Okay I was playing on FTB and was working w/ my mining turtle. to test what i learned so far w/ turtles i made a small program called towerUp.

you type towerUp and then how tall you want it. ex: towerUp 10

so I input towerUp 10 and let it run. It only places three blocks before quitting.

if you can help me, here's the code:
local args = { ... }
local i = 0

while #args .= i do
turtle.place()
turtle.up()
i = i + 1
end

If you can succesfully resolve this issue I'll subscribe to you.