Holly Lisle's Blog, page 35

Today went better. Coffee was involved (for my characters) and 1482 words just flowed.

Better yet, I got to include my favorite local restaurant, and a local (fictional) band, and the first meeting between my MC and a character who’s been dancing around the periphery of the story for two and a half novels.

Well, at 40,123 words total on this one, I won’t really be at the halfway point until I hit 45,000 — but I’m pretty close.

Meanwhile, I had fun, my characters had fun, there was scary business, there was some sleight of hand — and you just can’t ask for a better writing day than this one. 

So I won’t. I’ll just appreciate that today was a helluva lot more fun than yesterday, and will roll with tomorrow as it comes.

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

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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The discovery of a beloved grandmother’s legacy

I was not expecting what happened to day. It wasn’t the sentence for this chapter in my life-for-scene outline — I had to write a new LFS sentence just to make sure it wouldn’t break the book when I started writing. But reworking the outline was definitely the right thing.

Along with meeting someone whose going to become increasingly important as the series goes on, my main character discovered that she only ever knew a very small part of who her grandmother had been.

Today, she discovered that one of the secrets hidden in the house she inherited had been sitting out in plain sight since she was a little kid…

And it’s still sitting there, waiting exactly where she left it.

And she’s now finished meeting the guy I’ve been waiting to introduce to her for two-and-a-half books. 

Their meeting didn’t go at all the way I expected.

It went better.

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Ending strong on Friday: 1320 new words – 36,807 total – and a scene I’ve been waiting to write since I started this

Great writing day, my MC and the character who has been hidden inside the story until now finally get to meet… 

And it all worked.

I miss being able to do snippets, because I would have had a great one for today — but I have to keep the pseudonym separate from me until the books have a chance to find an audience in the Urban Fantasy / Fantasy readership.

Today just went really, really well.

A meal, a band, and a song about a guy who rescued a girl long ago and far away…

Today went well. 1,618 words for the day (which was a nice chunk over my objective)… and 35,505 for the book, so well past the first third… But much better than that, they went funnily, and passionately, and a bunch of pieces from the first two books and bits of this one came together in this one scene.

And fit.

I accomplished my main objective with the scene, got to put in some song lyrics from the song I wrote about one of my main characters in Book 2, and got to write the live band who performed and let the reader see for the first time a character that I’ve been writing but keeping in the background in both Book One and Book Two.

I have not yet identified that character to the reader. But I know who it is.

This was a big day, because it held the workings of a critical plot point for the overall five-book series.

And it flew, did what it was supposed to do, and while I was writing it, made me believe.

And made me cry. Just a little.

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Alien technology… blinks. Fun writing day, 1250 words.

You’re writing along, and the story is going just the way you planned, and then out of nowhere (in your plans) guys appear in your main character’s basement with spiffy, shiny gadgets with buttons and sliders and knobs…

And the gadgets have their own legs, so that they can walk around, and eyes… and the eyes blink while watching you.

It was a “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore” moment.

And an excellent writing morning.

Exactly 1250 words, which is the daily goal, a scene I just LOVE, and a set-up that should make it pretty easy for me to jump back in tomorrow.

33,887 words total, three very good hours and change… and now, on to the rest of the day’s list.

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My MC’s world is about to get stranger… and that’s saying a lot. 1433 words today, 32,637 words total, and a meaty scene

I’ve been up and writing since well before seven AM, and today I left myself in a great position to pick up tomorrow right where I left off.

Today’s piece of the story unfolded nicely for me, the coming danger and adventure are closing in, and my MC is finally going to meet someone who’s been important in her life since she arrived in town — only from shadows and corners.

She’s not going to realize the two separate people are in fact just one person for a while yet, but I know it, and I’ve been waiting to write tomorrow’s scene since I realized it had to happen (BUT NOT YET) waaaay back in Book One.

I also had time to do some worldbuilding in my background document (uncounted words), to write out details about a couple of folks that I just discovered this morning, and to fix some early worldbuilding that has gotten better over time, but that I’d forgotten to document.

This is the kind of writing day I love, and I’m so glad I woke up early and couldn’t get back to sleep.

But now, on to the rest of the day’s work. I head off, already excited about getting back into this tomorrow.

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A fine and fruitful Monday: 1400 words, 31,204 total on Book 3, and the “neighbors”…

An already weird world took a turn for the weirder this morning as my MC went for a dangerous run, and carried cookies over to the neighbors’ house as a pretense to being invited in.

I love those days when you go over the word count in flying time, and those days when the work ends on a round number (this is a silly, silly thing, and absolutely nothing to waste time trying to pull off on purpose… but it’s a lot of fun when you look up and see that there you are).

Today I also did a few hundred words of worldbuilding on a separate document so I would know exactly what my MC was doing running past the enemy’s fortress — (doesn’t look like a fortress, of course, because this is set in small-town Ohio, and locally there aren’t any of those).

A registered nurse my character met in worse circumstances showed up, as did her three housemates.

And I managed to bring in a monster from a previous book to help my MC start solving the mystery in the present one.  

It was a fun, funny, weird writing day… and to top it all off, my cat Sheldon invented a new game he can play while I’m working. I sit in a regular office chair at a regular (large, cheap, particle-board, wrap-around) desk, and under the front part of the desk is a large box of hanging files. He discovered that if he sat atop the box, he could swipe at and occasionally catch one or the other of my feet (via my socks and his claws), because when I’m writing hard, I swing them back and forth.

It was funny, and fun, and I gave him treats for doing it, because there are days when the writing isn’t this easy or entertaining, and I wanted to be able to think that there will be other mornings in my future where he’ll play with me when I’m NOT having such a great morning, and his presence will make it better.

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Today’s words funded by my Ko-Fi supporters.

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Almost to 30,000 words (one third), and got a scene I love

While my day has been a bit rocky overall, I came out of my work on Ohio Novel #3 with my character making a tough decision that is going to have major repercussions — mostly good, but some bad — and I got a couple dollops of funny stuff into the story.  

Word count for the day is 1276 (a smidge over my 1250-word daily target), and 29,804 words for the entire manuscript so far. 

And — insert much joy and dancing here — it’s now the weekend. Which, because it has been a weird week, I intend to enjoy. All the ridiculously late snow and freezing weather has once again been replaced by sunshine and mid-50s temperatures, green grass and dandelions, and probably nymphs and faeries dancing on the lawns (though not while anyone is looking, of course).

Meanwhile, I have 49 workdays left on the Ohio Novel #3 project, and I am on target.

And I love what I’m getting, which is a nice note upon which to wrap this up.

I hope you have a great weekend. 

See you Monday.

Day’s chaos not as disruptive as I had feared — 888 words, and a new kind of evil monster

I didn’t get the full three hours — I still have a stack of stuff I have to get done. But I did get one good scene, a decent chunk of words, and a new creature to throw at my good guys that makes my skin crawl.

Keeping this short, because I’d love to finish the other essentials today… 

But I’m now at 28,535 words total, and I’m happy with what I came up with.