Getting Punchy

As I reach the quarter mark on a second read-through of my novelette for HTRYN, I've noticed a trend in my revision notes. I'm mocking myself rather mercilessly. Everytime I get sick of a particularly melodramatic plot point or character, I start sassing off about mustache-twirling and EBILness. It's fun and twisted. I mean, it's good not to take yourself too seriously, but I seem to be having a snarkfest at my own expense. At least it's keeping things entertaning, which is more than I can say for my novelette. (See what I mean?)

HTRYN: Lesson 1 Accomplished

Because I haven't done too great a job working a consistent writing schedule into my life what with making the DDJ into a career, I decided to sign up for Holly Lisle's "How to Revise Your Novel" course. It's a six-month-long intense look at a finished draft and weekly lessons to take that steaming pile o' crap to the manuscript you wanted and that you can submit for publication without infinite tweaking. I've got three drafts that are truly good stories but are atrocities in their current condition and need significant work to get them out the door. I wanted a structure to accomplish that work and some help in pulling together all the various skills I've acquired and advice I've heard over the past decade of writing.

I just finished Lesson One. Seeing as how this class started Turkey Day weekend and, as I mentioned, the lessons are weekly...well, you can do the math. It was hard but good work (a line-by-line reading of the draft, without changing a damn thing and only noting where everything falls to pieces in several different areas). And I just started in to Lesson Two, which requires yet another line-by-line reading of the draft. I'm very very glad I chose to do this course on the 85-page novellette that I want to turn into a long novella or short novel instead of the 100,000-word novel I finished last year before I started my job. Mind you, I want to fix that novel, but I think I might've abandoned the course with the enormity of that task with this sort of intensity.

Tomorrow is really the last day of my vacation I have to make significant progress on the rest of the course lessons to date. Here's hoping I can complete Lesson Two.

Eat Well. Be Safe. And Shop!!

My dad, stepmother, and grandmother are due in any minute now, so I'm going to sign off for the Turkey Day weekend. I might be back on Sunday. Or not.

While I'm gone, take a look at these fine new products from Holly Lisle. This is a great time to work through a writing block or to stock up on products to help you nail your 2008 writing goals.

Just the How to Beat Writers Block course:



Just the 21 Ways to Get Yourself Writing When Your Life Just Exploded book:



The bundle of both above items as well as all of the "Create A" Clinics (a seriously good deal):



Holly's got a lot of great new things in the works, and the How to Beat Writer's Block audio course (plus bundled goodies) is the first of those. Her clinics have been great writing tools for me (I can't speak highly enough of the Create a Language Clinic), so check these out and maybe tell people where to shop for Christmas (if you do that, have them go through an affiliate--not necessarily me--so you can give someone else a holiday bonus; I recommend Lazette Gifford, click on either Ruins or Muse in her sidebar to take you to the shop through her link).

A Whale of a Sale!

Holly wanted to change her luck, so she decided to put her writing clinic books (and a fiction book) on sale. This means you can get your mitts on the Create a Character Clinic, or the Create a Language Clinic, or the Create a Culture Clinic, or Hunting for the Corrigan's Blood, or any combination of the four, or ALL FOUR for cheaper than you could last week!

Seriously, gentle readers, the clinics are great. The Language and Culture clinics are excellent for not only helping you create a believable fictional world, but also for keeping your thoughts on that world organized for reference and future use. The Character clinic (which I haven't played around with as much) still struck me as an excellent way to develop character motivations and backstories, something which can be difficult if you have a character who enjoys playing mute.

As for the fiction novel, I haven't read it fully yet, but it starts out with our heroine in close quarters with a corpse! What's not to like?

Go. Buy. Enjoy.

Ooo, Shiny! New Items at HollyShop!

As you saw by my previous post and my updated sidebar, the HollyShop has a few new items up for your reading pleasure. I haven't had a chance to write up reviews for all the items as yet, but I did want to make a special mention about Holly Lisle's Create a Character Clinic and her worldbuilding series.



The CCC is a fab book. I have breezed through it without doing the exercises, more to get a feel for technique, advice, and general characterization trends. It's a great book for helping you get to the heart of your characters (which is what I was using it for), and it looks to be an excellent way to create characters from scratch should you need that first inspirational push with an idea or to just break past a block. There's also a great section at the end that discusses the traditional gaffes of writing characters (looking in a mirror to describe your MC, etc.) and how they can be spun into something unique and valuable to your story. An excellent writing tool.



This is the first installment of Holly's worldbuilding series, and I must say that I am eager to get my hands on this gem. Putting together a language for Velorin wasn't very easy. I had pulled together info from a couple of sites that seemed authoritative, but it just didn't click well for me. I like the basics of what I developed, but I really wanted a step-by-step process for generating a believable language. As soon as this whole thesis insanity is gone, I will be picking this up for use with SoZ. You can look here and here for an inside peak at this book. (Keep in mind that those are draft snippets, but the heart of the content will still be in the final product.) I will be posting a more intense review as soon as I can.

By the way, if you'd like to make a buck or two in support of some great writing resources and excellent e-fiction, read this. Sure, I'd like you to join up for the affiliate program by following the "KHazell" link, but I'm willing to share the love and give you a choice of Holly's list there.

Zette Gifford's Two-Year Novel Course

I highly recommend this book. I've been taking this course in its on-line format via Forward Motion. Zette is a very gifted teacher and writer, and using her course has helped me better organize my own writing process. This is a bit of an odd review as I haven't actually read the book, but I know its content from the course. I started the course just a couple of weeks before I found out I was pregnant, and I chose Soz as the novel I was going to write in the course. Well, then Drew came along and made it very difficult to actually write the novel during the course, but this course prodded the Muse into high-gear regarding Velorin and the novel ideas I have for that world. Keep in mind that this is an idea that I had been trying to coax into bloom for two years without luck.

The first part of the course is geared toward intensive worldbuilding. I still haven't addressed all the factors she mentions, but they're there in the back of my mind, percolating and simmering and gathering juice for a richer world. One of the best things about the course is that Zette is adamant about her students finding their own best process. She provides several different approaches to writing a novel, focusing of course on the one that works best for her but offering ways it can be adjusted to suit individual writing needs. The exercises for the worldbuilding part of the course were very helpful in solidifying the ideas I had for Velorin and in making my world even richer.

In short, the course has helped me break 60K, think ahead enough so I'm not writing completely in the dark, develop a rich background, tease out characters, and generate a more cohesive and coherent approach to writing a novel. And that was just in the first year, which is the material on which this book is based. Stay tuned for the second year's material in a second book.

Helping Another Writer

Many aspiring writers think that getting published equates to getting a bunch of canvas bags with big dollar signs on them. Get that Great American Novel into the publishing houses, and get busy moving into your mansion, buying your fancy cars, shopping at Cartier, etc. That only happens for a very small percentage of writers. I'd say less than one percent, but that's a SWAG (Scientific Wild-Ass Guess). Most writers slug it out every day to earn enough money to keep them solvent for the next year, or even month. And, in the case of an amazing woman who manages to write a ton as well as run Forward Motion, Vision, and a host of other writing-related things, she's down to getting enough money to make it through the next day. I'd like to wave a magic wand and give Zette those canvas bags with dollar signs--filled with the green stuff, of course. I'm going to do the next best thing in this mundane world: direct interested folks to buy her e-book and do so using her HollyShop affiliate link, and not mine. Just click over to Zette's site, and then click on the Shop.HollyLisle.com sidebar box. I tried to figure out how to give you her affiliate link directly, but I don't want to do anything that might screw up her comission stats and whatnot.

While you're there and giving a little commission to Zette in addition to royalties for buying her book, check out Hunting the Corrigan's Blood by Holly Lisle. It's a e-book reprint that starts out with the MC in close quarters with a corpse. Talk about a hook.

All told, you'll spend less than $14 for two books that are both non-traditional (and, if you ask me, worth checking out for that reason alone for market research purposes), one by an established print author, and another by an established electronic author. And you'll get those warm fuzzies for helping out an author in serious need.

Writing: The Hunting Metaphor

Lynn Viehl (aka S.L. Viehl, aka Jessica Hall) is an extraordinarily prolific writer. She routinely writes at least five books a year, all for paying markets. Last year, she wrote nine. Did I mention that she also has rheumatoid arthritis and has to dictate her novels? No, I'm not kidding. As a former moderator of the Forward Motion think tank, on-line class instructor, yahoo writing group leader, and blogger extraordinaire, Lynn has spent a lot of time helping aspiring writers learn and improve their craft. Me included. Now she's written an e-book to help writers improve their productivity.

Way of the Cheetah is a quick read, full of helpful, easy-to-apply hints, and it's as entertaining as Lynn's voice always is. In addition to the basic tips that are standard fare in many general writing how-to books (how to develop a schedule and stick to it), Lynn also blends in some of the emotional/mental analysis that make Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way such an amazing book. But Lynn doesn't stop there. She also provides a chapter on how to maintain writing equipment and how to store your writing for a minimum of data loss headaches. She finishes up the handy advice with a chapter on physical health maintenance and its impact on writing. At the end of each chapter, she has several exercises to help incorporate the her advice into your writing world. These exercises range from the simple to the advanced, depending on where you might be at in your writing journey and in life in general.

I enjoyed Lynn's no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is look at writing beyond just getting the words on the page. While not every tip she has may be applicable to every writer, I found that all of her advice helped me analyze my own process and gave me ideas for improving it. This great resource for maximizing your output is available for download here.

Another Writing Resource

Lynn Viehl has written a book on improving your productivity. It's called Way of the Cheetah and it's available for download at HollyShop. I bought it on Monday, and the book is a great way to help you make the most of the time you have to write and the way you write. I doubt I'll ever come close to Lynn's stunning nine novels in a year output, but any improvement is a good thing. Check it out!

Character Resource

Holly Lisle has been putting together an on-line shop for e-books by herself and by other authors. I've been helping to beta-test the shop, and it'll be going live tomorrow. Right now, you can buy Holly's Create a Character Clinic as part of the preview of the shop. And if you click the HollyShop link on my sidebar to get there and decide to buy the CCC, then I'll get a small commission. And if you like the shop and its concept, you can start earning a commission as well by becoming an affiliate.

The CCC is something I would've linked to and recommended anyway as Holly's writing advice as always been very helpful to me, but it's nice that she gave me and others a chance to make a buck of said recommendations. This shop looks like it has the potential to offer a lot of great writing resources and even some e-fiction. Check it out.

Interesting Vocabulary

Amazing how having a kid alters the words you use every day--both words you use in your mind and words you use when talking to others. I don't even want to count the number of times I've said "poop" and "poopy". And the phrase "peed his onesie" gets used much more often than I want--especially because it involves frequent laundry loads. Thankfully, though, "golden shower" has only been uttered twice since Drew's birthday. The word "burp" features prominently, as does "nap". Speaking of, I'm going to try to catch an hour now while the boy is sleeping and then do some writing stuff this afternoon now that I've taken care of the on-line stuff.

But before I go, I had meant to link to some good news of Holly's. She's going to self-pub a workshop booklet thingy on creating characters. She's hoping to get it out in print and e-book format early next year. I'm looking forward to it.

Now, time for the nap.