Holly Lisle's Blog, page 61

Two Sticks and Some String, and a Cat: Building Becca’s Noro Sweater

In May, my daughter Becky bought me Noro yarn for Mother’s Day. Gorgeous stuff, pure wool, the kind of yarn where you open the bag, shove your face against the yarn, inhale, and sigh with happiness.

But it had to sit there for a while, because…

Well, LIFE first, and then with yarn, you have to get to know it for a while before you can start to see what it might become. (More on that in a bit.)

But in July, I had an idea of what to do with it. Nothing solid, just “Sweater for Becky.”

So I called her. Said, “Got some questions for you.”

She was wary. (Smart, my kid. Questions from mothers always require caution.)

The conversation went like this.

“Cardigan or Pullover?”

“Cardigan… And I like where this is going.”

“Fitted or oversized?”

“Oversized.”

“Pockets or no pockets.”

“Pockets.”

And that was it. I started playing with the yarn, doing some cast-ons and some rip-backs until I considered Becky.

Test squares, I thought.

I was walking through JoAnn Fabrics to pick up a few more knitting markers, and discovered these buttons, which were, I thought, the same colors as the Noro Becky’d gotten me.

Bought them, took them home, and…

They. Were. Perfect. 

Not just perfect for the sweater. Perfect for HER. Not the same color, not tiny, not timid.

They were bright and bold and happy.

Meanwhile, the test squares had become some coherent pieces.

And Sheldon had taken up his position as “Associate Knitter in Charge of String Pouncing.” Note the feigned disinterest.

So, anyway, I got the raw body pieces together, and shoved one of the sweaters I’d made for myself inside to make sure I had the armholes and pockets in the right places.

I don’t use patterns, you see. I think up what I want the sweater to look like, I consider the couple of measurements I need to make sure it’ll fit the person I’m making in for, I test what I’m building against my numbers as I knit. It’s an always-interesting exercise in three-dimensional artifact construction, and the way I do it, it takes a little math, and sometimes a sketch on paper (though not this time), and a little twiddling at the beginning when I’m working out the bugs.

Example—getting the left-side squares on the back to slant in the opposite direction from the squares on the right required me to knit from bottom to top rather than top to bottom, from left square to right rather than right square to left, and to use an entirely different cast-on.

With the main body pieces made and knitted together, I discovered that I was not going to have enough yarn to finish the sweater, however… and I also discovered that Webs was out of that color, and that I couldn’t find any more elsewhere.

So I… er… “shopped the stash,” and found the very first good yarn I’d ever bought. Elspeth Lavold wool-silk, very dark purple, that back when we were living in Georgia, was my step away from Red Heart. Only not, because once I got it, I discovered that I was going to have to buy a swift and a yarn winder before I could use it, and it was sport weight, which I’d never worked with. And by the time I got the yarn winder and the swift and smaller needles, I’d discovered Noro.

So the Elspeth Lavold has been sitting in the stash for, at this point, about thirteen years.

I knitted on the left button placket with doubled Elspeth Lavold, and sewed on the buttons so I’d know where the buttonholes would go and how big they’re need to be when I moved to the other side. 

And ended up with this.

At which point my impatient daughter said, “Oooooh! Vest! I want it now.”

Vest. Is. Not. Cardigan.

I made her wait.

Figured out how to use the Elspeth Lavold for detail stuff, and started working out the sleeves.

And ended with some spiffy cuffs in the Elspeth Lavold that work into the diamond shapes at the top with some fancy ribbed decreases, and finished the collar and the hem, all with Kitchener bind-offs. (Makes it look smoother and of higher quality. And is a lot of fun to do.)

Looks done, right?

Not so much. On the right side facing you, you can see what it looks like with the ends sewn in. EVERYTHING else is what it looks like everywhere but that one little haven of done-ness.

Meanwhile, I’m getting, “But I want it NooowOwwOwww!” from my impatience oldest child.

Seriously…

And at the point where I started sewing in ends, Sheldon, who had managed to restrain himself throughout most of the construction, suddenly lost his mind and became Lunatic Cat of Button-Chewing.Note the pretense of being uninterested.

Note the little stretch that moves him closer.

Note the button attack. In all fairness, the button did call him a name.

A bad name.

Dog, possibly.

Anyway, I got the ends sewn in on the front…

And the back…

And washed and blocked it…

And waited three days for it to dry…

Drying with towels — the Noro dried quickly, but the Elspeth Lavold took forever.

But Still Not Done…

Cardigan.

Oversized.

POCKETS…

Which took an age to knit, and another age to sew in while keeping the stitches hidden from the front.

 

Sweater, inside out, with pockets sewn in. They’re big, and deep, and they went in AFTER I’d blocked the sweater so they would not cause any puckering.

And now it’s done.

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1021 words on The Owner’s Tale, and Lesson 7 of How to Write Short Stories

I’m writing The Owner’s Tale a little little differently than I usually work.  

I generally just do my first draft from beginning to end, but this time, because of the complexity of this story, I worked out the stages in the life of the Longview’s owner, and am having the owner tell the story of each stage as one short chapter.

When I get this story told, I’ll go through and add in interstitial chapters for Herog and Cady, Melie and Shay, and show these in counterpoint to the story the owner is telling.

I might possibly add in a couple other folks, too, though I have mostly wrapped up the stories of the other people in this series.

But I now have 5,524 words of what I’m planning as a 30,000 word story, and a got 1021 of those words today.

And I like what I got.

So, on to Lesson 7 of How to Write Short Stories, where I’m 2260 word into demonstrating by dissection the process of working huge amounts of time into short stories, and have the stories still hold together. I’m having a lot of fun with this… except for the parts that keep making me cry.

Debugging Plot: Episode 3 of Alone in a Room with Invisible People

So here’s the gig on Debugging a Plot

Alone in a Room with Invisible People my newer-writer daughter and me, a long-time published writer, talking about writing, revising and publishing fiction.

In this episode, we’re talking about how plots go wrong while you’re writing them — and some things you can do to fix them.

We discuss:

How an antagonist is not always a villain
Limitations and why they’re important
How to start debugging
Why Reading like a Reader is important for a Writer
Why it’s bad when you get caught up in ‘Writer over Reader’
Why not to write to trends

 

Share, rate and subscribe for weekly episodes!

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Mentioned in the Podcast

Armor-ella
Armageddon
Sixth Sense
Lost in Space Reboot
How To Write a Series

 

Social Links

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aiarwip

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alonewithinvisiblepeople/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/aiarwip

Our Website: https://www.aiarwip.com/ https://www.alonewithinvisiblepeople.com/

HollysWritingClasses: https://hollyswritingclasses.com/

Holly’s Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/hollylisle/

Holly’s Personal Page: https://www.hollylisle.com/

Holly’s Blog: https://hollylisle.com/weblog/

Rebecca’s Personal Page: https://www.rebeccagalardo.com/

Rebecca’s Writing Blog: https://rebeccagalardowords.wordpress.com/

 

Credits:

Producer – Rebecca Galardo.  Sponsor – Holly’sWritingClasses.com.  Intro written by Holly Lisle and performed by Mark Hermann.

Our podcast is 100% free and sponsored only by Holly’s Writing Classes.

Fung, Keto, Before and After Pics

Just a couple of pictures of me, one taken in June of 2007, when I was 46, and one taken of me today, at 57.

I’m in about the same pose, and wearing the same sweater, which I knitted back in 2007.

The sweater is in the picture because this is the ONLY picture I have of me back then, because while I was not yet at my top weight, I was at that point pretty close.

So… 2007.

And now today…

Different houses, eleven years difference in my age, some gray in my hair now. And Sheldon, the Only Cat.

Fung. Keto. No cheating. I know I look older (and yeah, I am older) but I feel about thirty years younger than I did eleven years ago.

Building A Better Character — Alone In A Room With Invisible People, Episode #2

Becky and I have our second episode live now. We jumped all over writing better characters, where it’s easy to make mistakes, how to prevent them, how to fix them…

We had fun, and there are a few stories in this episode about how crazy characters can make you — and your story.

Here’s what we cover:

Basing Characters off of real people
What ‘Character’ is and is not and what it does
Digging deeper into character creation
Characters that surprise in good and bad ways and what to do about them

Share, rate and subscribe for weekly episodes!

iTunes  |  Stitcher  |  Podbean

 

Mentioned in the Podcast

Mark Hermann: markhvoice@gmail.com or find him as MarkHermannVA On Fiverr.com
Hunting the Corrigan’s Blood
Warpaint
Fire in the Mist
How to Motivate Yourself
Syd Field
The Minimalists

 

Social Links

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aiarwip

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alonewithinvisiblepeople/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/aiarwip

Our Website: https://www.aiarwip.com/

https://www.alonewithinvisiblepeople.com/

HollysWritingClasses: https://hollyswritingclasses.com/

Holly’s Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/hollylisle/

Holly’s Personal Page: https://www.hollylisle.com/

Holly’s Blog: https://hollylisle.com/weblog/

Rebecca’s Personal Page: https://www.rebeccagalardo.com/

Rebecca’s Writing Blog: https://rebeccagalardowords.wordpress.com/

Credits:

Producer – Rebecca Galardo.

Sponsor – Holly’sWritingClasses.com.

Intro written by Holly Lisle and performed by Mark Hermann.

Our podcast is 100% free and sponsored only by Holly’s Writing Classes.

Fung Fasting Report #5: The Breakthrough Month

This was the month in which I broke through my 3-days fasting block.

Went four days easily and comfortably on just water, coffee, and a daily multivitamin, and I think I could have done five, but we had a roast that needed to be cooked and eaten before it went bad.

I fasted yesterday just because I felt like it, and the jury is still out on whether or not I’ll want to eat today. I probably will, but we’ll see. I don’t want my body to get complacent, or to have a regular schedule it can count on.

This was a month in which I dealt with massive stresses, both financial and technical, as we completed all but the clean-up part of getting the HollysWritingClasses.com site out of beta.

It was the month in which — if I were ever going to revert to the secret stress eating that, along with a one-time diet of gummy bears and Diet Coke, pushed me over (probably way over) 220 lbs — I would have.

It was a rough damn month from start to late middle. But it finished pretty well, and so did I.

Waist just prior to adopting keto and fasting: 42” (106.7 cm)

Waist today: 31” (78.7 cm) — 13” (33 cm)

But that’s just a number.

I look in the mirror and for the first time in years, my face is the “right” face — I see the person I was at 25, before my life took that first careening left turn into Bad Shitville.

I don’t look twenty-five, of course.

If you’re fifty-seven and you do, you’ve either made a deal with the devil or a plastic surgeon, and I’m not sure which would be more detrimental to you in the long run.

But I know this face. It has the right angles, the right plains, the right jaw. I have laugh lines around my eyes, but I’d already decided when I was a teenager that I’d rather have laugh lines than frown lines.

And from the point where I decided that, I’ve lived my life with that in mind, always looking for humor even in the middle of darkness and ugliness.

And while I have a lot of laugh lines, I don’t have any frown lines.

I know this body. It runs up stairs, and lopes across the parking lot. It launches me out of bed with a quick rolling snap, from lying down to standing with nothing in between. It picks up socks and underwear with its toes, flips them into my hand with a deft little move we practiced after seeing Matt do it when we first got together, and thinking that was really cool.

It moves the way I remember it moving — fast and smooth and without pain.

I know this brain. It wakes up in the morning ready to go, full of ideas and conversations, full of focus. Full of smart-ass commentary on everydamnthing.

I am more focused, quicker to accomplish tasks. I fall asleep easier. I wake up easier.

I’m fifty-seven, and I felt like THIS when I was twenty-five.

On food…

Feasting is nice on occasion, and we had our little 4th of July feast with Matt’s family, in which I ate vegan cookies with sugar in them without regret. (They were delicious.)

Cookies without guilt or regret. Imagine that.

I’m eating straight keto with fewer than 20 carbs per day on a 23:1 intermittent fasting schedule.

So one day of eating outside of keto in a month when I eat one healthy meal and NO snacks every day… except for the days when I fast is not a sin, or a cause for guilt.

It is a little moment of celebration in a life where celebration comes at the end of hard work, and focus, and dedication.

I’m still hanging in with my old clothes, because I HATE shopping, and the tucks I’ve done work — but everything is baggy, and even the smaller old clothes I had shoved into the back of the closet with that wistful “I used to be this size” stigma radiating off of them are now back in use, and are too loose.

I’ll eventually have to stop being a miser and go buy some damn clothes.

But not today. Probably not next month, either.

There is something wonderful about being both healthy and energetic AND too small for your skinny clothes, and besides…

I still have scissors and thread, and I know how to use ‘em.

Alone in a Room with Invisible People: Our New Podcast

My daughter Rebecca and I get together every Sunday to talk. Knit. Show our goofy cats to each other.

We do this online, because we currently live about 600 miles apart.

But we also talk about writing. A lot.

And at one point a couple months ago, we were having this really animated discussion and bouncing ideas around on the book she was working on, and she said, “You know, I wish other people could be a part of the writing stuff we talk about.”

And a week or so after that, she said, “You know, you could do a podcast, and I could produce it for you.”

And I said, “I already did a podcast once, and it died an ugly death because I got sick of listening to myself talk.”

But I agreed that it would be really cool if all the stuff we were discussing about our fiction, and about writing fiction could be saved for folks to listen too.

An then I had an idea, and a week after that, I said, “I figured out the podcast. It’ll be both of us talking to each other about writing. About what we’re writing, and about how it’s going, and about how to do it better.

“Because I’ve been doing this for years, but you just finished your first real revision on your first serious written with intent to publish novel. So while you’ve sold your shorter work, you’re at the beginning of pursuing a career as a novelist, and I’ve done that both commercially and as an indie. So with both of us in there, it will have BOTH our perspectives.”

And the week after that, we started setting things up, and last week, we did the podcast intro, and the first show.

We get together every week.

We talk.

A lot.

And for an hour or so each week, we’ll be talking exclusively about what we’re writing, how we’re writing it, answering listener questions about your writing or our fiction (yes, you HAVE met the Longview’s owner in both Hunting the Corrigan’s Blood and Warpaint)… doing what we did in the first full episode.

You can be a part of our lively conversations about how our own fiction is coming, about writing fiction, and about how to do it better.

(To maintain sound quality, and to be able to eliminate some of my worst spirals downward into Spectacular Swearing, we will NOT be broadcasting live…)

Whether you’re a reader, a writer, or both, you’ve invited to sit in, listen to what we discuss, and leave questions about our fiction or about writing fiction on our blog, Alone in a Room with Invisible People.

I hope you’ll join us every week — and if you love the show, please take a moment to rate us on iTunes and elsewhere, subscribe to the podcast, and to share us with other folks.

Our Website:

https://www.aiarwip.com/ https://www.alonewithinvisiblepeople.com/

https://www.aloneinaroomwithinvisiblepeople.com/

Subscribe

iTunes:  https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/alone-in-a-room-with-invisible-people/id1416188676

Stitcher:  https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/rebecca-galardo/alone-in-a-room-with-invisible-people

PodBean:  https://hollylisle.podbean.com

Social Links

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aiarwip

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Holly’s Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/hollylisle/

Holly’s Personal Page: https://www.hollylisle.com/

Holly’s Blog: https://hollylisle.com/weblog/

Rebecca’s Personal Page: https://www.rebeccagalardo.com/

Rebecca’s Writing Blog: https://rebeccagalardowords.wordpress.com/

No Man’s Sky: They Nailed It!

In spite of everything (and there’s a lot of “everything” going on right now), I took the entire day off yesterday to play a video game.

Not just any video game, though. The one for which I went out and bought a Playstation several years ago, and the one for which I dug out my X-Box and bought a NEW copy of the same game I bought two full-price copies of the day it went on sale the first time.

Why would I buy three copies of the same game?

First, because…

…when I was eleven and really understood who I was for the first time, I came up with this prayer:

Now I lay me down to sleep

I pray the Lord my soul to keep

If I should die before I wake

Please don’t make me go to heaven

Let me go to space.

The coda of that prayer included a request for a pony, and I was already well on my way to atheism at that point, and by praying at all was basically covering my bases.

But I wanted to go to space more than anything, including the horse.

And when I found out that to go to space, you had to be REALLY good at math (and I suck at math to this day) I was devastated.

I never considered that being female might be an obstacle — not even in 1970-71. I never let it be for anything else that I wanted that was within the reach of possibility.

I got the other things I wanted in my life. My one person to spend my life with, my kids, writing science fiction for a living. (Along with a lot of other stuff.)

Second, because…

…the guys who built the game stood by it even when, on launch, the most astonishing collection of asshats and douchebags crawled out of the woodwork to complain about everything.

I bought this third copy to support their quiet resolve to not let Sony’s premature forced launch kill something wonderful, and I got out my dusty X-Box and bought it for that system SPECIFICALLY to reward them for sticking with it in spite of Sony’s fuck-headed premature launch.

Third, because…

…it is as close as I’ll ever get to that kid’s yearning prayer, and the closest I’ll ever get to the dream.

Wake up on an alien planet. Fix your spaceship. Go to space. Explore strange new worlds and alien life. Find mysteries. Watch wonders. Be the best of what we as human beings are — creatures who can think and wonder and create and explore and achieve.

So yesterday morning at two minutes past nine, when the game went live for me, I woke up on an alien planet. Struggled with horrific weather, made it to my spaceship, and began exploring the mysteries.

As always, I started with a clean slate. No saves, complete do-over, the chance to see the game brand new and fresh.

And it’s magnificent.

I flew through the rings of a planet, built tools, discovered ruins, built a little wood shack next to an isolated middle-of-nowhere shop kiosk as my first base, and while I was building, watched a herd of antelope-y creatures gallop past me, chased by a dinosaur-ish beast.

And they were a herd. They moved together until obstacles in their path forced them to split, then wheel in different directions… at which point the hunter split off a group, and killed and ate one of the smaller ones, and then the bigger one that had stayed close to the smaller one.

While exploring a crash site, some enormous, heavy-bodied bat-winged nightmares flew overhead, and I stopped, stunned, to watch them (in spite of taking quite a few rads while doing it).

I started over several times, because I was trying different things, seeing how they worked — and I finally settled on my “keeper” world and system at around four or five in the afternoon. Deleted the other saves, and settled in. I’m playing slowly. Not racing out to chase the game objectives. I’m getting a feel for my world, my system (which has a lot of planets… and I have not yet been to any of them).

For me, this game is about finding life forms, playing with terrain manipulation, building stuff. Dealing with the intelligent aliens. Learning the languages. Hunting for the secrets.

Flying from planet to planet, stepping on new worlds, discovering what’s out there.

Stopping to stare at something unlike anything I’ve ever seen before flying overhead, thinking, “God, I hope that’s not carnivorous.”

Knowing that what I’m seeing, no one else anywhere has ever seen.

I’ll get out into deep space eventually, but at this point in my current game, I haven’t even left my home planet yet.

I’m still discovering species (and worrying a bit about the big-ass T-Rexy thing that has set up housekeeping in my neighborhood).

I played until 11 PM with just the one break for the daily meal.

Forgot to take screenshots, so I don’t have any pictures for you.

But I’ll get them.

Here’s the thing: I’m essentially a loner — you can’t be a writer if you don’t enjoy spending a lot of your time alone inside your own head.

So I have not looked at or investigated the multiplayer options. 

They may be wonderful. They might give you everything you want from the game. And I might eventually try that part of the game myself.

I don’t know if I will, though.

So for now at least, I cannot report anything about that very new part of No Man’s Sky. It may be wonderful, too.

But I got what I was looking for without it. I got an amazing, delightful, deep, beautiful, challenging trip to space.

So In Closing…

To the guys at Hello Games who did not let themselves be crushed by the herd of “me too” shitweasels who ripped them apart when No Man’s Sky first launched — who instead of quitting, stood by what they were creating, and who kept making it better, and better, and better, until now it is magnificent:

Thank you. Your dedication, determination, integrity, and courage have been inspirational, and your work is worthy of admiration and deep praise.

From one player who has been there since the beginning… and who’s been waiting for this my whole life… thank you for giving me space.

Vipers’ Nest is live

The book went live about a week, week and a half ago. Maybe longer?

I’ve been buried in getting the HollysWritingClasses.com site done, getting the affiliate program live, and it has been wall-to-wall, morning to night work for the last couple weeks.

So while I did remember to publish the story, I missed mentioning my own book launch. Anywhere. To anyone.

But this time I went wide, and part of what I’ve been doing was taking as much of the rest of my stuff wide as I could.

So here are the WIDE links (which means you can find these books in a bunch of different stores for the first time).

Longview 1-5 IN ORDER:

Born from Fire: https://books2read.com/born-from-fire
Suzee Delight: https://books2read.com/the-selling-of-suzee-delight
Philosopher Gambit: https://books2read.com/the-philosopher-gambit
Gunslinger Moon: https://books2read.com/gunslinger-moon
NEW! Vipers’ Nest: https://books2read.com/vipers-nest

If your read it and love it, I’d deeply appreciate a review on your bookstore of choice.

Vipers’ Nest bug-hunts: DONE!

What I thought would take one day has instead taken over two weeks and more than six butt-in-chair fully focused hours a day each day of those two weeks.

And I know that I will have introduced some new bugs in fixing the old bugs.

It happens. ALWAYS.

But I have to quit now. HAVE to.

This is as good as I can make the book (and at 38,000 words, it’s just under the low-end cutoff for a novel, so I’m not even uncomfortable in calling it a book instead of a story) in the time I have and with the resources I have.

I now have to move on to How to Write Short Stories lessons and How to Write a Novel class planning.

In a perfect universe, everyone would have infinite time and infinite resources in order to create infinite perfection.

My clock ticks loudly, though.

So I’m going to put the book together in Mobi, ePub, and PDF formats, and put it live on all the places I can. Today.

Like I said, I’m going wide from the very beginning with this stuff from now on. Will post a link as soon as I have one for those of you interested.