The Secret Writing Class is finished… except for bonus course…

By Holly Lisle

Yesterday I finished the final lesson on the new writing course.

So I’m taking today off, and relaxing. I’ll be thinking about the bonus course. I have several ideas, and I’ll be digging through the HollysWritingClasses.com forum for additional ideas.

I have a specific topic — Big Course… Bonus Brainstorming — and if you’re a member (membership is free), just log into the forum and let me know what’s on you wish list for a short course you’d like to get as the bonus for the NEW class when it goes live — something that would help YOU.

If you’re not a member yet, you get a free class when you join, and there is NO membership fee EVER.

You can buy classes, or you can just use the free one, and hang out in the forums and write fiction, and talk about writing fiction.


HollysWritingClasses.com Member Updates

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Writer-Related Stuff… The Thursday List, and why it’s on hold.

By Holly Lisle

I was building a really nice writing-tips email list for my writers. Every Thursday, (or mostly every Thursday), I was creating one new writing tip, answering a writer’s question, demonstrating a quick version of some technique I’ve found helpful…

And then the HollysWritingClasses.com class software died. Hard.

And we spent six months installing new software, moving all the classes on the old software over to the new software before the old site stopped working entirely, and managed to save all the classes.

Of course, because they were ONLINE classes, built as PDFs, all the links in them that referred to the site itself are broken. A lot of links that went to OTHER sites are broken.

And I figured out that we’ll fix those by posting the corrected links in each lesson right into the classroom, so that things can be easily updated.

But almost all the links in the Thursday emails referenced posts on the site, or classes on the site, or freebies on the site…

AND ALL THOSE LINKS BROKE, TOO.

During the six-month Save-The-Site complete overhaul, I didn’t have time to do any Thursday emails. I was squeezed managing to get my daily fiction words (and sometimes I just didn’t).

But the dust is settling (not settled yet… not by a long shot).

So I headed into the Thursday Emails to start fixing links. I got through the first several emails, and will work on these a bit at a time every weekday until I finally have the existing list updated. (It’s an ever-green list, filled with techniques and processes and tips that I’ve figured out over the last thirty-something years. Writers can join at any time, and get the first email, and keep getting them as long as I write them.)

I won’t be doing any NEW tips, though, until I have all the existing ones fixed.

And I’m having to do this in between writing the current novel, and doing my work over in HollysWritingClasses.com. 

It will all get done. It’ll just take some time, and I can’t write any new tips until I have everything already written fixed. But now that getting those links fixed has made the priority list in my daily bullet journal (it hit the Priority List at last when we stopped having to put out HollysWritingClasses.com fires) I figure I can correct about five emails a day after I get my fiction done and check in on my writers taking their classes), and be ready to start writing new tips in about a month. Maybe a bit more.

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6:47 AM – Finishing Ohio 4, starting Ohio 5, while building the new HollysWritingClasses.com site

By Holly Lisle

SO…

My website over on HollysWritingClasses.com is undergoing a massive overhaul (complete site rebuild).

And I anticipated the process taking FOUR months.

Turns out… it’s probably not anything like that.

My amazing community moderators over there have already finished building all the classrooms in the new software, and getting all the class materials into them — a process I’d expected to take about two months. That means that all the lessons, all the downloads, all the videos, all the EVERYTHING… are done.

Except for the lesson timers (the things that make a new lesson show up each week for the writer taking the class), which I have to go in and do manually.

Turns out, that takes about ten seconds a lesson, and all the lessons are (for the person building the class), on the same page, so you can just go through and check a box and put in a number and it takes a couple seconds if you’re being careful. 

So, timers are a non-issue. I have to do them, but they won’t slow anything down. That’s what I’m going to do today on all the classes… and I anticipate having all the classes done today… even if I have to duplicate the BIG classes to offer the slower-pace/smaller monthly price one-lesson-every-OTHER-week option.

I’d figured another two months for my two database guys to figure out how to move all the existing members and all their existing classes into the NEW database, while I built the front end — the sales pages for the classes, for us to test the new classroom with the new, beautiful, professional, already integrated shopping cart.

And it very well might take us that long.

But since the software we’re using has built-in professional integration with the shopping cart we’re using… probably not.

Moving ever single writer who ever bought a class (and who therefore still owns it) into the new database might in fact take two months. 

But I’m going to say odds are pretty slim that anything else will.

So I’m saying  BEST CASE, we could be on the new software and live on December 8th (one month from now).

I’m saying that the Reasonable Assumption is that we’ll be moving everyone and everything to the new site (and the new site to HollysWritingClasses.com) around the New Year.

I’m excited. There are a lot of things I’ll be able to do on the new software that I cannot do on the old software… but that’s a post for another time.

Right now… I’m heading in to write the ending of Ohio 4 novel. Yep. LAST SCENE. And I know what I want to have in it.

Tomorrow, I’ll start outlining Ohio 5.


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HAPPY DANCE!… Ohio 3 first draft finished at 89,556 words and 1828 for the day

By Holly Lisle

Today was a good day. I had to delete one whole chapter, and I ended up writing about three times as many words as what shows, because of that giant chunk of deletion.

But I landed the next to last chapter, and retrofitted the last chapter to fit the new stuff today.

The last chapter — it had originally been written as a middle chapter, but it had that perfect last line that, when I read it this morning, made me laugh and cry  — didn’t need much. I made it match the new next-to-last chapter.

And then read it again. And laughed and cried at the same time.

So. Book 3 of the Ohio Series is now done in first draft. And like nearly all my first drafts, it will probably get longer in revision. BUT not today, or tomorrow.

Tomorrow, I’ll read my raw outline for book for, and make that fit what happened in book three.

That might take a few working days, but best guess, I’ll start into Ohio 4 on either Tuesday or Wednesday.

Today though?

Happy Dance!


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Rediscovered Worldbuilding Workshop: Holidays in Hell and Other Delights

By Holly Lisle

I was doing a BIG search on my hard drive for something I’d previously written about Tangerine, who was a minor character in Hunting the Corrigan’s Blood  who became a major character in the current novel, The Wishbone Conspiracy (for which as I blog this, I have not yet gotten my full complement of words for the day…

When I tripped over a handful of old workshops and articles I’d written for Vision, back when Lazette Gifford was editing and publishing that as part of my Forward Motion site.

Most of them are already in place on the writing pages.

But one of the ones I hadn’t yet reprinted was Holidays in Hell and Other Delights: A Worldbuilding Workshop.

I got a wee bit sidetracked with that, and am now getting back to my fiction, STILL not having recovered a big chunk of writing I did on the novel that actually featured Tangerine (that isn’t his real name, by the way).

I put that up so I wouldn’t forget it, and am posting here so you won’t miss it. I was pleased that the quality still held up — it’ll be useful for those of you who write fiction and need to build in some little pieces of worlds to give them added depth and verisimilitude.

The link again: Holidays in Hell and Other Delights: A Worldbuilding Workshop

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