The Deeper Side of …. Cell Phones?

By Holly Lisle

Okay, so he had the good taste to like Talyn. But I like his blog. He’s funny as hell.

And today, Cranky Phone Guy is ragging on massive corporations, which is something I can really get behind.

WARNING: If you are easily offended by words, don’t look. He uses lots of them, and some of them are appropriately rude.

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


Scrivener by Another Scrivener Lover

By Holly Lisle

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


A Hang-Up in the Plotting Course

By Holly Lisle

I know this isn’t going to reach everyone who has signed up for it, but the autoresponder that sends out the plotting course lessons has died an ugly death.

Either today or tomorrow (IF we can get cron working in the new e-mail program), I’ll be sending out an invitation letter to everyone who was on the plotting course list, sending instructions on how you can either sign up for the whole e-mail course again, or pick it up from lesson five, for that very large group of people which was about halfway through when the autoresponder died.

I know this will mean at least one or two duplicate lessons for most of you, and I apologize deeply for the inconvenience.

As a note, if any of you are ever in the market for an autoresponder, AVOID AT ALL COSTS the program MyAutoresponderPro, which has a documented “known error” that dumps everyone on the list on January first every year, and which will then re-dump them every time you put them back into the list with their old information intact.

This charming detail is NOT documented in MyAutoresponderPro’s sales literature, of course. Just FYI.

NEW INFO: 1 PM

Plot Course invites will not go out today. I’m having cron issues with the new program, and tech support is in Australia, so we’re on opposite schedules. It may, in fact, take a couple of days and perhaps even a complete reinstall of the software by the code creators to get everything up and running.

This means the newsletter may be on hold, too.

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


Sunrise: Moonrise

By Holly Lisle

I got a great sunrise this morning. I’m in the middle of words—just about exactly in the middle, in fact, and oddly, am writing about Genna’s first moonrise in reach of the moon in three months. Genna never had an issue with moonrises until she found herself on a moonroad.

Now, she’s discovering she has a bit of a problem.

Not me, though. The sunrise is a beautiful mix of purple clouds and orange-y-pink sky that has turned the white fur on the throat and paws of the cat in the window a radiant peach. Fresh night air, a fan, the music from the BioShock orchestral score going—you can legally download the orchestral score (.zip file — 23 MB) for free from 2K Games, the producer—and the words are finding me.

I love mornings.

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


Scrivener, and your comments

By Holly Lisle

First, I just discovered this in Scrivener (I’m a jump-in-and-use-it, figure-it-out-as-I-go software user, so it always takes me a while to figure out the full capabilities of a new piece of software).

Project Targets Window

This is the Project Targets window, which allows me to see not only the wordcount for my complete document, but also how far I am on my way to my word goal for the day.

Since the document window itself lets me see the wordcount for each section I’m working on, I’m able to tell whether I’m running short or long on each tool I’m working out while still knowing how I’m doing overall. It’s wonderful.

Also wonderful—your comments about plotting, both in the Time for your stories thread, and in your comments on the intro. You’ve managed to remind me of things I’d overlooked in outlining the book, and it will have some new sections and new material because of this. Thank you.

If your plot issues haven’t been addressed by anyone yet, please write them down. I may have already planned to cover them, but maybe not.

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


Where have you been all my life, WriteItNow? (updated)

By Holly Lisle

I only recommend things I use and love, which is why I frequently mention how much I love Inspiration, and rarely say anything about Word (use it, hate it).

I almost never find anything I love, or even like, where writing software is concerned. I’ve tried a lot of it, and most of it is an enormous waste of money. So when my agent forwarded me an envelope containing writing software, I was cynical, to say the least.

Ah, the difference a day makes. In twenty-four hours, I have gone from “Yeah, yeah, yet another useless writer’s tool to try,” to “Oh. My. God. Somebody knew what I needed.”

The tool is WriteItNow, the platform is either Windows or Mac OS X (including Intel versions–it works just fine on mine), the price is $37.55 US, and let me tell you why it’s cool. Why it’s necessary. Why it will ease your writing burdens.

  • Everything you need, you can see in the left-hand column.

    I do not remember the majority of my character names, place names, or language and worldbuilding names when I’m writing a book. Part of this is that I do books with lots of characters and detailed worldbuilding, part of it is a short-term memory issue, and I’ve been dealing with both parts of this equation for my entire writing career. I’ve always dealt with it by keeping my maps pinned to a nearby wall or board (place names), covering my computer with sticky notes (character names, ideas, world details), and keeping my language vocabulary sheets on the desk while I’m writing (vocabulary). With WriteItNow, I added every Osji vocabulary word and special worldbuilding term to notes (I found them by doing a spellcheck of the already-written chapters I imported—the whole process took just a few minutes). Found my character and place names in the manuscript the same way, and added them to Characters and Locations respectively. Now I look left, and the names and terms I need are right there. But it gets better than this.

  • This program is a perfect adjunct to the Create A Character Clinic and the Create A Culture Clinic.

    I went through my Character Clinic questions and developed each character in the Characters section of program. Then—HA!—I exported my notes (Export/Text…check all backgrounding boxes, then go to note you want, export) into beautifully formatted printed pages that went into my RUBY KEY notebook. Ditto Culture stuff—most of that went into Ideas. This gave me a nicely organized (typed) notebook that is also a perfect backup for the rest of the MOON AND SUN series (HARDCOPY BACKUPS WILL SAVE YOUR WRITING), since now all the information I need is also right in the writing program. But it still gets better than this.

  • This works with my notecarding process.

    Every category is sortable by alpha, reverse alpha, or clicking on an event, location, or whatever and pushing up and down arrows to move it around. So you can sort characters alphabetically or by their importance in the story (what I do), sort locations by when they show up in the story, how important they are, or by name, sort ideas and notes any old way you please. And…and…and…for me this is the big one. You can dump a bunch of ideas for events into the program by title only (just click in the body of the text and your title is added), brainstorming things you think you want to put into the story. And THEN you can move them around to your heart’s content, until they land in an order that works for you. But even yet more wonderfulness awaits. Because……

  • Everything links to everything.

    I linked my culture notes to character names, linked ideas to events, linked locations to chapters. I added relationship links to my characters, added birth and death dates, created a timeline by adding the first event in the book and giving it a date, and then creating an event for the ending and giving it a date. Connected characters to the events in which they particpated. Spent an extra couple of seconds guesstimating the times that each event started and ended (there are little click-it clocks and calendars [even including BC dates] in events to make this whole process a no brainer.)

    And then I checked the charts. Yes. WriteItNow generates charts, and you can see if you have one person in two places at the same time. You can see if it would be impossible to get from point A to point B in the given time. You can see if somebody who’s dead experiences a miraculous resurrection two days later because you forgot you killed him. You can put dates on those not-yet-in-the-story events you notecarded in the step above and see how long it will take your characters to get through the story. I cannot begin to explain how huge this is. How beautiful.

    But it isn’t everything. There is, in fact, even more.

  • You’re stuck. You don’t know what to do next. Help arrives in the form of dice.

    UPFRONT DISCLAIMER:
    I am the most anti-random-generator person on the planet. I do not flip coins to decide character genders, I do not randomly generate names, I loathe random-generator plots. Basically, if you can randomly generate it, I want nothing to do with it, because I like worlds where the pieces fit, and I have found than random generators do a horrible job of making the pieces fit.

    For those who like such things, WriteItNow offers a slightly-better-than-average random character generator (go to Character, click the dice icon [yeah, it’s only a single die, but “die icon” sounded like something you would never, under any circumstances, want to click]) that will give you a name; a birthdate; an already-configured personality slider for Health, Wealth, Happiness, Friendliness, Generosity, Aggression, Extroversion, and Caring; and a description like: “Bud is of average height, wiry and thuggish. His hair is very short, light brown and unruly. As a child he was aggressive. Bud is interesting and goofy. He loves ‘The Three Musketeers’ by Alexandre Dumas. Bud likes bacon strips. He loses sleep thinking about social standing. In summary he is very excitable,” This description is copied directly from the program.

    I’ll never use the random character generator.

    But WriteItNow does one random-generation thing that I find intriguing enough that I may try it out from time to time. Go to Ideas. Click the dice icon. By drawing from what you’ve already developed (and occasionally pitching in stuff that is wildly out of place), the program will offer up new ideas. Example: “Oris is injured and can’t carry out his duties. Could The Cat be less rational? Create an outline for this idea by dictating to a friend.” Sometimes, a couple of off-the-wall questions can kick you loose from your stuckness. I figure it’s worth a try.

    Is that everything, then? Not a chance.

  • You can track submissions.

    And in a very cool, very organized way. And even that ain’t all.

  • You can see how long people have known each other, and what their relationships are.

    Not only that, but you can see how those dates overlap in a chart page specifically for relationships. The program will tell you how old your folks are, will keep track of gender if you remember to click gender in the Characters section, and will also remind you that someone is dead, and tell you how long that person has been dead, in relationship to your story time.

  • I’ve used the program for one work day.

    I’m betting there’s more wonderful stuff I haven’t even found yet.

So…

Is it perfect?

NOTE: Comments pending. Just got a note from Rob, who created this masterpiece, addressing the three issues I had with the program. He’s already modified the Windows version of the program and the new version will be available later today. Mac version will follow.

Talk about WOW.

The wordcount chapter at a time and inconvenient issue:

WriteItNow Wordcount

The single-space type issue AND the no-blue-background/white text issue:

New Options

WriteItNow new line-spacing buttons

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


2YN: The Two-Year Novel Course–Year One, by Lazette Gifford

By Holly Lisle

Two Year Novel Course: Set 1 (2YN) (English Edition ...I’m delighted to be able to present 2YN: The Two-Year Novel Course–Year One, by Lazette Gifford. This is the e-book form of Zette’s wildly successful, standing-room only online course on Forward Motion that takes writers step by step from the very first idea for writing a novel to the day it ships off to the editor or publisher. Book One (469 pages, $9.95) is available now, and Zette is working on Book Two, which will cover the second year of the course.

This comprehensive, sane, and fun writing course is the answer to the question “How do I write a novel?”–from coming up with ideas all the way through to publication. Gifford, a writer, editor, and associate publisher, and the owner of the Forward Motion Writers’ Community, guides you one logical step at a time through every step of writing your novel. From making sure your idea is a good one (or coming up with a new idea), through developing your characters, building your world, outlining your story, writing your first draft, rethinking and reworking your second draft, doing final edits, and finally sending your work off to an editor or publisher, Gifford makes sure you’ll never need to ask the dreaded question “What do I do now?”

Two Year Novel Course: Set 1 (2YN) (English Edition ...

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


And … and … Serenity!

By Holly Lisle

Wow. Just … wow.

Spoilers would be criminal, so you won’t find them here. If you haven’t watched Firefly, Serenity will be a good, exciting, and comprehensible movie. If, however, you’ve seen the series, it becomes breathtaking.

So … what you do is, you buy or rent or talk a good friend into renting the whole series, you sit up one night and watch it from front to back (this can be done — I’ve done it), and then you go see the movie. Because it is too damned good a movie for you not to know how very, very, transcendentally good it is.

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


And Serenity

By Holly Lisle

I’m a huge fan of Joss Whedon’s work, and above all, of Firefly, the one show that, if it returned to television, would actually lure me back to sitting through advertisements to watch it. (In the last ten years, the only other two shows I actually made time to watch when they were being broadcast were Buffy, the Vampire Slayer and Angel, which my two older kids and I showed up for faithfully during their entire runs.) There are other shows on television that I like: Alias, Rescue Me, The Shield. But I don’t like them enough to tolerate television shills and endless advertising to see them. I just wait until the DVD sets come out, and watch them that way.

Whedon is different. I’ve found in his television work the same touch of grace that I’ve found in some of my favorite authors — Theodore Sturgeon, Clifford Simak, Lawrence Block when he’s writing Matt Scudder. Whedon isn’t just there for the story. He’s in there for something deeper, searching for transcendence and transformation, and you walk away from his stories with more than you took into them. Whedon’s storytelling has grown and gotten deeper; the arc from Buffy through Angel to Firefly demonstrates a writer who keeps pushing himself to be better, who keeps digging deeper for characters and themes and stories, and who keeps daring to take chances.

Today, Serenity, the first movie that originated from the Firefly series, debuts in our area. We’re going to be there. I’m excited.

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


Oh, God, Oh, God, The Sky Is Falling

By Holly Lisle

Since the early 1980s, the civilized world has been crushed beneath sheets of onrushing glacial ice. We’ve watched in horror as the world’s great cities have fallen beneath those relentless, grinding masses, as the lights have gone out in heartbreaking, poignant flickers, overrun by darkness that will not retreat for thousands of years, if ever.

Here we sit, in our caves, the few survivors of a once-populous world, and … What? The world isn’t covered in sheets of ice, cities aren’t ground to rubble beneath the onrushing glaciers, we aren’t all dead? Sonuvabitch. If only that had happened, we could have been spared Wham! and glam-rock.

But the world did end on January 1, 2000. Here we are, our civilization crushed by our foolish dependence on computers, living in caves and starting fires by banging rocks together and …. and … Dammit. We missed that one, too?

For those of you who missed the Ice Age that glaciated the populated world in the early 1980s, or the devastation of Y2K, be sure to catch the exciting hysteria and fun panic of your very own chance to die horribly in ten years.

Fascinatingly enough, the end of the world is always ten years from now. Or at least on a Number Ending In Zero. In the early seventies, we were ten years from the ice age. Y2K — many zeroes. Now we’re ten years from a melt-down. If you’re getting a bit suspicious of the magic sky-is-falling God Hates Decimals doom mark (and yeah, you should be), take the time to read Michael Crichton’s The State of Fear. I’d already figured out global warming was hype before I read the book. (I was about thirteen when I read that in ten years everything and everyone I loved was going to be living in perpetual snow. And I was one of those jackasses who thought the carefully documented disaster scenario of Y2K was plausible.) Burn me once, shame on you. Burn me twice, shame on me. Burn me three times … I don’t think so, pals. I started doing my own research.

But if the end of the world is new territory for you — and with it, the people who make a whole lot of money and gain a whole lot of power when you buy into their scenarios — you’ll appreciate a novel that is massively and comprehensively researched, footnoted, appendixed, and intelligent. And a writer who doesn’t claim to have all the answers, but who is very, very good at pointing out the lies told by those who do claim to.

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