I spoke today at Tyler Public Library’s Writer’s Club Facebook Group on “Writing Conferences and Writing Books.” I was pretty nervous at first because I’ve never done anything like this before online, but I felt like it went really well! If you are a member of the group, you can see the replay of the live video here: {link}.
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I had no idea my husband was on the phone so much. Or in meetings. No, really. I know what he does in abstract. I’ve seen the engineering charts, I’ve watched him work during family vacations. I just had no idea being my husband’s newest co-worker would be so loud. Thankful that today is a half day. I’m seriously starting to go nuts here. I have gotten very little writing done and writing is what I do.
Next week the kids will be home doing what they’re calling Distance Learning. The kids will have classes through their Google Classroom Portals, I guess. They’re making a plan this weekend and will let us know on Monday.
The silver linings are that: 1) my sister ordered my kids a Yum box, so we have weird snacks from Brazil to eat, 2) my dad randomly sent me an awesomely creepy Mouse King nutcracker/music box and the kids are mesmerized, and 3) we are ordering pizza from Top it Off Pizza for lunch today. YAY!
I like to post things on Facebook that I find helpful or that I think other people will find helpful. I’ve been doing it all week and apparently other people have noticed. I’ve been added to not one, but two East Texas Covid-19 Help and Support Groups (not their actual names, mind you). So I spent a substantial part of my last couple days copying and pasting links from my personal page to these pages. Then I cross-posted links previously posted from each group to the other one. Such fun! Seriously, though, it feels good to actually be doing something to help others right now. Everything seems to be getting worse out there. I can’t leave the house because of my own health issues. Kids are getting wacky. I’m just happy to help others out there in similar positions. If you’re interested in joining either group, let me know and I’ll send you an invite. 🙂
On March 25, 2020 at noon, I am speaking at the Tyler Public Library Writers Club about “Writing Conferences & Writing Books” via Facebook Live on their Facebook Group.
Back before all this coronavirus craziness hit, our public library had asked our writing group to consider having an online presence. People had complained that they weren’t able to come at noon on a Wednesday, not to mention for a two-hour period all at once. Some people in wackier places, like the Phillipines, wanted to join our group as well. A poll of the current group took place –the people attending said they couldn’t meet or didn’t want to meet in the evenings, so we were at an impasse.
The library decided to set us up with a Facebook Group page, with our four in-person facilitators (myself included) as moderators. Today we started our online writing group adventure a little earlier than we had planned for, due to coronavirus closing our library. One of our facilitators figured out how to pre-schedule posts so they could go up when she wanted them to, just in case she turned out to be unavailable at the right time. Prompts got posted several times over the two-hour time slot we usually met. People could come and go, writing at whatever time worked for their schedules.
Personally, I was having internet woes by that point in the day. Having extra people at home using the internet constantly means that sometimes the internet goes wonky when you least expect it. So I wrote on the prompts later in the day. Other people have joined in, several of which I haven’t met in person before. I think it went pretty well, so I’m going to volunteer to moderate for next week. 🙂 Let me know if you want to join us and I’ll shoot you a link to the online group.
Today has been weird, y’all. Super weird. My Tyler Critique Group canceled their meeting, which I’d expected, as all four of us have immune system issues or family members that do. Nick’s workplace said they’d let anyone with immunocompromised family members start working from home. The kids and I set up a desk area for him in the corner of our bedroom next to my desk so he’d have a quiet place to work.
Since I couldn’t go out for supplies like I wanted to, I had to be a little weirder with my St. Patrick’s Day things than I normally would have. We did start the day like normal, with Irish music blaring out of the living room speakers. I did not have an Irish style breakfast planned, however. I did have white chocolate fudge makings, though, so we made that instead.
I ran around the house like this, pinching everyone that wasn’t wearing green, which meant Nick. I also made people randomly wear headbands or hats with shamrocks on them. There were many complaints.
For lunch, it was green mac-and-cheese. Usually I don’t have to do lunch on St. Patrick’s Day because they are usually in school. No one would eat it. Ah, me.
By dinner I was too exhausted to do the kind of in-your-house- pub-crawl like my awesome friend Amie did at home. Instead, I sat on the couch and Nick occasionally brought me an Irish beer. Wheeeeeeee!
Dinner was an Irish style dish that I cannot spell now that I have had beer. Have a photo instead.
Hope you had a lovely St. Patrick’s Day! Good night!
Today was supposed to be a several things that it wasn’t.
Kids were supposed to be back at school, but the district is having what they call a “Community Mitigation Period” instead. They’re cleaning the schools and we’re supposed to be back on schedule next week. Ree is a little bit wumbly over it because he left his instruments at school because of the wisdom tooth removal. He’s already heard from his band director that this weeks pass offs are still due. *sigh*
We were also supposed to have our belated Lindale Critique Group meeting today. Since we usually meet at a McDonald’s off a busy highway and two of our members are immunocompromised, we decided we should probably all stay home this time. So we exchanged critiques by email, which is never as enlightening as meeting face to face is. Ah well, hoping next time goes better.
I was supposed to finally have at least an afternoon at home alone, which didn’t happen. Instead I talked to kids about the coronavirus and what the schedule at home would look like. We’re going on a modified summer schedule for now. Morning are quiet movies, exercise, and chores. Afternoons are video games, some outside time, instrument practice, and reading. Evenings will be mostly as normal as they ever get. One teacher has offered online flute lessons. We shall see how that goes.
Finally, our East Texas Writer’s Guild had its usual Nutz & Boltz meeting online via Zoom. We had some good conversation about things. (I have notes if anyone is interested.) 🙂 At least one thing went off like normal.
Yesterday Spring Break ended. It wasn’t that exciting. Nick and I were minorly sick the first weekend, then Ree had his wisdom teeth out that Monday.
I saw the Endodontist on Tuesday and they told me I needed a tooth removed and sent me back to my regular dentist to have that done. I got a new shelf for my desk area that I found on deep discount at Michael’s when I looked for planner stuff. I got it all set up the way I liked.
Wednesday was the writer’s group at the library, which sadly I skipped because we were trying to get everything done so we could leave on time the next morning for College Station. We got Greg a laptop computer so he could start typing most of his assignments, which we’d discussed with his 504 committee the week before.
We drove down to College Station on Thursday. By then the coronavirus crazies had started. Nick tried to go to the grocery and they had announcements the entire time about what you could and could not buy. A fight broke out in the parking lot, and he came home without toilet paper. The rest of us just stayed at the house and watched movies.
On Saturday, Steph and I were supposed to attend a Marbling Workshop at the Bookbindery. It ended up canceled. I went out with my dad and bought him a new computer so he could teach classes online for the next week or so until all this social distancing stops. His old computer was ancient, y’all. This was completely necessary.
Today I spent the morning fixing up the computer for my dad and transferring files and all that goodness. It took forever. Setting up two computers in two weeks. What was I thinking?! Eventually we drove back home. Bluebonnets have started showing up in fields now that weren’t there when we drove down. Could it be Spring?
My youngest has pneumonia — they diagnosed it on Monday. My family of five had four dentist appointments and one doctor’s visit scheduled this week even before that happened. We’ve been to the doctor every afternoon this week besides that. I still made it to a critique group on Tuesday and led a lesson on the Snowflake Method at the public library group on Wednesday. My eldest son sat with the smallest so I could go. Other than that it’s been pills and breathing treatments and trips to the pharmacy over and over. In one five-minute window, while sitting in the doctor’s office and overseeing a breathing treatment, I spoke to one other doctor’s office about how the scan from last week showed that my thyroid was “super enlarged”, the dentist about my husband’s recovery from minor dental surgery, and the endodontist to schedule an appointment for my abscessed gums, all while texting with the flute teacher about her own bout of pneumonia and the French horn teacher to say that we really couldn’t make it this week. Today I had to reschedule two other appointments because of bad schedules at the places I was going (how do they manage to schedule people onto days the doctor won’t be there?). All this to say that there has been no writing this week, other than the four-page document I wrote about the Snowflake Method. *sigh*
Here’s what I love about my critique groups:
- We have so many kinds of writers, so everyone has a different way of looking at stories.
- Everyone has a different thing they’re serious about, too. One hates adverbs, one obsesses with having enough romance, another is super descriptive about what she likes and what doesn’t work, one loves my sticky words, another one tells me every time I have a good hook…
- I can go through all four critiques and still have things to work on by the time I’m on the fourth one. It’s amazing how that works.
- No one can tell me why transferring from Scrivener to Word destroys half my apostrophes and half my italics. No one knows. It’s a mystery. I look at it in Scrivener, and they’re fine. Move stuff into Word, they’re not. WHAT EVEN IS GOING ON?!?!?!
- They would all get onto me about my excessive use of exclamation points and all caps in the last point. I can’t help it –I’m excitable.
- People in my groups know the difference between all three dashes and can talk about it. I have to have it in a file on my desktop and remind myself every day. I still don’t remember. Also, the shortcuts for them vary across apps and that drives me insane.
- Sometimes people draw pictures on my critiques. I love that.
Lisa Holcomb 