Author Holly Lisle Has Passed Away, And A Piece Of Me Is Broken

I just learned of this tonight and, although Holly would no doubt be horrified, sobbed for a good 10 – 15 mins, including on the phone to my husband, who – not noted for his knowledge of/familiarity with writerly people – replied with, “Oh, I’m so sorry, I know how much she meant to you.” This makes two people in my life now whom I’ve cried for without knowing them personally: Holly, and Terry Pratchett. I think Holly might be okay with being in that company at least 😀 

Her daughter called her a “[h]ell of a role model and human being.” This. Precisely. I own every nonfiction thing Holly every did; I got up at 2am in our tiny 2-bedroom apartment the night How To Think Sideways launched because there were limited places and I didn’t want to miss out just because I’m in Australia. I saved for months to afford that course, even at the bargain price it originally sold for. 

Holly is responsible for SO much of the writing I did throughout uni (college), which in turn is responsible for the decision to aim for professional writing. I literally would not have the book How To Write Dogs without her, as I wrote it originally for her 33 Worst Mistakes series. Forever indebted to her for that, as it was my first published book. 

And I certainly wouldn’t be the writer I am today without her How To Revise Your Novel course. I’d still be hanging around, utterly clueless and frustrated about how to fix the mess of a first draft my novels often are. In fact, that’s how I learned of her passing: I’m doing HTRYN again right now, I just completed the monastery* today, and was squeeing about it to a friend who’s read the draft: This is going to be SO MUCH BETTER, I told her. It’s so different from the first draft, but with the same heart and soul; you’re going to love it. I’m so glad I have this course to work through – the monastery is both brutal and magical, every damn time.

Oh, my friend replied, I heard Holly passed away. 

Cue frantic googling, and the first thing I saw with the Wikipedia article. “Holly Lisle was”. That past tense was like a knife to my soul. “Holly Lisle was.” 

No. Holly Lisle IS. As Rebecca noted, Holly lives on, an enduring legacy in these courses, in the writing of all her students (like me), in the lives she has transformed by example, in her impeccable teaching skills (I say as a highly skilled high-school English teacher of 13 years), and in the lives we (her students) ourselves will transform through our writing. Holly is a great hulking boulder, hefted into the pond of the world, which may not be a flattering image until you realise that the splash will ripple forever. 

Holly will never be ‘was’. 

Holly is. 

And I will be grateful until the day *I* die… And then my readers will be grateful after that. 

* The monastery is the stage in her revisions where, having spent a good several months assessing your manuscript without changing a thing, you rewrite the entire outline from memory. It is, as I note above, absolutely brutal, but creates magic every. single. time.