On February 24, 2021 at noon, I will speak at the Tyler Public Library’s Writing Club Facebook Group about “Writing Wonder.” Think about it as adding sparkle to your worldbuilding. If you are a member of the group, you can see me speak and join in on the fun writing prompts here: {link}
Blog
We’ve been talking about Personal Creeds in church lately, so I thought I’d share my own personal creed:
I believe that love can conquer hate, that kindness can break barriers and that we should try to leave the world better than we found it.
I believe that we should respect our fellow human beings, regardless of their race, gender identity, or sexual orientation, and that we should reach out to help the poor and the powerless.
I believe in the power and the magic of the written word, the satisfaction that comes from hard work, and the comfort we derive from our family and friends.
I believe that pain is always going to find us in some form or fashion and that how we react to that pain determines our path in life. I choose not to wallow in it, to always try my hardest to accomplish what I say I am going to do, and to not just find the light in darkness, but persistently stumble towards it.
Every person owns a beautiful story; I learn best by listening, not judging. By learning about another, I learn about myself. I strive every moment of my life to make myself better to the best of my ability, to share all that I learn in that process that all may profit by it, to take what comes with a smile and without loss of courage, to be considerate of people and things in everything I say and do, to appreciate beauty everywhere I look, and to find the best in others.
What is one thing that reminds you of your grandmother?
I only had one official grandmother growing up, as my mom’s mom had died before she even got married. Something that reminds me of my dad’s mom is those little tiny rocking chairs for little kids. She had one on her porch that my sister and I weren’t allowed to use because she kept it around for the pastor’s daughter to sit in when she visited. Why? I don’t know. She never really liked us; I’ve always thought it was most likely because we were adopted and therefore not really related to her.
I always considered my cousins other grandmother my grandmother, too. She had a bajillion grandkids of her own, but she was always very nice to me and my sister. One year at Christmas she gave me a bell ornament, which I have out year round. When she passed away, my aunt gave me a scrapbook her mother made of photos of me from various events and a bunch of notes and cards I’d sent her over the years. I miss her.
I spoke today at the Tyler Public Library’s Writing Club Facebook Group on “Setting New Year Goals” for writing and writing life. It went really well! If you are a member of the group, you can see the replay of the live video here: {link}
I will speak at the Tyler Public Library’s Writing Club Facebook Group on January 6, 2021 about “New Year’s Goal Setting” geared towards making good writing goals. If you are a member of the group, you can see me speak and join in on the fun writing prompts here: {link} If you’re not a member, come join us anyway. We’re fun people and membership is free to anyone anywhere!
I spoke today at the Tyler Public Library’s Writing Club Facebook Group about “New Adult versus Young Adult Literature.” It went really well! If you are a member of the group, you can see the replay of the live video here: {link}
On December 9th, 2020, I will be speaking at the Tyler Public Library’s Writing Club Facebook Group on “Differences Between New Adult and Young Adult Fiction.” Come join us!
I had that one really great writing day last week and then it all dried up. When I say “dried up,” I don’t mean that no words came to mind…not exactly. I was just too cranky to find the words and let them out.
It started with a migraine that wouldn’t go away. I woke up migraine free this morning after 7 days of migraine. It was not one of those all-encompassing-bad migraines, but one of those where your head hurts and you feel dizzy and things look weird and nothing seems right.
Then I joined a reading group for next year where you try to read a book a week all year, only you fit the books into categories that someone else makes up. It sounded fun, but led me down the deep dark path of “what did I read this year?” I only had like 20 books in GoodReads and surely I’d read more than that, right? Turned out I had 38 books in my “Currently Reading” list that I’d never gotten around to finishing. So I’m making my way through the ends of those now. I do the audio book of “Becoming” when I’m in the car waiting for kids, a fun kids book “5 Children and It” (from the Top 100 Fantasy Books list that came out not too long ago) in the morning when my brain isn’t awake yet, and “Thinking Fast and Slow” when I have more brain.
Then my sister told me that my dad caught Covid. Seriously? He goes nowhere and sees no one. He doesn’t even feel bad from it. He went to the doctor for something else and they tested him for it any way. So now he’s super perky because he’s on good drugs. This did not make me feel better about life, though, because now our carefully laid out Thanksgiving plans are not going to happen. We were kind of all depending on having a few lazy days somewhere that wasn’t this house for the first time in seven months. It made the crankiness worse. And a cranky Lisa is not a writing Lisa.
A few days into this “no writing” phenomena, I just decided I hated everything and I was done writing forever. I cleared off my desk, took down a bunch of art, and decided to work on some other projects. One of those was clearing out my hard drive. So I spent a solid day combining all my photo files, deleting the randomness out, and making those nice. Then I spent a day sorting out my documents folder into places where things actually went. That led to me shoving all my poetry into a Scrivener document, like I’d always planned. Which led me to looking for poems that I couldn’t find, but knew I’d written. Which led me to tidying up my writing from the TPL writer’s group and putting it all into the right Scrivener files.
Which sneakily led me back into real, actual writing again because I kept finding things that just needed a little tweaking here or there to fit into place in their own main storylines. So I’d tidy this bit up over here, and change the time of this piece right there, and bam: a whole new scene just appeared. MAGIC!
As I said before, another speaker could not show up today at the Tyler Public Library Writer’s Club Facebook Group, so I presented a very last minute lesson on poetry. You can watch the video here if you are a member of the group, but honestly, I was mostly just reading from a textbook, so don’t. I’ll do a better presentation on poetry another day and let you know when I’ve posted it. 🙂
Lisa Holcomb 