Trusting your characters to surprise you: 1400 words from Friday, reported a day late

By Holly Lisle

Writing yesterday went really well. I hit this awesome surprise, where one of my characters suddenly did something perfectly unexpected, showing up at my main character’s house with a cell phone video showing the impossible in action.

It was exactly the weird and twisty wonderfulness that thrilled me, and made me laugh, and at the same time made chills run down my spine, because it makes the situation my main character is in so much worse.

After the writing, however, my day took a sideways turn, and I didn’t have the chance to blog.

So I don’t have a spiffy picture of yesterday’s daily progress.

But I did get the words, and I cannot wait until Monday to get back to them. I will wait, because part of the process is religiously observing the two days off that let my subconscious mind refill.

I’m refilling.

So enjoy your weekend. I intend to. 😀

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


Fun, Joy, Surprises, and The Way You Want A Writing Day to Go

By Holly Lisle

Some writing days are just wonderful, and amazing, and fun from beginning to end… and you have to appreciate them when you have them, because a lot of them aren’t.

So this is me being joyfully grateful.

In spite of the fact that I got nearly three thousand words today, I actually only wrote about 1500 new ones. The others came from scenes I sort of remembered writing in two different failed starts of Book 2, in which I went off in wrong directions. (THOSE two false starts, you see, are excellent examples of the OTHER kinds of writing days.)

After the second crash, of course, I did a careful line-for-scene outline using a new technique I’ve come up with.

Today, working off that incredibly useful outline (something that will be showing up as an addendum in at least one or two of my writing classes, probably How to Write a Novel and How to Revise Your Novel, but possibly something else as well), I realized that there were a couple of scenes I’d remembered that might be cut, pieced together, and adapted for this version.

So I went in, grabbed copy, revised, rethought, moved things around, dumped everything that didn’t relate, and came up with a tense, compelling scene that brought together things worth saving from both earlier starts, all tied together with the thing I’ve discovered in this version of the story that makes everything work.

Things that previously had been parts of two entirely different stories that didn’t connect at all suddenly came together (with some help and hard work, of course) into this one scene that has secrets buried in it, leads to surprises to come, and let me do something both funny and awful to a villain.

Today was fun.

But today is also because of this…

Snowy Ohio 2020 12 17 08 11 01

I love snow.. and now I have some. 

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


Better and better — Ohio Novel 2 and 2377 words

By Holly Lisle

I woke up this morning knowing how Ohio #2 needed to end. And today I jumped to all the way to Chapter 25, five chapters from the planned last Chapter 30, and started writing the necessary stuff to get the story to that ending. Tomorrow, I may drop back to chapter 12, and then write toward todays work on the beginning of the ending.

Or I might write from 25 all the way to the end, and the go back and pick up the middle — though that path in the past has led to a certain amount of tinkering with middles and endings and even beginnings to get things right in the final draft. 

Either way though, with the exception of choose-your-own-adventure novels, readers read fiction linearly.

And most of the time, I more or less write it that way.

This book is coming at me from a lot of directions at once

But it is, by God, coming.

I wrote 2377 words this morning — way more than I’d planned — and I wouldn’t have even stopped except I have other listed in my bullet journal that must be accomplished today.

Writing was delightful, though. I built in a good, solid hunk of action tied to a bit of a mystery — and I pretty much know how that bit of mystery ends. I could write it tomorrow. Maybe.

Then I could use that bit to write the ending, and introduce the issue that I now think is going to set up Ohio #3.

But I might let what I know and have on the page sit and age for a bit now, and go back to the empty Chapter 13, and follow up with what I wrote yesterday.

Either way, I win.

Usually I don’t know the ending until I write it. This happens for me with a lot of novels, but most spectacularly with third novel of the Secret Texts trilogy, where I had no clue at all how the thing was going to end until my right brain started pouring its surprise ending out as my fingers were moving… and that turned out to be my dream ending.

This wasn’t a dream. This was more like having a brick of fiction attached to a happy tiger cub dropped onto my head from Santa in a sleigh.

The fiction brick was nothing like what I expected.
I’ll have to find a good home for the tiger… and while it’s with me, it might leave some messes in the book as I get to the finish line.

I didn’t even believe in Santa until the bugger present-bombed me.

And the results so far have made for a pretty good surprise.

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


Pretty good day — Ohio Novel #2 Progress

By Holly Lisle

This morning, I increased my daily word-count goal to 1500 (up from 1250). This was a small change, and I’d been hitting that number pretty regularly anyway. So I decided to make it my regular objective.

I came in just above that with 1532 words for the day. 

Have a nice situation going on with my main character and one of my favorite protagonists who is in deep trouble, and with a handful of folks who have gathered to figure out how they might help.

I like what I got, and this has left me in a good position from which to pick up words tomorrow. (Characters are still in trouble, and there’s some conflict about how it might be solved.)

Now I’m off to write the next Thursday Tip, my free weekly email for fiction writers, and after that, I have a longish stack of other things on my bullet journal to get done.

It was, however, a good writing day — and my focus on a reasonable word count, and on doing fiction first, is making me very happy.

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


Monday, and 1333 Words

By Holly Lisle

Not a lot to say, but the wreckage of last week has now been cleared away, and I sat my ass down and wrote my book, and Ohio #2 is 1333 words closer to the finish line, with a total of 35,900 words down…

In FIRST DRAFT, which is still a long way from done.

But. Before you can do the revision, ya gotta do the first draft. 

And today’s words were fun.

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


Seven. But close to done.

By Holly Lisle

At the moment, I don’t have much more to say than that. If I can get this last hill of shit shoveled, I will then be able to get some actual words today.

If I get to my fiction before I run out of working hours, I’ll be starting at 34,298 words, with a writing goal of 1250 or better — but if I get to work on the book at all today, and don’t hit my wordcount, just getting to write some fiction will be a win.Dec11 2020 ohio novel start

Here’s hoping. AND working.

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


Restarting Fiction Progress Updates

By Holly Lisle

To say that I’ve been absolutely shitty about keeping up with the blog would be too kind by half.

I’ve been in Ohio now for a year and three months, more or less, and have written six posts since getting here.

One of them was about my fiction progress.

There have been some things that have gotten in the way, like Covid, and trying to revise Dead Man’s Party only to discover it wasn’t a book I wanted to have written, and working on the Ohio Novels, and the stress and depression that apparently has hit a lot of other folks besides me with Covid and lockdowns and a world that doesn’t feel particularly warm or welcoming right at the moment.

Doing a regular podcast also pulled from my pool of “time that isn’t writing fiction.”

But the thing is, I have been making very good progress on my fiction, and I suddenly realized that going back to posting that would let me share a bit of how this is going.

Because in spite of all the shit in the world right now and how it has affected everything else in my life, the Ohio Novels are coming along nicely.

Book One is done in revision, and is awaiting its final editor pass (from Matt) and me doing the typesetting, and then the bug-hunt. NONE of which will happen until the first five novels are complete and I have my small team of bug-hunter volunteers.

I’m currently doing a minimum of 1250 words per day on Book 2, Monday through Friday.

I’ll post as regularly as I can. Fiction words come before blogging. Things like technical issues over at HollysWritingClasses.com come before blogging.

But coming only after the sanctity of fiction and the necessity of keeping technical stuff working with the nonfiction, I’m going to shoot for SHORT daily posts on the fiction, and will consider this a success if I accomplish a minimum of two or three posts a week.

I’ll include my little Scrivener screenshot of where I am at the end of each writing day for remaining four novels, along with a bit of “what’s going on in the writing or my life”, and occasional links to my temporary UrbanFantasyGirl.com site for readers who like that sort of thing and who think they might like these Ohio novels.

The Ohio Novels are going to be under a pseudonym well separate from the OTHER pseudonyms I’ll be moving to.

I am finally biting the bullet on the whole issue of using pseudonyms, which I’ve resisted for thirty years.

I am a broad writer, with a big backlist of fiction in many genres and an equally big backlist of nonfiction (though most of that is exclusively on my writing site, HollysWritingClasses.com), and I was the idiot who believed from the beginning that all my books should be under my real name.

Turns out, that’s an awesome way to guarantee you’re going to bring folks who love just one of your genres to a shit ton of stuff they’re guaranteed to hate.

Most of my pseudonyms are going to be public.

  • My SF is going to be under HD Lisle.
  • My high fantasy is going to be under Holly Lisle.
  • My nonfiction is going to be under Holly D. Lisle.

These books and classes are all already out there, I have already wrecked their find-your-perfect-audience hopes and killed their Amazon also-reads, and while some day I may successfully clean up that mess, these books can’t be my priority. Hoping to get them to sell better is going to be like towing big iceburgs with rowboats.

I’m going to have to re-cover, re-blurb, re-link, re-promote, and bring in the new pen names WHILE writing fiction full-time AND taking notes for the update of my How to Revise Your Novel class, and none of this stuff is going to happen overnight. It’s a process.

My urban fantasy Ohio Novels, however, are NOT going to be under a public pseudonym for the initial book launches. (There’s nothing I can do to keep folks from outing my pseudonym eventually, but at least I can give the Ohio stuff a chance to build an audience that doesn’t also bombard them with everything else I’ve ever written that they would hate.)

I’m going to give them the best chance of finding their perfect audience that I can manage.

BUT anyway…

You can see by today’s screenshot exactly how far along I am in Ohio #2, and what I’ve done so far today. It’s not mammoth progress, but done consistently, it does add up.

And that’s where I am right now. Stressed like everyone else, doing five days a week of manageable word counts on the second of five books, having the occasional day where the words actually fly…

And now once again taking my fiction-writing process public in small and manageable ways. And, I hope, reconnecting with some old friends who used to hang out here with me.

 

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


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


Still kicking, still writing

By Holly Lisle

So Ohio Novel #1 is pushing hard toward completion — or rather, I’m pushing hard and it’s fighting me all the way to the finish line.

As I’ve discussed on the Alone In a Room with Invisible People podcast, having this book done doesn’t mean there’s going to be a new book. Not soon, anyway.

  • This one is coming out under a pseudonym.
  • I have to write and finish the next four before any of them come out.
  • When they do come out, they’ll be coming out a month apart on Amazon exclusively to begin with, and will,  by Amazon’s terms, stay exclusive for at least one full term per book. 
  • And this particular book and its series are set up to introduce a brand new world, brand new characters, a solid core of layered conflicts that cross and intersect through the entire series… Five books minimum, possible spin-off or connected other characters, other books, and other stories beyond this series for the characters in this one.
  • It’s a big, big project.

I have been head down, learning a lot of new things about revision while doing it.

The How to Revise Your Novel class revision and update is on hold because of what I’m learning, and because I need to figure out how to teach what I’ve learned, and also (only slightly less important) how to present my new discoveries while not giving away my pseudonym. 

But I’m pleased that the book is now over 90,000 words. My objective for all five is 90K apiece. It makes for a nice reading length, and gives me a good writing rhythm for each 3000/word-ish chapter.

 

 

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


First draft of The Ohio Series First Novel is DONE! Includes FRIDAY SNIPPET

By Holly Lisle

I did not expect to finish the first draft today. Thought it would take me a couple more days to get there, but while Becky and I were running ten-minute work sprints together, what had to be in there just clicked, two complete chapters flew off my fingertips, and all of a sudden, I have a done first draft in my brand-new Urban Fantasy world.

I wrote it using the same process I teach in How to Write a Novel, I had a blast doing it…

And now it sits in a corner of my hard drive for a minimum of one month while it cools down. 

Because I need to NOT be wildly in love with it when I do the read-through. I have to be tired, and grumpy, and bored, and wishing I was someplace else. In THAT frame of mind, the good stuff with hook me in, but I will be unable to make excuses for the bad stuff.

But before I put it away for the requisite month (and possibly a bit more), I have the Friday Snippet for you.

The Snippet Disclaimer: This is raw first draft, copyright Holly Lisle and all rights reserved. Do not quote, review, or bug hunt. The contents of this snippet are subject to change, and during revision I will not see any problems you find here.

THE FRIDAY SNIPPET

Now here I was with a cookie junkie who’d just heard there was a new dealer for his long-lost favorite drug, looking at me with eyes that were shining with need, that said he was jonesing pretty hard.

People.

“I could get you the ingredients so you could make them,” he said. “If you told me what they were.”

“Didn’t Grandma give you the recipe so that you could learn how to make them yourself?”

I was watching him. I work the streets, I know what addiction looks like, and I was seeing a guy who’d gotten a hit of something that had sunk hooks into him and dragged him out on a cold, mean day to a dead woman’s house in search of cookies. Nobody does that.

Nobody.

Only the look people get when you’ve pulled them over and they think they’re about to pull one over on you was on old Mr. Yeager’s face, and that cop sense kicked in and all of a sudden I knew this wasn’t about cookies. It was… but there was a lot more here, and for some reason I didn’t know, it was important.

Really important.

In no universe are cookies a big deal.

So this was something else. Something was wrong with my picture.

When in doubt, poke the problem with a stick.

“I’m not going to be baking cookies here,” I said. “I’m just going to be going though the attic and the basement, clearing and cleaning, and then I’m going back home.” When I said the word home, it sounded like a lie in my ears. No matter. I was watching his body, watching his eyes.

And I saw a whole lot of panicked crazy go skittering beneath the surface. “Could I buy the recipe from you?” he asked.

The answer to that question came out of my mouth unbidden, instantly, like someone had programmed it there. “Old family recipe,” I said and shook my head.

And he hung his. “That’s what she always said, too.”

And though I could not understand what made me do it, I grabbed my metaphorical stick a little more firmly, and said, “Tell you what. Why don’t you bring those papers by the house for me so I can look them over while I’m cleaning. If you do that, I’ll think about making some more cookies.”

When it came out of my mouth, I knew it was a mistake. No lawyer would say yes to that. There was no guarantee, there was no promise, there was nothing to pin down. It was an utterly one-sided deal.

“All right,” he said, and sighed.

And that gut thing I had going said, Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner. Whatever Mr. Yeager is, he is not a lawyer.

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