This book from A Worthy Press hopes to help teens and young adults choose a career path that best fits their God-given talents. Each contributor shared insights from their own career journey—what they learned, what they’d do differently, and the wisdom they wanted to pass on to the next generation. I wrote my essay on the one thing I’ve done most consistently in my life – wrangling volunteers. I know, not an official job title, but you know what jobs are like, your title could be just about anything that made sense to an HR person at some point. Hahaha. In any case, this book should be out sometime in February. I’ll post more about it when I have cover art, etc.
Blog
I’ll be speaking this upcoming Wednesday afternoon at the Tyler Public Library’s Open Door Writing Group. We meet on the 3rd floor of the Tyler Public Library in the Makerspace from 1-3pm. I’ve been asked to talk about “Forms in Poetry” again and I’ve been practicing writing some different forms so I’ll have some contemporary examples for you! I know it’s the day before Thanksgiving, but we’re home this year for it, so I’m taking a chance on others being as excited about poetry as I am. 🙂 Hope some of y’all can make it! 🙂
In October, I wrote 3840 words, which is so little that I could cry. But I was busy! More about that later. Of those words,
- 320 were for this blog (2 short posts),
- 667 were for my journal,
- 0 were for handouts, scripts, and slides for lessons (I reused an old one for the Open Door Writing Group),
- 1204 were on various social media accounts,
- 1652 were poetry (9 poems),
- and 376 were in short stories (1 piece of flash fiction).
There were only 12 days that I didn’t write anything. I spent 10 days on vacation, traveling to, then staying in North Carolina, and driving home. I used every morning as a little writer’s retreat and wrote a lot while I was there. I’m still having trouble with my shoulders, so I spent several days either at the doctor, at the physical therapist’s office, or off getting X-rays and a couple of MRIs. I do have an essay that I found out about an anthology for on the last day of October that I’m going to start writing this week (but that counts for November). I still didn’t get any poems or short stories submitted anywhere.
As for reading, I read parts of:
- Let Loose the Dogs by Maureen Jennings (e-book; historical mystery – I’m having trouble getting this book again through Libby, hence taking a break from it)
- The Viscount Who Loved Me by Julia Quinn (audiobook; historical romance)
- Stargazy Pie by Victoria Goddard (e-book; cozy fantasy)
- The Man with Two Left Feet (e-book; I’m not sure the genre)
…and I finished reading:
- The Honey Witch by Sydney Shields (trade paperback; cozy fantasy)
So I have finished 49 books so far this year (and read parts of another 18, mostly for research, but also a couple of things I’ve had to mark DNF.).
I’ll be speaking this upcoming Wednesday afternoon at the Tyler Public Library’s Open Door Writing Group on “How to Test if a Story Idea is a Good One”. We meet on the 3rd floor of the Tyler Public Library in the Makerspace from 1-3pm. Hope some of y’all can make it! 🙂
In September, I wrote 4097 words. It’s still a busy month, even if all of your kids are out of high school. Yeah.
Of those words,
- 346 were for this blog (2 short posts),
- 0 were for my journal,
- 2024 were for handouts, scripts, and slides for lessons (one for the Open Door Writing Group),
- 448 were on various social media accounts (which seems low, I know, but I’ve been trying to cut back on that and spend more time reading lately),
- 1142 were poetry (3 short poems and 2 long),
- and 137 were in short fiction (1 piece of flash fiction).
There were 19 days that I didn’t write anything. I spent a lot of the month either moving my eldest child to his new apartment or I was editing for Caro’s Quest. One of the books I beta read for came out this month, so I’m feeling that weird sense of accomplishment about that (you know, in that way where you walked alongside a friend going through something that you got to help with, so it’s like it’s partly yours just a little bit?). Meanwhile, I personally didn’t get any poems or short stories submitted anywhere.
As for reading, I read parts of:
- The Comfort Book by Matthew Haig (audiobook; self-help)
- The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie (e-book; mystery)
- Let Loose the Dogs by Maureen Jennings (e-book; historical mystery)
- …and I finished reading:
Nothing Romantic by Kennedy Hope (e-book; LGBTQ+ romance) - System Collapse by Martha Wells (e-book; science fiction)
- Except the Dying by Maureen Jennings (e-book; historical mystery)
- Poor Tom is Dead by Maureen Jennings (e-book; historical mystery)
- Conversations in the Garden* by Chelsee BreAnn (manuscript; poetry )
So I have finished 48 books so far this year (and read parts of another 16, mostly for research, but also a couple of things I’ve had to mark DNF.).
*The title of this book has changed since it was in beta. It’s permanent title is Honeysuckle Memories.
As requested by one of our lovely writers, I’ll be talking about “White Space and Line Breaks” at the Open Door Writing Group this Wednesday from 1-3pm at the Tyler Public Library in the 3rd floor Makerspace. Looking forward to seeing y’all then! #writingcommunity #writinglesson #poetry #whitespace #linebreaks
In August, I wrote only 3811 words. I was sick the first half of the month and then moving kids from house to house and editing the second half (so technically I lost a bunch of words off my novel, but we’re not counting those as a negative number of words those days). Of those words,
- 206 were for this blog (2 short posts),
- 0 were for my journal (which I cannot find my paper journal, so that might not be true),
- 1612 were for handouts, scripts, and slides for lessons (one for the Open Door Writing Group),
- 1042 were on various social media accounts,
- 217 were poetry (2 poems),
- and 734 were in short stories (4 pieces of flash fiction).
There were 17 days that I didn’t write anything. Mostly I spent the month either ill (the flu, bronchitis, and a sinus infection, oh my!), moving one kid over a room in the house he’s in so another of my children could move into his old room (and helping that second child as well – child #2 in this scenario was far easier to move) or trying to edit my novel Caro’s Quest down to a reasonable number of words so I can turn it into the editor (today, I hope!). Also, life was still too chaotic, so I didn’t get any poems or short stories submitted anywhere.
As for reading, once again, I didn’t leave any books unread, but I finished reading a ridiculous number of short e-books, all by Martha Wells (the first published author that ever gave me advice – she worked in IT at Ocean Drilling Program at the same time I was a student worker in the publishing department – she was so nice about it when my boss sat me down at her table at lunch one day):
- All Systems Red
- Compulsory
- Artificial Conditions
- Rogue Protocol
- Obsolescence
- Exit Strategy
- Home
- Fugitive Telemetry
- Rapport
- Network Effect
That brings me up to 42 books finished this year and 13 partially read (that number went down because I finished two partially read books). 🙂
As requested by one of our lovely writers, I’ll be talking about writing for contests at the Open Door Writing Group this Wednesday from 1-3pm at the Tyler Public Library in the 3rd floor Makerspace. Looking forward to seeing y’all then! #writingcommunity #writinglesson #writingforcontests
In July, I wrote 6569 words, which doesn’t feel like a lot. I did, however, take two of my kids on their first international traveling adventure, so there was a lot of kerfluffle for that, and I also took a few days off to go to the Poetry of Society of Texas Annual Conference.
Of those words,
- 251 were for this blog (2 short posts),
- 478 were for my journal (which I may update later with numbers from my paper journal, which I cannot find today,
- 1276 were for handouts, scripts, and slides for lessons (one for the Open Door Writing Group),
- 2630 were on various social media accounts,
- 1346 were poetry (10 poems),
- and 588 were in short stories (3 pieces of flash fiction).
There were only 8 days that I didn’t write anything, despite being out of town a lot this month. I just wrote a lot while I was traveling. There’s something about getting out of your regular every day patterns that gets the writing juices flowing. I wrote a lot in my paper journal, but I didn’t count any of those words because I cannot find it at the moment. Who knows where it is!
I didn’t get any poems or short stories submitted anywhere. I just wasn’t that kind of organized.
As for reading, I didn’t read anything that I didn’t finish this month, mostly because I read very little
…and I finished reading:
- Fire At the Exhibition by T. E. Kinsey (audiobook; mystery)
- Burnout by Emily Nagoski (audiobook; non-fiction – see, I’m dealing with my burnout by reading up on it)
- Wherever You Find Yourself by Tasha Gaines(manuscript; Christian fiction romance, I believe)
I’ll be speaking this upcoming Wednesday afternoon at the Tyler Public Library’s Open Door Writing Group. We meet on the 3rd floor of the Tyler Public Library in the Makerspace from 1-3pm. I’ll be speaking about what I learned at the Poetry Society of Texas’ Annual Conference. Hope some of y’all can make it! 🙂
Lisa Holcomb 