Desktop Curtain, from Many Tricks: My single favorite Mac app

By Holly Lisle

Big fan that I am of GSD (getting shit done), I’ve found things over the years that have made GSD easier.

The screenshots below are Before and After on a TINY section of my very large desktop this morning. The white bar on the left isn’t neatness. It’s Scrivener below a 30-word PACTS Sentence that would give some massive spoilers on Book 5.

So…

HERE’S BEFORE…

Desktop before 2022 02 21 at 8 10 51 AM

And keep in mind this is a tiny section of a very large desktop screen, and that most of the right side of it is covered with folders.

Okay. NOW…

Here’s AFTER one simple click…

Desktop after 2022 02 21 at 8 11 50 AM

Beautiful, right? Calm, soothing, beautifully damned invisible. It’s like a massage for your brain.

I’m not an affiliate for the software or anything. I just love it — and this morning, starting in stressed about the upcoming HollysWritingClasses.com site overhaul, and the upcoming class debugs, and getting Ohio Five done so I can then do the <shudder> five-novel, 470,000+ word One-Pass Revision…

I felt that moment of peace as my chosen blue covered all the crap on my desk, and I wanted to say thanks to Many Tricks [NOT AN AFFILIATE LINK] for  my favorite focus-to-get-shit-done app for the Mac. 

Now… back to the words. I’m doing mean things to my characters today.

Big surprise, right?

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


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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Ya gotta love an evil plan…

By Holly Lisle

…And in Book 4 of the Ohio Series, way toward the end, (where I only have about 14,000 words left to finish the damn thing…

The Evil Plan just crawled out of the woodwork.

Not just for my characters.

FOR. 

ME.

I’m at roughly seventy-six thousand words in the FOURTH book of the series, with only one more book to go to wrap SERIES ONE…

And NOW the monsters let me know what they’re up to?!

NOW?!

Yep. Apparently now. It’s way better than anything I could have planned, because it so much meaner than anything I would have planned, and so much BIGGER, and so… horrible.

And while I know my brain does this shit all the time, and while I know that no matter what I’ve planned, my subconscious mind is going to be actively working to make all of that feel too stale and too small when it hits me with its next bit of better…

It’s still always a shock when it happens.

So. Today was… AWESOME!

And even more so because there’s not a single thing that landed on my head today that’s going to have to be retrofitted into the nearly 400,000 words I’ve already done.

I’m all about the HAPPY DANCE today, lemme tell you.


Now, I’m off to work on the HollysWritingClasses.com replacement website for the next four or five hours. Wish me luck.

[And for my writing students following this blog, I’m not going to flog the current class discounts via email. I am going to say here that prices on the classes are going to return to normal as soon as the new version of the site goes live. And that is going to be AS SOON AS WE CAN MAKE IT HAPPEN, BECAUSE our old software is now way too creaky and old to keep using.]

Anyway… Have a wonderful weekend, and I’ll see you in here next Monday.


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Wow! WOW! A character gamble and last week’s wandering PAID OFF!

By Holly Lisle

I was LOST. 

Gut said to shut up and keep going. And I spent a lot of time today fiddling with the outline, and trying to understand what the stuff I wrote last week meant…

And then, HOLY CRAP!!!

Someone I never expected showed up at my MC’s door, and was the person who gave me such a bad time last week, and this week, all of a sudden, I found out what all that strangeness and storm und drang and wandering was about.

It went CLICK like a well-oiled machine.

Things are going to get deadly again.

But the character who switched teams on me this week is going to make the rest of the week’s writing a blast.

HEART

1296 words today (and I fixed the damn “working hours” timer in Scrivener early today so that it didn’t eat them on me again when it took me a really long time to get them)… and 72,229 total.

And there’s a happy dance going on over here, let me tell you.


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A pre-writing post: After Monsterity, 1357 words that no longer fit Book 3

By Holly Lisle

At least, they don’t fit in the way I need them to. 

I have the pieces of the story that I need in them, but writing on which I spent 8022 words, four scenes, and two chapters needs to be small and tight and avoid (in this book, at least) — one scene, not four — the introduction of five new named characters.

I can handle one… and that one — who may or may not be critical in one of the later two books (or who may be a main character in a second series or a stand-alone for me if the first five books do well — is going to have to summarize the concept behind what he’s doing.

Here was today’s lovely starting word count.

Pre Removal  Book Four Scene  2021 07 01 at 9 02 31 AM

 

Here is the unchecking of two chapters that will have to be dropped into the Book Four manuscript as soon as I post this.Compile Magic  2021 07 01 at 9 01 34 AM

And below is the wordcount following the removal of those two chapters to Book Four.

Post Removal  Book Four Scene  2021 07 01 at 9 03 02 AM

 

There is a bright side. I have a wonderfully funny way to start Book Four now, and a hefty chunk of words I’ll get to count the instant I open THAT manuscript.

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


Brutal writing day. NET GAIN of 769 words, but to even get into a positive word count was a damn battle

By Holly Lisle

Okay. I knew the fight scene was going to get messy.

I knew getting my MC home was going to be tricky.

Some of what I wrote yesterday was really good, and it put my character in exactly the right sort of danger.

Some of it wandered off into the weeds and got lost, and meandered around — and I had to burn down the weeds, cut the head off the meandering, and wipe up the mess afterwards.

Which is actually pretty much what’s now in the chapter. Chapter 11, FWIW.

And I like what I have.

I just ran out of time with fewer words than I would have liked to have.

Still, I can take the fixed, much better scene with me into tomorrow, and maybe make up some of the wordcount I fell behind on today.

Way more than three hours on this today, though.


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Today is brought to you by math…

By Holly Lisle

This isn’t the way I want to spend a Friday, but I cannot ignore the fact that I have to sort all my receipts, mark every single item that is deductible, gather up all the papers, pack them up, and get the box to my accountant.

Even really shitty years produce a stack of paperwork, and no matter how much I want to do the next 1250 words on Ohio 3, I can no longer ignore my Tax Nest Monster, which is glaring at me from its box under the desk.

This project might, in fact, be my Friday, Saturday, and Sunday… but I’m going to be back to the Ohio Novels and book three on Monday.

I’d like to say that I’ll be well-rested and raring to go.

But what are the odds?

Either way, even if I come into Monday tired and cranky, I can still get words, and it will be okay (for me, if not for my characters)… because once all five novels are written in first draft, I’m going through a massive five-book One-Pass Revision, which is where the magic happens.

Magic Monday, or magic later… Same results either way.

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


HUGE story win: Price? 2000+ words words cut today, net gain of 670 today, and 3267 to delete tomorrow…

By Holly Lisle

Today went really well from the story perspective.

From the wordcount perspective, not so much. 

I deleted a ton of words back in chapter six, wrote a ton of new words in that chapter, and came up with a net gain of 670 words.

Tomorrow is going to be tougher, because tomorrow I’m going to end up deleting almost 3,267 words… though with luck, I’ll end up being able to save the sentence at the end of that entire chapter…

Saving a quote while losing words 2021 02 11 at 11 09 06 AM

“And kids in school these days are probably a lot less likely to spread rumors that your mom or grandmother barbecued your father and served him to neighbors on the 4th of July.”

I like that line. I need to keep it. My character lived it.

Meanwhile, my difficult today and tougher tomorrow are brought to me by this single writing truth:

There is always a good idea.

There is always a better idea.

And there is always the right idea.

And today, I uncovered the right idea — the one that pulled all the keepable stuff in the book together. I lost a couple thousand words today.

I replaced them with the right words.

I’ll lose several thousand tomorrow. 

I’ll replace them with the right words. 

And in doing so, I will bring my MC’s past to life for myself and my readers, increase the stakes she faces for the entire series of novels, introduce a truth about an upcoming essential character while hiding that truth in plain sight, and, if I’m lucky, scare the socks off my future readers while at the same time making them laugh.

It is for such days as this that writers live.


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The Ohio Novel #1 Is Done! (Or what it’s like to disappear into a black box)

By Holly Lisle

I wrapped up my final draft yesterday.

In spite of best efforts, I came in over my 90,000K wordcount by about 12,000 words.

I don’t have a title for the novel yet (Matt comes up with my best titles, and I’m really hoping he can pull out something amazing, both for the first book and for the entire series).  

I do have my pseudonym. I can’t give either until — BARE MINIMUM — the first five books are out and starting to find their audience.

And then I’ll only be giving it to the folks on my mailing list who are genuinely interested in the genre. 

Since I’m publishing the Ohio series independently, since I’m bringing the series and world (with possible subsequent series) out under a pseudonym, and since I have to plot the next four novels, then have to complete the entire 5-book series — have all five written, revised, edited, bug-hunted, formatted, covered with pro-quality covers, and get them all up into Amazon-exclusive KDP and print formats, and then launch them at the speed of one book a month for five months, I have a long, long way to go.

But… THIS TIME, I’m trying to work with Amazon’s algorithms, and see what I can learn from doing that. 

It’s an investment in manpower. A BIG one — primarily but not exclusively mine. We’re talking the time, effort, focus, dedication, that goes into thinking and then writing 400,000+ MORE connected, related, compelling words of fiction that must be outlined, first-drafted, finished, revised, edited, bug-hunted, typeset, put into Kindle, print, and other formats (the Ohio novels will start Amazon-exclusive, but probably won’t stay that way past the completion of the initial five-book launch) have cover copy written and tested and re-written, have title testing — so I’m talking about an all-in commitment of a big chunk of my life, with no feedback (except from Matt, Becky, and my bug hunters) until this whole things goes live.

It’s also an investment in money: All mine. Just the cash outlay for five great, professional covers, is significant. But much, much more expensive than that is opportunity cost — the things I don’t get paid for because of the time and effort I’m putting into this project that I hope I might get paid for… that isn’t a new writing class or a couple of classes I KNOW I could get paid for.

If it goes big for me, THEN my writing students will get my numbers and how I did it, along with this really cool story development process I’ve come up with and am using for these. Maybe some workshops. 

If it doesn’t go big for me, they’ll get the really cool story development process… but that’s not a cool new workshop that might be able to give writers willing to do the work (as outlined above, so we’re talking BRAVE writers) a path to building a live-on fiction income. The story development thing is just a few lessons. Probably added into an existing class or two.

And here’s the thing that’s making me a little nuts.

The entire process has to be done completely in the dark. I have to build EVERYTHING, pay for EVERYTHING, set up EVERYTHING, write EVERYTHING, and publish EVERYTHING… with nobody but Matt, Becky, and myself seeing what I’m doing. (Well, at the point where I’m ready for bug-hunters, I already have a couple lined up, and will bring in a few more, and this handful of readers will go through all five novels back to back to back. And sign an NDA beforehand that they can’t tell anyone who I am, or what my pseudonym is, or where the website is, or anything. Not until the books are doing so well that I can bring in my other genre-related fiction to the new writer under a “written as Holly Lisle” label with the pseudonym as the author name.

I can’t share snippets of any of the Ohio stuff — not snippets or scenes or teaser stuff or worldbuilding — on my blog, on the podcast, in the writing community forum. Nothing.

I can’t put links to the books when they come out here or in the writing community or on the podcast page.

I can’t link my old novels to this new set.

I have to become invisible.

Not my strong suit.

But for this test to mean anything, for this process to mean anything, this is where I am.

At some point in the future, I hope to be able to share some crazy great news. Or at least, “Hey, I’m making enough to pay off the house.” That would be really cool.

 

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


The Wishbone Conspiracy: 2027 words, and a Change in the 3-Novels Experiment

By Holly Lisle

Got pretty decent words today on The Wishbone Conspiracy. 2027 new words, taking me to a total of 23,873 words in the novel.

I mostly like what I got, though I had a bit of a hard start.

And that’s what I want to talk about today.

The “Write on three different novels each week” experiment worked very well. Until it didn’t.

I was writing first draft of Dead Man’s Party on Mondays, first draft of Moon & Sun: The Emerald Sun on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and first draft of Cadence Drake: The Wishbone Conspiracy on Thursdays and Fridays.

Getting 1515 words or better on Mondays, about 1500 words on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and 2000-ish words on Thursdays and Fridays.

BUT…

It required a big mental shift, and rolling through three very different projects back to back to back started taking a toll on me.

I kept going… but then I started research in improving the marketing I’ve done — or in many cases haven’t done — on my work, and current methods of increasing Amazon sales, and experimenting with copywriting and cover design and split testing and…

Along with writing the three novels, and writing a new lesson every week in my new How to Write a Novel class, and answering student questions, and working with Dan on getting the final pieces of the HollysWritingClasses.com website out of beta, plus spending time with my family…

Well, the fiction broke down just a little. And I hit what I have come to recognize as the “trying to do too much at once” wall.

Dead Man’s Party has to stay. It’s my demonstration novel for How to Write a Novel.

My writing on The Wishbone Conspiracy is still running smoothly. 

But the writing on The Emerald Sun hit a wall.  

This is a book I need to be able to throw myself into exclusively: to NOT be writing other fiction at the same time. It has a specific voice and some specific worldbuilding and a place it’s going that is very different from other things I write. It has a deep world that I have not been writing in recently, characters who have become strangers to me, and both Tuesday and yesterday, my mind simply balked. Refused to work on Emerald Sun.

Was real damn happy to offer up copywriting, cover design, threw ideas at me for both The Wishbone Conspiracy and Dead Man’s Party

But it dug in its heels on what was supposed to have been the work of the day.

Had all my fiction crashed on me, I would be taking a different approach than the one I’m taking starting today, but two of three books — the one with NO previous worldbuilding, and the one with a ton of worldbuilding, but in which I’ve been writing regularly for the last eight or so years — are still fine.

So now I enter Phase Two of the experiment.

This is pretty simple. Monday will still be Dead Man’s Party, and still 1515 words or thereabouts each week, followed by working on HTWAN, answering questions in the forum, doing the help desk tickets that require me, working with my moderators, working with Dan on the site, answering emails, and other daily task.

With Dead Man’s Party, I have to have this amount, and JUST this amount, for my class and to make sure I’m applying the material from the various lessons as I write. So I can’t just write ahead and be done with this particular novel. Each chapter has to be written along with each lesson.

Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, I’m going to be shooting for 2000 words per day on The Wishbone Conspiracy.

That will give me six-thousand first-draft words on that book each week.

I currently have 23,873 words total, and with a 90,000-word target for completion of the first draft, need another 66,000 words (rounded) to hit my target.

So some book math. At 6000 words per week, I’ll have the first draft finished in about eleven weeks. Figure I’ll have it done around May 17th.

This is nobody’s fastest pace on a novel ever, and if it were the only thing I was doing, I could get it done a lot faster. But it isn’t, and what I’m looking for at this point is…

SUSTAINABLE FICTION CREATION.

A system that I can put into action and stick with, that will allow me to maintain my nonfiction work while creating regular publishable new fiction.

Now…

Those of you who didn’t get sidetracked by the book math are going, “WAIT A MINUTE!!! What about Tuesday?”

Very good.

Tuesday, my first two to three hours will be focused on marketing my current backlist and learning how to do a better job of launching my front list.

It will also give me a clean break between Fiction Project One and Fiction Project Two.

And it will carry me to the completion of Fiction Project One AND Fiction Project Two at about the point where I also have the class How to Write a Novel completed in the Splinters version.

At that point, I’ll have two finished novels in need of revision, editing, covers, marketing, bug hunting, launching, and publication.

And at that point, I’ll figure out what happens next. I’ll probably dive all the way into The Emerald Sun at that point.

And look at possible new writing classes or workshops I could create.

But as always…

This plan is subject to revision as I experiment and figure out new definitions for what I want to accomplish, and new ways to accomplish my objectives.

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