I will be speaking at the Open Door Writing Group – Day Group on July 24, 2024 at 1pm at the Tyler Public Library on the topic of “Character Reactions”. Come on and join us! 🙂
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I’ve spent most of the last week running around trying to keep my and my kids houses from falling down around our ears due to storm damages. A tree fell through the roof at the kids house, so they’ve moved back home this week. The power’s been out and then even once it came back, we had no internet for days and days. It’s been really nuts, so I haven’t managed to finish transcribing from May yet. There’s no telling how many words I got, though I’m going to hazard a guess that I almost matched February’s numbers (around 17,000) because I was really going hard on my short story work. I’ll do an extra update next week about that. (Update: I couldn’t find everything in order to transcribe it all, so I didn’t hit my goal. I was somewhere around 7,000 when I ran out of things to transcribe.)
One of the other writing related things going on behind the scenes is time spent putting together an anthology for the Open Door Writing Group. I can’t remember if I mentioned this before. We’re having members of our group (both online and offline) write short works of non-fiction, fiction, or poetry on the theme of frogs. It started off as a fun little writing prompt, but it really took off. The in person writers were entranced by all of our frog stories and really wanted a wider audience for them. Since I have the most behind-the-scenes knowledge of how to start an anthology, I’ve been doing quite a lot of the legwork for the project. We’ve opened up the possibility of having writers also contribute to putting the anthology together and handling stuff as well. It’s been fun so far. I hope all the hard work pays off. We’re anticipating a mid-November launch date.
In other real life stuff, we had Mother’s Day, which we celebrated early at a sort of local renaissance festival (2 hours away), and then actual mother’s day I just sort of spent hanging out. We finally got our roof replaced from the hail storm in February. Then we had all the graduations and parties to attend and finished up the month with my husband’s favorite annual family BBQ (which we host here at my house).
This month’s word count was even worse – only 5,562 words overall, nearly all of it journaling projects I was working on as homework from therapy. My Wednesday writing group started an offshoot nighttime group this month and I’m one half of the team leading it. So far we haven’t had quite the turnout we hoped for. So many people said they needed an evening group, but far fewer are showing up. ODWG also started work on an idea for an anthology, which should be fun. I prepared and taught one lesson on “How to Write For an Anthology” and one on “Character Reactions” for both the day and the night group. I wrote a few things about frogs for the anthology.
In real life, I got strep throat on top of all my other illnesses. My city was in the path of totality for the solar eclipse, so I got to enjoy that from my front yard. I lost electricity due to another storm for a couple of days. A tree fell in my kids’ yard, taking out nearly all of the patio furniture. My kids beloved band director unexpectedly resigned midyear and we have no idea what’s going on with that. My youngest kid bought another car, this time from his brother’s ex-girfriend, and sold us his old one. It was also my birthday month, so I went out with the kids on my birthday, took my husband to the airport for a work trip, then had lunch and a fun afternoon with my BFF in DFW that day, then had a dinner with other friends later in the week.
I will be speaking at the Open Door Writing Group – Night Group next Thursday, April 25, 2024 at 6pm at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Tyler (1629 Old Omen Road in Tyler) on the topic of “Character Reactions”. Come on out and join us! 🙂
I will be speaking at the Open Door Writing Group at 1pm at the Tyler Public Library on April 24, 2024 on the topic of “How to Write for an Anthology”. Come on over and join us! Open Door Writing Group
I will be speaking at the newly formed Open Door Writing Group – Night Group at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship (1629 Old Omen Road in Tyler, TX) at 6pm on April 18, 2024 on the topic of “How to Write for an Anthology”.
I’m trying to get everybody on board for the upcoming ODWG Frog Anthology!
Come on over and join us!
This month, word count was down again, at 8,833 words, nearly all lessons for ODWG again. Spring Break always throws things off, especially when friends and family have the other week off for their spring break.
I also tried to design a new closet for my writing/craft studio, which would have gone better if my closet had enough studs in the wall. But mostly I started the month sick, did a bunch of stuff with other people, then ended the month sicker than I started (flu, bronchitis, sinus infection, walking pneumonia). We decided not to do Easter with family because I was just so sick.
All I managed to do really was work on a crocheted blanket for a friend’s kid/kid’s friend that is very special to our family and is very sick herself right now.
This month, I managed 17,967, but 2/3 of it was lessons for the ODWG. I also tried to train a new membership chair for one of my local writing groups.
I wrote one really long poem about teeth. No, really. It started off about teeth and then it got weird. I also wrote a poem about grief that involved Pokemon. You know you want to read that one. (There were several other poems this month as well, but those were my favorites).
I also was the featured speaker of the month for my local writers guild. I spoke on “How to Get Back on Track After Life’s Disasters.”
In real life, I had to figure out how to do my local church’s annual certification because our board president’s life exploded that week. I attended the first of hopefully many delightful meetings of a local yarn group. I loom-knitted one sock and then tried to figure out how to regular knit it’s partner after my sock loom broke. I started a crocheted snowflake blanket.
I also spoke at two other groups, using the “How to Get Back on Track…” lesson as a starting point. Which was only funny because disasters kept making it so I almost didn’t get to speak at either group (first an epic hail storm and then a mass internet outage).
I also read The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammet.
I will be speaking at the Open Door Writing Group at the Tyler Public Library at 1pm on February 28, 2024 on the topic of “How to Get Back on Track after Life’s Little Disasters”. Come on over and join us! (I will try to promise a hail-free experience, unlike what happened last time I gave this lesson – hahaha)
This month, I eked out 8,749 words, but a lot of it was poetry, so when I think about it that way, that’s a LOT.
I prepared and presented two lessons at ODWG. I also worked some more on the Lake House Mystery and made a whole new system for tracking my poetry and short story submissions.
I also rearranged my entire writing studio again because it turned out that one of my bookshelves could not stand up without the support of the two on either side and books were everywhere.
In real life, one of my kids had an MRI for migraines and also sliced open his foot badly, all in one month. My dad visited for a long while. I started crocheting the Pineapple Peacock shawl, took it apart and restarted it twice more, then finally gave up. Knitted a scarf for my spouse instead.
We had a polar vortex hit and had several “ice days” I started reading “Barbara and Susan Talk About Empty Nests” once a week as a kind of devotional for therapy homework. I also read “Shadow and Bone” and “Lessons in Chemistry”.
Lisa Holcomb 