Holly Lisle's Blog, page 6

Redundantly redundant redundancy…

Argh. I had to do a read-through today to pick up where I left off last week, and doing so, I discovered that I’d managed to cover the same ground in two different places, from two different perspectives… but from the same character viewpoint (because these are first-person single-viewpoint) novels.

So today was me reading, and cussing, and trying to figure out what to keep from the two separate approaches.

And in spite of working on this for hours, I’m just shy of actually being in the hole. A net gain of a mere 41 words, in spite of working for hours. And that’s because I’ve written my ass off.

There will still be more coming chunks coming out of this tomorrow.

But that’s tomorrow. For now, I’m done.

Happy Writing… and some love

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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It’s “Make Yourself Cry” Day…

I got good words. 997, to be exact. And I love what I got today.

But some of what I wrote was pulled out of my real life, and part of it was me getting to do in fiction something I never had the opportunity to do in real life, because my real childhood was a never-ending series of ill-considered and poorly thought-out moves into bad places and worse places, with no consideration — EVER — for the people those dumb-and-dumber moves left behind.

I wrote today the scene I would have given anything to live through in real life, and writing it helped.

It also happens to be a really solid scene right before TSGD (The Shit Goes Down)… which is what I get to write tomorrow.

So not only am I happy with what I got today, but I’m really excited about tomorrow.

Now, though, on to all the other work that must be done.

 

WITH ONE RATHER DROLL OBSERVATION… (ADDED AFTER THE EMAIL WENT OUT)

I’ve been working on the same part of the book for three days, and had not noticed (until I read my own blog posts for these last three days, that I have, in fact, made myself cry three damn days in a row.

Here’s the bright news on that. These are in general, pretty funny books.

There is just this one little section here where I gave my hero some bits of my own childhood in her past (heavily altered), and threw in one person in my life who meant the world to me. And she and that one special person got to do the one thing I never did. Which is why there were tears.

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Ohio 3, and the Shoe-Drop Moment

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.

Today was BIG… good words, but also landed a huge PIVOT scene

And made myself cry.

That might not seem like a big deal. But this was a crucial scene in the book in which my MC has just come through an massive ordeal, and found one moment in time in which she got to say goodbye to her person in the world — the one who’d meant the most to her in her life…

And what she had to do in order to do that was horrific. And then, at the end, she discovers this crazy, tiny little gift that she had all along, except she hadn’t known it was a gift until right at that moment.

And BAM. Serious, embarrassing waterworks.

Very glad I had the office to myself when I did this, because I hate to cry, and even worse hate to do it in front of anyone else.

Thing is, there are parts of your life that you tear out of yourself and translate into fiction. And the ones that hurt back when they were real hurt again when they show up on the page.

They do make for a pretty spiffy moment in the plot, though.

That which cannot be unseen… 45,783 and 699 for the day.

This was a tough scene to write. It was emotional, and painful, and just mean. But it allowed me to bring together two characters who need to build a relationship that’s going to affect the rest of the novels…

And it sets me up to bring BACK a character who has been silent so far in this book, but who is crucial to the entire series, and to my MC.

I’m satisfied that I got this right, and I worked out what I’m going to be writing tomorrow. So… GOOD writing day.

Just not an easy one.

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Heading in — teeth bared, knives out… because the BIG bad is coming

Rolled out of bed early — couldn’t sleep. Got the shower, drank the coffee, and cleared all the office shit first, because today I’m heading in to the BIG MIDDLE SCENE, where everything changes.

I’m taking a deep breath. I have the Rock Gods going, because this section of the book needs my full focus — so if you want to hear what I’m hearing, you can listen too. YouTube Link — I doubt that Disturbed would be considered work-safe, but they’re rocket fuel for writing through the fury.

And while there’s a helluva lot of funny stuff in this novel, we are now at the place where fully justified rage comes ripping out of the walls looking for whoever or whatever is coming after my heroes. There will probably be some funny stuff IN today’s words… but it’s probably going to end up be battlefield “We who are about to die salute you,” said to the head on the pike humor.

Today was a heavy, brutal rip-through… but I like what I got in the end

I hit a part of the novel today that I got way, way wrong in first draft. And while I’d estimate that in FACT I wrote close to 2000 words — over a period of three straight hours of hauling ass — what I was left with after ripping out that big first-draft nosedive into concrete was a forward gain of 954 words.

I’m okay with that. This time, the plot outline is clicking, the bad things are happening to characters, not to the plot – and I made myself cry.

When the stuff you’re writing digs into YOU, and you find yourself typing through tears as you get to the end of the scene, odds are pretty good that you nailed it. At least in concept, if not perfectly in execution.

The counts: 44,220 words total. The part I get to mark as progress after ripping out most of a two-thousand-ish word first-draft chapter — and then making back the loss and showing a bit of profit at the end — is 954 words.

Works for me.

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

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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Big Progress, Scary Scene on Ohio 3 today.

According to Scrivener’s word counter, I got 5,508 words today. About 2000 of them were brand new. The others were stuff I managed to save out of the previous version… and while I’m pretty sure some of those will be going away tomorrow, I don’t think it will be all that many. THIS part of the first draft of Ohio 3 was the part I got right.

I didn’t get anything done on my second project. But that’s okay. We have a bunch of chores we have to do today, and I’m off to take care of those.

Tomorrow, after I get my Ohio words, I’ll put an hour or so into the secret project.