green and growing. Tender plants, budding out, were stripped bare in minutes and the clouds of beetles ascended again and moved on.

The plague would last a month, and then the cheriks would dig back into the earth, so deep that men could never find them to destroy them, and lay their eggs, and die.

Behind them, much of the northern world would starve that year …

#

Across the globe, observatories went crazy as out of nowhere, asteroids swarmed, ripping through satellites and exploding secret geosynchronous listening posts and smashing in toward earth, trailing debris and fire and destruction.

Newscasters rocketed toward their chairs, makeup-less and in shirt-sleeves, cigarettes dangling from their mouths, to shout at the cameras in a thousand languages, “We have just been informed that Earth has moved into an unmarked asteroid belt, and we are being bombarded by meteors. Remain calm … most of these will burn up in the atmosphere –“

But many did not. Some of the meteorites hit like exploding bombs, taking scyscrapers and their inhabitants, hitting with freakish perversion on one person standing in line at a bus stop but missing the ones to either side, and slamming into the ground with such force that the earth shook and the people spared a direct hit were shattered by the shock.

Enemies eyed each other suspiciously across borders, suspecting foul play — but not one continent in the world escaped unscathed.

#

… and the magic moved upworld even farther, through Kerras and Frejandur and even Jerrits — but those worlds lay dead and empty, with no one to care about fresh disasters.

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Tricky bits

By Holly Lisle

Falling back into the writing yesterday was tough — and I’d actually gone to bed with little done. Thanks to ending up sick, however, I got a lot more done than I thought I would; I got back up and manages to do six pages of an insert demonstrating the effects of magic on Earth as it rebounds up from a war six worlds downworld, by tracking it through the other worlds before it hits.

I spent a great deal of time researching for small cut-scenes — the problem was that I quickly ran out of natural disasters and needed some new ones, but of very specific sorts. The internet is great for research of this sort.

I like the new material, and along with it managed to get a nice chunk of revising done. Sometimes it pays to feel too bad to sleep.

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


Couple of days off

By Holly Lisle

I needed some think time. Not quite sure how to deal with the next bit of revision. I’ll have to figure it out when I get back up today, but Saturday and Sunday I actually took off — first time I’ve given myself a whole weekend in a while.

And something silly:


which Episode II character are you?

Queen of Naboo. You could have a split personality – simply to hide who you really are. You are extremely polite and gentle. However, if needs be, you will take action and can be a very good leader. You have the power to make people believe in you – use this power. The one you love could also end up being the one you hate.

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Ended up doing all hand-rewrites yesterday

By Holly Lisle

I never made it to the writing computer. I am frustrated beyond words — this is the revision that will not end. I have less than a hundred pages left, and usually I would look at that and think, “Right, have it finished today.” This time, I don’t even dare guess. Next week? The week after? With new storylines, multiple major plotline revisions, and the need to keep up with continuity throughout, and the need to not screw up the good stuff, this has been way too much work and nowhere near enough fun.

Oh. And the community it tits-up again, with no warning — emphasizing once again my need to get it off N54 and move it to my own domain and control.

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I should post a snippet of the new material from the revision

By Holly Lisle

I’ll look through stuff tonight and put something up tomorrow afternoon.

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Time to grouse

By Holly Lisle

I’ve never written so much new material for a revision before in my life as I’m doing for The Wreck of Heaven. I’ve already done six new-from-scratch scenes that add an extra sixty pages to the manuscript. I’ve cut and rewritten and completely rethought two existing storylines, including the major one. I might have 20 pages so far out of the first 373 that have no marks on them at all — but certainly no more.

Damn, this is awful. Not the book — I like the book, love the story, and the revisions are making it even stronger. But I sat down today thinking, Yeah, I’ll finish this thing today and I’ll be able to start typing in the revisions tomorrow. But as of right now, just after ten p.m., I still have 148 manuscript pages to revise, and I know of at least one more complete new scene I’ll have to write.

My brain feels like pudding, and this revision reminds me of the staircase I created in Sympathy for the Devil, the one that keeps getting longer and longer until the person using it is precisely the right degree of late to get into the worst possible trouble. Feh! I want to get back to Midnight Rain already!

Well — bitchfest over. Onward.

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Good progress

By Holly Lisle

I only have about 3/4″ of manuscript (measuring the stack) left to edit on The Wreck of Heaven. I’m going to have an amazing amount of typing to do when I get the edits done, but I still think I’ll be able to get the clean manuscript and disk done this week.

Matt’s fix on Lauren’s story has worked out well. I’m past that part now, and hoping that the last section of the manuscript won’t end up looking like the Frankenstein’s-monster patchwork that the first huge chunk does.

I’m looking forward to having this done. Once it’s finished, I get to get back to Midnight Rain.

And to think I thought these were going to be easy revisions. Hah.

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Unsticking a stuck story

By Holly Lisle

Had to quit last night when I was too tired to think my way out of an unnecessary stupidity Molly committed in the first version of the book. Today, I sat down, did four lines of a timed writing, including a couple of sentence fragments, and the idea for the fix slammed me between the eyes.

So I’m flying again. Will probably be working on this most of the night, but I’m getting there. I had hoped to be done last Tuesday, but I’ll finish in the next couple of days, and that will be fine, too. I love the way this revision is going.

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