Holly Lisle's Blog, page 19

OHIO 5: Far better than average morning: 1001 words, 8202 total

So… The writing flew this morning.

I’m not sure why… but things just clicked. And while they were clicking, the back of my mind was working on the problem of taking books four complete first drafts and one book that as of today is not quite ten percent done (in first draft only, of course), and turning them into pick-up anywhere reads.

And I think I have it. Something that won’t cause massive rewrites during the revision, something that will not include an expository introduction to the series with “In Book One…” “In Book Two…” summaries.

Just a focus on nailing four or five essentials.

The back of my brain was hammering this out while the front of my brain was focusing on getting the days words’ and only poked me with it when I finished them.

So now I’m going to write down what I figured out, so that I don’t lose it.

And then I’m going to see how the New Site/New Forum data move is coming.

Looking very much forward to getting the old site gone and the new site live.

Hope you had a wonderful weekend. 

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The Mot Juste… 361 words, and 7201 total on Ohio 5

There’s the word.

There’s the right word.

And then, there are 361 right words that bring in a character for Book 5 that ties in tightly with what my main character just discovered about her grandmother’s secret activities, and how they affect her town… and her world.

Today did not go quickly. The words did not flow, and they did not fly.

They had to be chipped a few at a time out of the unyielding details behind what I knew I needed, and lots of them got tossed as I fought for the way to get this one very important scene right.

I managed to build the foundation for it, but the plot of this particular book depends on this particular scene. So I’ll come back at it Monday, fresh from a weekend away from words, and take another shot.

I have to walk away now, because Tom Vetter and James Husum and the guy who built a plugin we need are about to do critical website stuff, and I need to be there for that.

I got words, though. And the ones I kept were good ones.

 

OH… YEAH…

I had a revelation this morning. NONE of these Ohio Novels can be numbered. The series has to be “pick up and start from anywhere.”

And I spent some time figuring out what I’ll have to do in the revisions of all five books at once to make that happen. I think I know how to do it with minimal fuss.

Just wish I’d written the first four as stand-alones from the beginning.

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Today was FUN, wordwise.

I discovered some new things about the town yesterday, and today I got to spend some time building those spiffy bits out.

The Lesser God of Barbecue made an appearance.

My MC’s primary ally discovered she knew something he didn’t about the town, at the same time that’s she’s discovered a weird little thing she inherited from her grandmother.

It was a very good day.

And now, having gotten words, I’m off to build pricing boxes for the writing classes again. Because while the shop is not going to open immediately when we take the new site software live, I’m holding over the half-price sale for ten days on the new software so folks who were locked out of the site can still get them. And then all the prices will automatically roll over to full price when the countdown ends.

(The new shopping cart software does some very nice things the old one couldn’t. But it does take some significant set-up.)

I got 630 words, and have 6,842 total on the book, and I continue to love what I’m getting.

And I’ll note that while the first five books will be numbered 1-5, they’ll be the ONLY books in the series that will be better when read in order. Later books in the series will be non-sequential stand-alones than can be read in any order. Including first.

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Done with Ohio 5, Chapter 3: 253 words today, 6216 total (Plus HWC Update)

No surprises today. The rest of the chapter just flowed smoothly from yesterday’s revelation.

Tomorrow, I’ll start chapter four, and probably revisit my existing outline again — because as I have with every single book so far, three chapters in, I have now completely left the outline I had for this book.

This is the process for me.

Outline.

Fight the outline.

Break the outline with something better.

Repeat.

There’s no efficiency in it, other than the efficiency of it being the process that actually works for me.

It lets me get the best stories I’m capable of writing.

It looks really messy. But my finished first draft is (almost) always solid, and I only have to revise once.

*v*v*v*

The classes are finished in the new HollysWritingClasses software, the website and webpages are built, the class sign-up pages are done except for the pricing boxes, and now what the guys have to do is turn off the old site, bring over the new one and its databases (ENORMOUS databases), and turn things on.

I make it sound small and easy, but it isn’t.

So in the next few days, there’s going to be an outage on the live site while we do this. I’m pretty sure I now have all active HWC members on the HWC list, and I’ll be letting you know when things are going to shut down. And then when they’re back up again.

I’m so very ready to be done with this, and to have a new site on new software with great support and frequent updates. It’s time.

The HWC “What do we do with No FORUM?!” page

We’re getting ready to shut down the HollysWritingClasses.com site for its update (This will happen in 0-48 hours… don’t know yet).

But while the site is down, HWC members can ask questions and talk to each other here.

This is not a place to report problems. For that, go to the HWC Help Desk and create a ticket.

This is just so folks can stay in touch with each other until we get back to the forums — keep up with word counts, talk about writing… whatever.

It ain’t perfect, but it’s a lot better than nothing.

Today I found the meaning of something enormous: 888 words today, 5962 total.

Fifth book in the series. The other four are written (but not revised), and I’m almost ten percent of the way through this one…

AND TODAY I found the primary subtheme of the entire five-book arc.

It’s been there all along. It’s been there since the first scene of the first novel in the first draft.

It’s been in every single book.

But TODAY is the first day I saw it — and it took a time-traveling smack on the back of the head from my seventh-grade Ohio History class over at West Branch Junior High back when I was thirteen years old to make me see it.

Parts of what this series and this world I’m building are about have been clear to me from the start. I love Ohio, I have always loved Ohio, and in the forty years I was away from it, I never stopped missing it. This is the dirt I was made of, and the place that made my ancestors even back before this was a state.

That love was, and is, and will be the baseline on which the series is built. Love of a place long-lost, never forgotten, and finally regained.

Not the same when you return as you remembered… because you didn’t see a lot of what was here when you were little.

But some parts of this series have come leaping out at me and grabbed me.

This just slipped up behind me and whispered in my ear… and then chuckled before disappearing back into my subconscious mind.

It’s a huge plot point, so I can’t even hint, dammit.

But it was beautiful to discover what the part of me that works without telling me what’s its doing has been doing while I’ve been writing the parts I DO know about.

I love this job. It’s a nutty, weird job. But I love it.

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Ohio 5: 570 words and a solid (if weird) start on Chapter 3

My MC is out of the house, tucked away someplace weird, and because she is who she is, she is NOT stretched out reading comfortably and nursing the injury that isn’t exactly self-inflicted… 

And I don’t know what she just found.

Don’t know its importance, don’t know why it is where it is, don’t know anything except she’s found something that was important to her grandmother… and that means that in some fashion, it’s important to her.

So, 5,075 words into Book 5, I have a new mystery. And this one needs to tie back to everything from Books 1-4, and start pulling things together.

I don’t know how it’s going to do that. I just know it has to.

Interesting writing days ahead.

Meanwhile, the guys were doing a test setup of the new HollysWritingClasses.com site yesterday, and at the point where that goes smoothly, we’ll be ready to do this for real.

So, with words finished, I’m now heading off to see how close we are to “GO!”

Get Holly’s Free Fiction Sampler, plus Weekly Fiction Updates, and when these books go on sale, get invited to the launch.

Ohio 5: Chapter 2 Finished!

So today went well.

For me, anyway.

It was NOT a nice day for my main character, who experienced pain, and feeling like a jerk (deservedly), and who has been tucked out of the way for the time being with the simple instruction “STAY OUT OF TROUBLE.”

I don’t see that going the way the person who gave her the instruction had hoped. It won’t be because she engages in “voluntary stupitude” in which the character knows the intelligent thing to do and doesn’t do it because she’s an idiot.

Rather, tomorrow something is going to go badly wrong so that she HAS to not do what he told her to do, because if she doesn’t act, worse things will happen than the things that have happened already.

But I have no idea what’s going to go wrong…

I’ll find out how and why she doesn’t do the simple thing she’s supposed to do tomorrow, while I’m writing it.

Right now, stuff is just cooking in the back of my mind.

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409 words on Ohio Five… and the shoe dropped. PLUS a site update.

My MC’s bad day just got a whole lot worse…

But then (as I finally get to bring out into the open a secret story thread that started back in Book 1) I got to add a tiny bit of sunshine to the story.

My poor main character is still going to have a rotten day. But now at least she knows it isn’t as rotten as it could have been.

UPDATE ON THE HollysWritingClasses.com SITE… We’re lined up for the final tests.

Once we’ve done those successfully, we’ll move the site.

The moving part will go quickly. Getting people back in won’t, because we have to start with small groups and fix things that may have broken in the move, and then move in larger groups.

I think we have pretty much everyone now, but for any HWC members who might not have added themselves to the HWC member list, here’s the Member form that adds the HWC MEMBER tag, and that will make sure you get your new-software login instructions and invitation:

 

 

452 words today on Ohio 5… and wicked fun!

There’s hurting characters for the good of the story.

There’s one-upmanship between two characters who have both provably been through some serious shit…

And then there was today, where I laughed my ass of while being Mean To Characters I Love(TM), where the one-upmanship got really, really intense.

 

452 words for the day, 3574 total on Ohio 5 after some days where I didn’t get to do any words at all (because we’re down to the wire on moving the site).

Today… was glorious.

Get Holly’s Free Fiction Sampler, plus Weekly Fiction Updates, and when these books go on sale, get invited to the launch.


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