“No plan survives first contact with the enemy…”

By Holly Lisle

Or second contact… 

Or third…

The quote may  come from Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, or Carl von Clausewitz, or Dwight D. Eisenhower… or just some dude who knew shit.

But it’s true — and it isn’t just true about war.

It’s true about any sort of creation that requires spontaneous adaptation to unknowable but expected change. Like writing fiction.

I outline while knowing the nature of outlining, which is this —

The thing fictional characters do when presented with a story plan is to act around the plan — to do something that will beat the plan. Fictional heroes and villains alike invariably act like real human beings. That is, they work to improve their own odds of success inside the story, and by doing so, they invariably shift the odds in their favor, and invariably surprise me.

These surprises are good for the story — if they surprise me, they will surprise the reader.

They’re just such a pain in the ass… because my heroes AND my villains keep blowing up my nice, neat, carefully plotted outline.

But anyway, that’s where I am today — several hours into my workday, having to stop to re-plot the next few scenes of my outline to maintain the structure of the story I’m building so that I can keep the cool shit one of the little jerks just did.


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Good progress, good conflict… and a whiff of destruction on the wind

By Holly Lisle

Have been working since 7AM — and today flew.

Book 4 took a dangerous turn this morning, as something I’d sort of tripped over in an earlier book took on a life of its own, and unfolded in front of me in a way I had never even imagined.

There is a schism amongst my main character’s most important allies — discovered today while I was writing.

And while it’s great for the plot, and while I knew something sort of like this had to blow up eventually, when it did, it did so in a way I’d never even imagined.

Blew me away.

So 1268 words (just over the 1250 planned), and 30,312 on the novel, so just over one third of what I have planned on Novel Four…

And I love this.


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Three steps forward, two steps back: Ohio 4, Chapter 7… and done, I think, with stuff brought forward from Ohio 3

By Holly Lisle

I am, much to my delight, just about out of the stuff I saved from Ohio 3 to use in Ohio 4. It’s good stuff, and reworking it so that it fits the current worldbuilding is interesting, and fun…

…But constantly ripping out old words as I insert the better new ones is not my favorite process. 

First draft is — for me — about hitting my stride and telling the story the first time… meeting fresh new situations and seeing how they turn out.

And for the last week-ish, I have not been getting to do pure first draft. I’ve been doing “saving of stuff I wrote into the wrong book the first time.” Which is practical… but kind of a pain in the ass.

In the screenshot below, I have the first three chapters of Ohio 4 — all new material. Then PRE-A through PRE-D — all stuff that I just dragged out of Ohio 3 into this manuscript. Then chapters four through 7.

Screen Shot 2021 08 16 at 12 22 27 PM

 

As of today, I’ve used everything I’m going to from PRE-A- PRE-C now. And just skimming through D before I wrote this, I think I can let that stuff go into the trash. None of it counts as words unless I move it into an actual chapter, so just dumping it won’t affect word count.

If I do that, tomorrow I’ll start in with brand new words… and I’ll get to start running again.

For today, I have a net gain of 332 words, and a total of 29,070.

 

Oh, yeah. And writers who have more series-marketing chops than I do have suggested that I not completely discount Urban Fantasy in favor of Contemporary Fantasy just yet. From my descriptions, some have noted that it sounds like it could fit in with the older and broader definition of Urban Fantasy that started with Charles deLint and Peter S. Beagle…

So I’m going to hang fire on any hard classifications of this until the whole five-book series is done and revised.

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


Tiptoeing through the minefield… and being mocked by my Muse

By Holly Lisle

I’d hoped to get 1200 words net today, but after a workday that started at six AM and included very little sleep the night before, I’m going to take what I got and go do things that don’t require so much brain.

What I got, though…

Holy Crap!

I found out something absolutely enormous about the over-all series villain today — something that pretty much rocked my world.

Funny thing is, though, that this discovery is one of the sort that is going to require absolutely NO revision to get it to fit into the earlier books.

I have from time to time mentioned that while I’m writing, my Muse (the non-verbal part of my brain where most of my best ideas come from) keeps secrets from me.

Some of them are minor. Some of them are kind of cute.

Today I met one of those secrets — And this one was EPIC.

More astonishingly, I have been writing important pieces of that particular secret into the novel from day one, never recognizing the actual meaning of what I was writing.

This wasn’t a little mike-drop moment for my Muse.

This was that wicked elf dropping the mike, flashing his ass, and laughing like a loon. It was, “Hahahahahah! Sucker! I’ve known this all along.”

(Why was my muse male today? Don’t know. It shifts.)

Anyway, while I probably got my 1250 or more in real words written, my net gain was only 846. But with the Muse revelation, which was awesome once I got over the shock… I’ll take it.

It was a good, good writing day.


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Bending space-time, dealing with elf shot, and 1344 words today.

By Holly Lisle

I’m now, much to my surprise, Ohio 4 is at 28,400 words. After the unwelcome but necessary “not writing” work yesterday, today was fun and exciting, and I got to know a lot more about my newest folks in the series.

I had to do a bit of retrofitting on some of what I got on Tuesday — that day off to deal with other things did give me a bit of perspective when I went in and started to work.

And my MC’s best friend is still in trouble. 

But now, on to the other stuff on today’s list.

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


The truth about elves… 2,266 words today, 27,056 words total, and a LOT of fun

By Holly Lisle

Tolkien aside, I have always preferred small, fast elvish trouble-makers to tall, willowy, blonde high elves.

And today I had a LOT of fun writing the little troublemakers, and got sheer joy reveling in knowing who they’re about to start making trouble for.

Some of what landed in the book today was a cut-and-paste save from Book 3 that had to be moved into Book 4.

A lot of it, though, was me having my ass out of bed at six a.m today and being to work by seven.

FUN writing day… and if past experience serves, that should make for fun reading when I go back through to revise these.


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Ohio-Novel Monday: Still working through the rewrite of the stuff I saved last Friday

By Holly Lisle

I did a lot of words. Pulled stuff out, put stuff in, and at the end of it, I don’t have 1250 words to show for my time, but when you’re fixing and tinkering and replacing chunks of text, that’s the way it goes.

I Iike this section. I love the characters, I love the conflict, I love the weirdness of it.

But in first draft, I really prefer writing new words to rescuing old ones from a previous book.

The count for the day? 549 net words, and 24,791 total.

However, this does mean that I am now significantly past the the 25% mark on the book.

Onward!


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Still fiddling with yesterday’s infusion of words rescued from Book Three

By Holly Lisle

I’ve added, I’ve cut, I’ve rethought… and I made significant progress on Chapter 6. 

Just not much of a net gain. 

So now I’m at 171 words for the day, and 24,242 for the novel. And having moved through a lot of pages to get that very small gain, I’m now going to call it Day and Week.

I’ve made a net gain of 5816 words for the week — a little less than my objective of 6250 per week.

But I made a lot of gains in the story. 

So I’ll take it.

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Hear now my wicked laugh… Today went GREAT. 3,555 words, and 24,071 total

By Holly Lisle

First, I need to say that I did not WRITE 3,555 words today. I wrote quite a few of the words I got today during that wrong direction I took in Book 3.

From the mess I made of that before I ripped out those chapters and wrote new ones, I saved a number of chapters that I knew were good, but that had happened in the wrong place.

And I got use about 2500 words of one of those… and then I added.

So today was a bunch of work. But it was fun work, with a dude who made me laugh the first time he showed up, and who made me laugh even harder today. I’m glad I got to save him.

And as a nod to a friend I misplaced about twenty-four years ago somewhere down in Texas…

I also saved the elves.

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


Got good words, got good pages, but running late… so…

By Holly Lisle

I’m just going to say that I love what I got, and but I’m running late, still have things to cover.

2243 words, and 21,109 total.

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