Holly Lisle's Blog, page 89

The Monster Trial

Okay. This sounds completely insane, considering everything else I have going on right now, but while I was showering this morning, I worked out a song, starting with the line, “Don’t ever look at me like I’m the answer to your prayer…”

Worked through most of the lyrics in the shower, realized it was from the point of view of the pivot character in The Longview, (a Cadence Drake spinoff) — the six-novelette series I’m going to write as a demo on putting together a complete series for How To Write A Series.

And weirder, as I was drying my hair, I figured out what that final story has to be, and why, and how it ties the whole thing together. When I realized I was standing there with tears rolling down my cheeks I knew I had it.

Wrote the song down, got a GREAT twist in the bridge…

AND I got the Sentence for the story, which already had the tentative title The Monster Trial:

The Longview owner sends away her captain because he loves her, and he kills a killer on a no-death world in order to be executed on her deathship.

Not what I’d planned for this morning, and not exactly my BWBO, but it sure counts.

Atheism and Freedom of Religion: Thoughts On Independence Day

John Carlton, whose work has done me immeasurable good, and whose blog—The Rant—I read with considerable enthusiasm, has a post up on “Why We Blow Stuff Up On The Fourth Of July.” 

Which is, actually, about the right of freedom of speech in America.

Generally I read without replying. This time, though, I noted that while he was giving deserved attention to the second clause of the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, he had skipped right over that much touchier subject, the first clause, with its guarantee that Congress would make no law regarding the establishment of religion, or restraining the exercise thereof.

So I did post. And because this is not an issue I’ve taken up here before, I’m copying my reply to his thread, and explaining why I, an atheist, am both an atheist and a fervent supporter of freedom of religion.  Read his whole post. It is, as always, well-thought-out and delightfully phrased.

But my response stands alone below.

To answer the first part of your question, I deal with cynics by walking away—cynicism is the art of remaining blind to opportunity and potential by artfully denying their existence. I don’t choose to be blind, but neither do I choose to fight with some idiot over his wish to remain so rather than remove the bag over his head.

As for freedom of speech, it is essential.

But as an atheist, I want to point out that the framers of the Bill of Rights got the order of the provisions of the First Amendment correct when they noted first that:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;”

…and made freedom of speech second.

Which might seem to be a damned odd thing for an atheist to say. But. Religion (or philosophy) is what people think…and in the better class of discussion, debate, reasoning, argument, and policy-making, people think before they speak.

The first item of the First Amendment does nothing less amazing than guarantee freedom of thought—that you can choose to believe, or disbelieve, any damn-fool thing you desire, and the government has no right to forbid you, or to make any laws regarding or restraining the contents of your brain.

Before you can speak freely, you must be able to think freely, to be able to study all options and pursue those you believe to have value.

I was raised the child of lay missionaries, I had an on-the-ground education in comparative religion and watched religion, like sausage, being made, and I discovered by the time I was sixteen that I have a congenital inability to believe that which I know to be untrue.

I came to my own thoughts by hard work and hard study—read the whole Bible end to end several times, read the Koran, read the Book of Mormon, went through the tenets and beliefs of multiple other religions looking for something that did not demand the sacrifice of reason for faith. I am no fan of religions—ANY religions—and vocally so.

But the presence of the first clause of the First Amendment protects our rights to our own minds, and it is no small point that those who argue vehemently for “freedom FROM religion” are arguing for the right to eliminate freedom of thought, of belief, of the right of the individual to choose and own the contents of his own mind.

So, because I am an atheist, and not in spite of it, I’ll make my stand on that portion of Bill of Rights that mandates Freedom of Religion.

I judge it to be in even greater danger now than freedom of speech.

The First Ever How To Think Sideways Anthology #writers #readers

I’m passing this very cool piece of news from my community moderators over at HowToThinkSideways.com

In May, the moderators of Holly’s Forum (that’s us), approached her with the idea of an anthology. With the 5th anniversary of “How to Think Sideways” drawing nearer, it seemed a good idea to match the release date with the anniversary. Holly agreed to the idea and even added a monetary prize for the top stories. After a very, very difficult selection process, we settled on thirty-five stories. It’s a pity that we couldn’t take them all. The scores were so close, we had lengthy discussions and finally went five stories over the 30 story limit we had planned.

With the stories selected and in Holly’s hands to pick a winner, we are proudly presenting to you:

The Adventure of Creation
The Think Sideways Anthology #1 presented by Holly Lisle

35 marvelous short stories by gifted new writers

Follow a girl to the Below-World to slay the Sharkshadow, or help a timid girl to overcome the destructive criticism of her art teacher. Witness a solitary drone on Mars or a naive homunculus struggle to become human. Sew with a mother who lost her daughter in a quilt, defeat super-villains in a bank robbery with an unlikely superhero, or join a great mage in the fire.

In thirty-five imaginative stories, emerging authors present the diversity of their creativity. Each author found a different angle for the unifying theme: The Adventure of Creation. Witness the talent nurtured by writing teacher, Holly Lisle. For the 5th anniversary of her first big writing course, How to Think Sideways, this anthology features the best of her talented students in a great variety of genres.

The eBook and print book will be released on the 24th of July. Help us spread the word. If the anthology is successful, we might do another one next year.

 

I’ll add that I picked the three winners. It took me three rounds and three different elimination processes to get to them, too. Rereading the stories that many times remained fun, interesting, and moving.

The Oddest Great Review I’ve Ever Received: Free Flash Fiction Course #writers

You’ve heard of damning with faint praise. It’s common.

But have you ever heard of praising with loud damns? I hadn’t. But I read this through three or four times, and was laughing out loud by the final go-round.

Here’s the link to a review for my free How To Write Flash Fiction That Doesn’t Suck course…

http://eibhlin.com/writing/free-writing-flash-fiction-that-doesnt-suck-review

And if you didn’t know I offered a free flash fiction course, here’s the link for that as well:

https://howtothinksideways.com/

Upcoming Stories and Classes #writer #reader

I’ve been nearly invisible here for ages because migraines left me with barely enough energy to keep courses running and get some writing done. But a low-sodium diet is proving to have a 1:1 correlation with the migraines—if I accidentally eat something high in sodium, I pay for it with three days of migraines, starting within 24 hours of whatever I ate.

When I manage to avoid the salt, I feel normal. No vertigo. No icepick migraines. No regular migraines.

So if they aren’t curable, the migraines are starting to look like they’ll at least be controllable.

Second, because for the last three or four weeks I’ve been MOSTLY feeling better (you’d be amazed what has a lot of sodium in it, dammit), I’ve moved most of How To Revise Your Novel to the new platform. This is NOT a course upgrade—it’s the identical course, but once I get it up and running, (I’m looking at June 28th as my target goal for opening on the new site) the student discount on HTTS will come back. It will become available to students once they have completed the first month of HTRYN.

Then I’ll move How To Write A Series over.

I’m nearly finished with Create A World Clinic, too, and I’ll bring that out right before I start doing the How To Revise Your Novel Expansion.

Because of the necessity of doing good, complete demos, and equally because of my desire to do the expansion in a timely fashion, I’m going to put off writing The Emerald Sun: Moon & Sun Book Three until I finish the expansion.

The How To Write A Series Expansion, will, instead, be six linked 10,000-word novelettes set in Settled Space, but with mostly different characters. This way, I’ll be able to demo the complete, start-to-finish arc of a series, and all the details of keeping everything running between crossing storylines involving multiple characters.

After that comes the simultaneous writing of The Emerald Sun and the HTTS Walkthrough Completion.

And then I’m taking a frikkin’ vacation.

Learn to fix the biggest mistake writers make in 3 minutes #writers

I put together a fun, but also useful, three-minute writing lesson for you.

I’ve thrown in a free printable PDF lesson with built-in worksheets about how to escape the single worst problem ALL writers face, which you can get if you enjoy the video.

Make sure your sound is on.

I figured this would be fun for Friday.

http://howtothinksideways.com/how-to-fix-the-worst-mistake-writers-make-in-3-minutes/

A chink in the armor of the never-ending migraines?

I’m not here. It’s Saturday, and I take Saturdays off, so I’m not here.

Which is the perfect way to note that I haven’t had a migraine in a week. It has also been not here.

Matt did a bunch of research, and about two weeks ago, we started trying something he came up with to fix this (after trying everything else except medication).

It took about three days to notice results, and another few days for the migraine to go. And after one accidental encounter with the problem substance, I had a brutal migraine the next day…but that cleared by getting back to what I was doing that was working.

Not ready to say more. One week is not enough to declare causation.

But correlation is there.

Going back to my day off.

A Silly Game: Work Excuses That Require More Explanation

So here’s the game.

Pretend you have to explain why you aren’t coming in to work, class, home, or another essential destination, and pretend that (for whatever reason) your boss, spouse, professor—whoever has the right to the full tale—is absolutely, positively going to find out some portion of the truth.

You don’t have the time, the desire, or perhaps police permission to go into the whole explanation, so you hone it down to thirty or fewer words. But the excuse you come up with HAS to keep your phone call recipient awake until he or she gets the full explanation.

“I can’t come in today because…” is a given. “Gotta go now!” is a given. You don’t have to count those words.

Just come up with three amazing excuses that will require some major explanation later. And keep them PG 13 clean.

Here are my three examples:

I CAN’T COME IN TO WORK TODAY BECAUSE:

I’m on my way to the ER because I caught my nipple in a chain-link fence.
The National Guard has cordoned off the space ship and my house is inside the perimeter.
The other tiger is still loose.

GOTTA GO NOW!

Removed almost 10,000 folks from my Writing Tips newsletter

It was not the easiest thing I’ve ever done. There’s something comforting about thinking you’re talking to 21,000+ people at a time.

But at the point where folks haven’t opened a single email you’ve sent in six months, you’re NOT talking to them.

So if you look at the green Writing Tips sign-up form in the sidebar, you’ll see that instead of 21,779 people on the list, I now have 12,217. (Well, I just looked at at the moment it shows 13,000 and change…but the database shows the lower number, so I’m guessing it will take a little time for the form to catch up to my massive deletion).

I’ll go through my other newsletters soon, and I’ll do the same clean-out process. But I wanted to note that if you’re on the Writing Tips newsletter, you can double-check to make sure you’re STILL on it by opening any email from me and clicking the “Change Subscriber Options” link at the bottom.

If you’re there and subscribed, good. If you’re there and Unsubscribed, you can click the Subscribed button to start getting emails again.

If you get an error page, you didn’t show up as having read anything for more than six months. You can sign-up again here if you’d like:

http://hollylisle.com/writer-updates-newsletter/

I’m getting back to adding new tips and answers to letters from readers to the list.

Results of the “Help I’m Looking For” Writers’ Survey

I did a survey of folks on my Writing Tips newsletter, many of whom have dropped out of regular readership.

Many of whom have a good reason for doing so.

The migraines don’t prevent me from working (most of the time) because I am tenacious and I’ll put up with a lot of pain before I give up. (This is, after all, how I got published in the first place.) This post, for example, is the sort of thing I can do with a migraine.

But the part of me that is creative crawls off in a hole and cries during migraines. Coming up with writing tips is big-C Creative. It does not play well with migraines. And when I’ve been feeling halfway decent, I’ve been working on stuff that pays the bills.

But I want to get back to doing cool things with the newsletter. So:

I asked the following four questions:

Where are you in your writing progress right now?

Answers I got:

598 (76.6%) said, “I’m working on creating my first work”
128 (16.4%) said, “I’ve finished projects, but I don’t know how to revise them”
46 (5.9%) said, “I’m self-publishing regularly, but would like to do it better”
8 (1%) said, “I’ve given up–I’ve moved on to other interests”

Receiving the following emails would help me reach my writing goals:

Answers I got (these were multiple choice, so totals are more than 100%):

956 said, “Writing tips once a month”
707 said, “Questions from readers that you answer once a month”
679 said, “Links to blog posts discussing aspects of writing that interest me (select preferred topics from SUBJECTS list)
490 said, “Notice of new writing articles on your site”
219 said, “Shop coupons”

The writing SUBJECTS I most need help with are:

Answers I got (these were multiple choice, so totals are more than 100%):

845 said, “Writing skills info: plotting, characterization, scene development, dialogue, worldbuilding, story structure and pacing, etc.”
627 said, “Advanced skills: career development, novel revision, series development and management, etc.”
619 said, “Functional skills: time management, motivation, scheduling writing time, developing project deadlines, etc.”
498 said, “Basic creative start-up info: how to get ideas, how to start stories, how to make myself write, etc.”
310 said, “Basic technical start-up info: software, hardware, document formatting, contact instruction such as how to write query letters, etc.”
88 said, “Something else” From this, I’ve received a bunch of new course requests, including a LOT on self-publishing, self-promoting, some advanced writing topics, some absolute beginner writing topics…. I’m putting the requests into an inspiration folder that I can pull from when I get ready to create new courses. As always, I’ll run ideas through here first to make sure enough people are interested to make it worth the investment in my time and effort. There are some GREAT ideas in there.

Do you resent me including information on my available novels and writing courses in your free emails?

Answers were:

1056 (99.5%) said, “No.”
5 (0.5%) said “Yes. (Please cancel your subscription. While I’m willing to offer free help to struggling writers, I can only do this if I get paid for the novels and courses I create. If you resent my inclusion of links to the work that allows me to help you, you don’t want my help. Unsubscribe instructions are below.)”

So far, about a hundred others however, most of whom did not fill out the survey, unsubscribed.

So what does this mean?


First, it means that I have some wonderful folks on my list—and for those of you who sent good wishes on the migraines, thank you very much.

Second, it means that I’m going to be getting back to work on adding new stuff to the writing tips list.

Folks in Year One on the list will get a new writing tip every week. Folks who have been with me for more than a year should start looking for one writing tip a month, plus one other cool content email—either a round-up of writers questions and answers, or a discussion of some aspect of writing or publishing I’m currently dealing with, or a link to a blog discussion here, or one of the other things folks would find useful.
I’ll continue to include links to courses I offer that meet the needs students have noted above. Aside from new releases, which I’ll promote regularly for a week or two, the links will be attached to content emails, and they’ll just fly by, so if you see something you like, go after it when you see it.

I’m going to be adding what I’m thinking of as Specific Task Classes to HowToThinkSideways.com.

These will be classes that use existing courses: Character Clinic, for example. You get Character Clinic separately, and then you do a Specific Task Class to create (as an example only) the Hero, Sidekick, Romantic Interest, and Villain for your next story.

Or a class built around Plot Clinic that will help folks set up plots for related 2500-word short stories to sell as limited-run series.

For Specific Task Classes (I’ll come up with a better name, I promise), you bring your own textbook, but you’ll get worksheets, audio, demos, a work board for live interaction with other students. Not sure what else. My objective with these is to keep the price low.

Here’s the link to sign up for the newsletter, in case you didn’t know I offered it:

http://hollylisle.com/writer-updates-newsletter/

Oh, if you want to ask a writing question for the newsletter (these will ONLY be answered in the newsletter, and I’ll pick the best questions to answer every month), ask them at THIS link: http://novelwritingschool.com/support2/

Comments?

Questions?