‘Twas a fine day in writing land… with vengeance…

By Holly Lisle

You know how you have heroes who you watch take a beating from the world, and get trampled by minions who’ve taken over something they’ve created? And you watch the over-throwing bastards who trample them ruin all the good stuff they made, and make a complete mess of this wonderful thing they put into the world that you loved?

No?

Well… for me, that’s a thing. And today I told a bit of that kind of story in Chapter 2 of Ohio 4 — and while I got angry all over again that stupid arrogance of that sort is endemic in businesses, and that anyone who dares to take a company public and put it into the hands of a board of directors is ASKING for disaster, and begging to see whatever he or she made wonderful turned into absolute crap…

It does happen.

And I figure the world has a place for cautionary tales, too, doesn’t it?

So while today’s little episode is just a tiny, minor, couple-of-scenes side story in the novel, I was very happy to write it.

And I am very happy to give this secondary character guy of mine a second chance, fueled by the knowledge that the people who didn’t build the company (those boards of directors) couldn’t give a shit about the company they were put in charge of. And he loves what he did, and will love it again.

To this fictional board of directors, that company is just stock options, and cutting costs, and raking in their own profits at the expense of employees and customers.

Meanwhile, my secondary-character guy has love, and passion, and crazy-wide knowledge, and brilliant skills, and drive.

And now, he has a good friend in LOW places. (Little in joke. It will make senses when the books come out.)


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The Other Shoe Dropped — Ohio 4 and the Friday “Say WHAT?!”

By Holly Lisle

In the first version of these novels, I had one main character who I was having do a lot of chasing around because my main character was being stubbornly stupid about an activity that was bad for her — except she refused to see it.

I made her smarter.

And because she stopped doing stubbornly stupid things in Book 2, my VERY important character disappeared from the Book 2.

And then, because she stayed smarter, from Book 3.

He’s still massively important to the story.

And this morning, I was outlining him into the next scene, and realized it had been a while since I’d written him…

So I searched back through the first three novels.

And. Yeah. He was well-represented in one. Then gone completely in two and three.

TWO whole books.

So while I’m resting and relaxing over the weekend, I’m also going to be brainstorming how to make him relevant to her my MC’s more intelligent current activities, so I can put him back to work.

He’s crucial for the series. So I need to get this right. His being in those earlier two books HAS TO MATTER, because in this book, he has EPIC work to do.

So this can’t just be folks bumping into him at WalMart, or the equivalent.

I’m so annoyed at myself.

But… it’s FRIDAY. So having discovered my oversight, I’m now heading off to relax for a bit.


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Technically, I finished Ohio 3 this morning…

By Holly Lisle

I’ll start my read-through, Monday. And I am considering the possibility of a final very short chapter to point the book toward Book 4.

I have the empty file sitting in my template.

But I’m not sure the “summation” chapter is needed, and I won’t know until I’ve finished the read-through.

The book is currently 57,040 words long, and will gain a few thousand words during revision as I find places where I wrote thin. (It always happens in first draft, especially to me.)

Meanwhile, I made myself laugh writing the ending.

ANYWAY… I’m looking forward to outlining Ohio 4 starting on Monday, working off of what I’ve now built into the first three novels, and seeing if there’s anything in the first draft of Ohio 4 that will be worth saving.

I’m not holding my breath on that. But I did find some things worth keeping from the first drafts on 1, 2, and 3. So it could happen.

Have a fantastic weekend!

I’m looking forward to mine.


•·.·´`·.·•·.·´`·.·•·.·´`·.·•·.·´`·.·•
My daily words are funded by my Ko-Fi supporters.

All supporters are thanked by name (withheld by request) in
each book’s acknowledgements.
To add your support, use the orange Support me button
on the bottom left corner of this page.
•·.·´`·.·•·.·´`·.·•·.·´`·.·•·.·´`·.·•


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


Evil Afoot — 2077 words, and I got a nice bit of a cliffhanger at the end

By Holly Lisle

Very pleased with the nasty situation in which I’ve dumped my MC — she’s going to have a rough rest of the week, too.

Evil is a foot (it left its footprint all over everydamnthing, in fact…) and my MC is in the process of using what she discovered to lead the bad guys into helping her.

So, with that done, I’m now going to work for a bit on the new Big Course for Writers I’m putting together.

Not going to discuss the course, or give hints about what it is. I’ll have it pretty much done when I take it live.

It will fill a big hole in my current classes, though.


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A tricky bit to figure out for tomorrow… BUT done for today.

By Holly Lisle

Tomorrow my MC has to figure out how to contact (and then rescue) someone important trapped behind enemy lines without breaking the rules that forbid her from having any contact with the enemy.

I already know how she’s going to do this. I just need to figure out how to make it smooth, and clean, and coherent.

But today was good — today I put the discovery that this guy exists in front of her.

Word count: 1984 words for the day, 53,496 for the book… and I’m happy with what I got.

Meanwhile, however, with fiction done, I’m going to do more planning on some important nonfiction I’m working out.

And then I’m going to try to get rid of a headache that has been plaguing me on and off ever since winter and spring started duking it out for the Most Annoying Weather crown.


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Happy Writing… and some love

By Holly Lisle

My MC has discovered that she is not alone in the world, or the universe… and today I finally got to do some of the happy stuff with that.

If I’d been able to keep all the words from today’s scene, the word count would have been a lot bigger. But I had to rip out a chunk, so I got 880 that I could keep, and 49,500 (and actual round number on BOTH stats today).

And I fell in love with the story and the MC and the MC’s new (very temporary) house guest all over again.

* * *


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Ohio 3, and the Shoe-Drop Moment

By Holly Lisle

There’s the “make yourself cry” moment, and there was some of that today. I did, indeed, make myself cry. Again.

There was a bit of making myself laugh.

There was giving my character one moment I would take in a heartbeat if someone could just stop the world and roll back time.

And there was the bit that you couldn’t even pay me to sit through watching in a movie in a well-lit room.

So… big story day, and the moment where the other shoe dropped gave me a terrific place to pick up tomorrow.

So now, on to the OTHER STUFF.

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Got ALL of Chapter 7 today — 4080 words, and JOY! (And a total count of 43,265)

By Holly Lisle

Today’s writing turned into what’s mostly a dark, mean chapter — there’s a lot of bad stuff going on for my MC and someone really important to her.

Except for this one luminous, beautiful moment that made come together and just really sing.

This was one of the chapters I got very close to right in the previous draft. And the key to it was a moment from my own childhood, when I was very young — probably no more than four or five — and was watching my mother hang laundry on a line on a late-spring morning.

That doesn’t sound like a scene from a horrifying adventure — and it wasn’t. It was just the thing my MC hung onto while being basically devoured by the adventure.

Happy, happy writing day today — lot of new words.

What I didn’t get was ANYTHING on the new big course I’m building. I got sucked into Ohio, and the words, and lost all track of time, and just fell in love while also scaring my own socks off.

So tomorrow might be a pure writing-a-writing-class day, to make up for not doing that today.


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Good OHIO 3 words, a new neighbor, a weird twist… and DANGER — 1233 words, 34,447 total

By Holly Lisle

I cannot believe how fast this scene came together — and this wasn’t even anything I pulled out of the first draft.

This was all new, all scary, and creepy in a way that I didn’t manage in the first run through this book. I didn’t see it coming… but I cannot wait to get back in and do more of this tomorrow.

Today, however, I still have plenty of time to work on the SECRET NONFICTION PROJECT. So I’m going to wrap up the outlining on that, and then start putting some of the pieces together.


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It’s been a good writing week… but today was EPIC — 4220 words, and a major plot twist

By Holly Lisle

When your fingers are moving so fast you can’t quite keep up with them, because you cannot wait to see what’s going to happen next, that could be described as a GREAT writing day.

That was today. And holy crap, I love what I got.

I was MEAN today.

Bad things happened to a character I love — and I don’t know EXACTLY what’s happened to her yet, but I’m hoping I’ll get to find out at least some of it tomorrow.

This was not pantsing, by the way. This was part of my carefully built line-for-scene outline, because (yes, OH, YES) I did learn very well not to pants novels after the epic fail I had when I tried it last time.

Today’s line-for-scene Sentence just took me to a much, much bigger and meaner version of the scene I’d planned, with higher stakes than I’d ever considered.

When you have to drag yourself away from work because you still have other work to do, and when you already can’t wait to roll your ass out of bed at O-dark-hundred tomorrow because that’s when you get to do it again?

That’s a good day.


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