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Starting a new thing – monthly word count updates

This month, I wrote 25,341 words, mostly on the Hannah Project. I also wrote an essay for an upcoming anthology for the UUA, covering UU and people with disabilities, with an emphasis on my own personal experiences as a semi-disabled person in a small UU fellowship.

In addition to those things, I  helped prepare for and run a local area writing conference and helped another local writer make decisions about cover art. I prepared and presented a lesson to the Open Door Writing Group about goal setting and how to reset your goals once you’ve gone off track.

In real life stuff, I had an MRI of my right foot, finally, and found out that despite it being my foot that hurts, it’s my spine that’s probably damaged. I traveled across the country with my middle son and my dad on the aforementioned Pilgrimage (also known as The Corn God Trip). I was sworn in as vice president of the board of my local UU Fellowship. I also finished crocheting a blanket that was meant for babies that turn five this fall.  I also finished a cross-stitch pattern that I’d started in 2022 that had never mailed me the final pattern pieces. My children will talk about this summer in the future as the summer I watched a lot of murder mysteries in order to commit murders of my own devising. I also finished reading “Winter’s Orbit.”

Around the House, Everywhere But Home, Family Time, Finding My Birthfamily, Parenting, Short Stories, What I Love, Writing

Midsummer Murmurings

I’ve got some exciting news, y’all! In November I’ll be attending the 20 Books to 50K Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. The lovely folks in charge of that conference gave me a scholarship for the conference ticket, so I’d like to publically thank them for that. Thank you, 20Books Conference Committee!! Nick and I will travel to the conference together and use it as a combined work trip and 25th wedding anniversary rolled into one. By day, he’ll be working remotely while I attend the conference. By night, we’ll paint the town red with whatever author friends we make along the way. I’m so excited about this conference. Everyone says it’s fabulous!

Before we get there, though, there’s still the rest of the summer to get through. I’d thought this summer was going to be quiet because my youngest ended up making the hard decision not to travel with DCI this year, due to a myriad of reasons and circumstances that I’ll not go into here. So traveling to see him performing across the US fell off the list of things I’d do this summer. In the meantime, I’ve been finishing the short story I mentioned last month, teaching my midkid to drive, adopting a kitten, planning two trips, working on my speaking engagements, helping with both planning a conference and installing a new treasurer for the East Texas Writers Guild, and juggling all the schedule changes unexpectedly sent my way. Which is why those that know me in real life have started to wonder if I exist at all. I do, I’m just constantly in meetings or driving lessons or keeping the Foxglove the Wonder Kitten from biting all the things.

A twelve-week-old tuxedo kitten wearing a lime green collar sits ensconced in a turquoise and grey crocheted blanket. She is looking directly at the camera with her golden eyes and looks content.
Obligatory Kitten Picture – Foxglove the Wonder Kitten

So I said I was planning two trips – the other one is a pilgrimage with my 80-year-old father to see my mother’s grave. She was buried amongst family in their hometown — Superior, Wisconsin — which is sixteen hours away by car. Along the way, he wants to stop in Lincoln, Nebraska, to see his brother, Platteville, Wisconsin to see my birthfamily (who he hasn’t met yet), and Eau Claire, Wisconsin to do some research with a former student (and maybe see my cousin and his family?). On the way home, he’s hoping to stop in Minneapolis to see his cousin as well. All in an eight-day whirlwind trip that includes four days in his hometown for two reunions and a chance to see the rest of the family. Eight days isn’t enough, y’all, but I have the ETWG Conference on one end and a speaking engagement on the other, so that’s all the time we’ve got. Being my dad, and therefore the source of my personal time blindness, he’s scheduled a bunch of stuff for days we won’t actually be there. Whee! This trip is ripe for stories that will make it into my adoption memoir, I’m sure. I will be taking notes and pictures. Follow me on social media for all of that.

Lisa Holcomb, wearing a pink and purple print shirt and multi colored glasses, stands hugging her father, David Larson, who is wearing a dark grey shirt with black suspenders, and also a plaid hat.

Me and my dad

Around the House, Crafts, Family Time, health, My Writing, Parenting, What I Love, Writing

Early Summer Musings

The fact that it is already summer break just astounds me. It feels like it was only yesterday that it was Mother’s Day.

Me and my kiddos

May went by in a flurry of tornado warnings, band concerts and banquets, color guard contests, kids’ auditions or testing for various activities, and all the sayings of “goodbye” to people and places we’ve loved spending time with.

I started helping out the worship team at my local UU church, both developing services and speaking during services. I also agreed to serve as vice president of the church board next year.

My eldest child acquired a car, passing his old one to his younger brother, who just started driving solo, and just like that *snap* life changed overnight. I no longer have to drive anyone anywhere unless there’s an emergency.

I spent a couple weeks preparing for a speaking engagement for the Open Door Writing Group at the Tyler Public Library about writing lyrically. I read or re-read so many books on writing poetry. Two didn’t arrive on time, so I still have those to look forward to.

Unfortunately, all that activity sent my diseases into overdrive. I got a sinus infection, then my joints flared up and I spent the last half of the month in too much pain to think, let alone set down words. It took me an entire month to finish a short story that I’d had outlined and ready to go. *sigh*

Last week my father was in town, so we spent time indulging in watching “Only Murders in the Building” (while I did cross stitch, since my hands had finally returned to normal) and taking time to look over his house here and make lists of future maintenance needs.

He went back to his primary residence yesterday afternoon and now I am back at my writing desk today, updating all the social media things, preparing for my two speaking engagements that are coming up later this month, and trying to sneak in a few new words in my next novel. Hope all of y’all are having a wonderful start to your summer! Let me know in the comments if you plan to join me at any of my events this month.

Available Now, Books, Lifelong learning, My Own Personal Weirdness, My Writing, What I Love, Writing

Reflections on the one-year anniversary of being published

Last month marked the anniversary of my first published work. Well, my first published work in over two decades, I should say, not counting unpaid blog posts and articles for local area newsletters. I had a few small bits published right after college, but then I had children and did not get back into writing for many years. Even then, I was too scared to send anything off to see if it was good enough for publication. Two years ago, I finally had enough positive feedback from other writers to get my courage up, and I got the ball rolling on submitting and by May last year, I had pieces published in four anthologies.

Click here for links to buy these books.

It’s been a good year, all told. I’ve had the chance to experience an anthology being built from the ground up, worked with several personalities of editors, set up Amazon Author Central and Goodreads Author pages, met a lot of fantastic and helpful new people, learned thousands of things about writing and marketing, attended my first book festival, changed my logo, and also discovered what the difference between people who had my best interests at heart and those who didn’t looked like.

2023 has been a hard year for me, logistically speaking. A prodigious number of things have gone wrong between the two houses I help maintain, my little family has had some big trials I’d rather not mention here, people and pets I love have passed away, my best friend had her whole life overturned, and groups that I help run have all had their own wacky disasters as well.

My word count is still really high compared to most years. My connections to other writers have grown stronger, and the number of writing opportunities I’ve had have multiplied exponentially, but I’m still struggling with time management. There’s just not enough of me to go around dealing with all the disasters and to get all the writing related activities done (so many of which are not, in fact, actually writing). Which is why my number of published works remains low – I just haven’t had time to submit anything anywhere with everything else that’s been going on.

That changed this morning. Despite a looming writing deadline for a short story that’s going in the back of someone else’s book, I sat down and made sure that I’d submitted at least a few poems and stories for publication in literary journals, anthologies, and zines. Just that little effort was enough – I’m feeling positive about writing again for the first time in a couple months. I can’t wait to see where my pieces end up. I’m looking forward to a fruitful second year of publishing.

Speaking, What I Love

How fast the time goes

When I set out to change up how I blog this last year, I’d figured on blogging every two weeks, on my church’s off weeks, but the time in between goes so fast and is stuffed with so many things that I often arrive at my computer and am completely overwhelmed about what to post and what to keep private. Being a more professional writer has been such a learning curve!

Since I last wrote here, there’ve been a couple winter guard performances for my youngest kid, which I chaperoned, my midkid learned how to make pancakes (in a few hilarious attempts, which he live-texted me about), Indy has gotten incomprehensibly larger, I rearranged my fridge to be more ADHD friendly (veggies in the door so we can see them), and I attended the East Texas Book Fest!

I had a fantastic time! I sat in a little corner where most of the writers were from my local writers group, so I had support, advice, and fun. Everyone that came to my table was encouraging, and I both sold a book and got invited to speak at a library in a nearby town as well. Such a great experience!

Around the House, Everywhere But Home, Family Time, Speaking

Spring Break Catch-up

When I last posted, I was about to go see the orthopedic doctor, which the former health blogger in me insists was a whole experience that probably should have a post to itself. But since I’m not doing much of that these days, I will just show you my glorious new prescription shoes:

If you don’t know me, please know that a) I usually hate shoes, and b) pink is not normally my favorite thing. However, these shoes are like walking on bouncy marshmallow clouds and it turns out I love that! Also, they match my new color-shifting glasses, which brings me joy. 🙂

For Spring Break, we spent half the week in town, doing generic house stuff and watching movies. The second half, we traveled (my youngest driving for the first time!) to College Station to visit my dad, sister, and other family. We repainted his outdoor statuary, had meals with the fam, and watched a lot of Ancient Aliens (which my dad is addicted to right now). On the way home, we stopped in a thrift store and bought me a practically brand new computer monitor, which I’m overjoyed with.

In writing news, I’ve been gearing up to attend the East Texas Book Fest next month. When I signed up, I’d hoped to have a book of my own available to sell, but that just hasn’t been a reality. But I’ll have copies of my anthologies available, and I’ve been working on how to dress up my little table. I’m super excited about the event and I hope to see y’all there! More info here: East Texas Book Fest

Around the House, Everywhere But Home, health, The Past Comes Back to Haunt Me, Writing

All the Appointments!

It’s Doctor Appointment Season! Since I have a billion and one health issues, I see a lot of specialists. One year I decided it would just be easier if I saw them all in February – who knows why at this point? Since they usually are 6 months or a year apart, I end up seeing at least one doctor every week through February and into March. So far I’ve seen the neurologist (my brain is apparently fine, even if it doesn’t feel like it), the ENT (my sinuses are still gross), and the rheumatologist (oh so much wrong with me). The rheumatologist referred me to the orthopedist (is that a word?), and I see him on Monday.

In between all that, I’ve been:

  • dog-sitting,
  • teaching lessons at Open Door Writing Group (who had a fantastic turnout this month!),
  • writing ALL THE VILLAIN SCENES for Caro’s Quest,
  • critiqued an entire paranormal romance novel for a friend (I’m so excited for that one to come out!),
  • drove my youngest to work and back about 30,000 times,
  • chaperoned a winter guard contest,

The awesome mascot statue at the winter guard contest

  • attended my kid’s pre-UIL concert
  • figured out that I’m way ahead on my word count compared to last year (thanks Sprint Club!),
  • painted the hallway bathroom, then painted the backs of the built-in bookcases the same color because I loved it so much,
  • got a fun haircut
  • started repotting plants and tidying up my yard for the spring,
  • and spent far too much time troubleshooting iPad woes.

That’s it for the end of February and early March.

What have y’all been up to? Let me know in the comments below. 🙂

Around the House, Lifelong learning, My Own Personal Weirdness, My Writing, Writing

It’s been a doozy of a year so far!

Y’all. I thought I was going to be so on track with my writing this year, having made a decent schedule, with lots of breaks for fun family times, illness, injury, and whatever. What I didn’t plan for was for all of that to happen in the first month of the year.

My year so far has included a totaled car, a busted dishwasher pump, mysteriously broken microwave, and wonky electrical system all in my house, plus a flooding under the kitchen floor, worn out electrical outlets that weren’t working, and a leaking hot water heater in the house my college kids live in, there was a major ice storm in my area, so we were without power for almost five days, and then the van we borrowed while we are looking for a new car had it’s battery die. So eight major crisis’s in a six week period.

Oh, and my college kid rescued a puppy that had been dumped in his friends yard, so there’s been puppy babysitting as well.

Obligatory puppy picture. Meet Indy! She’s sweet and feisty all at once.

Needless to say, I’m a little behind on my word count. I have, however, figured out all the plot holes in the current novel, have made a list of all the scenes needing to be written, and put it all into a handy-dandy word document that I can access from any device I own. So now I can write literally from anywhere. Which is good because the puppy cannot come here to my house, so I must go to hers. (It’s the puppy’s house now. Bwahahah.)

Also, Indy has been a welcome inclusion in my life because my current novel has a little dog in it, a puppy only a little bit older than her, so I’m using my time with her as inspiration for dog-related comic relief in bleaker parts of my story. 🙂 Plus puppy kisses! Win-win!

Hope y’all are all doing well. Let me know in the comments below. 🙂

Books

Weird Projects that relate to Writing

Starting last Friday I finally had some time to myself again. I made a list of all the writing things I accomplished last year, which is below:

2022 In Review – Writing Life

  • Led Open Door Writing Group 16 times
  • Attended Open Door Writing Group 24 times
  • Led East Texas Writers Guild meetings 23 times
  • Attended writers conferences – 1 online and 2 in person
  • Attended one writing retreat
  • Submitted the first three chapters of my current novel to a respected writing coach in my genre and spent two sessions discussing my writing style, my writing flaws, my writing strengths, and potential plot holes for this particular novel
  • Worked with two critique groups, covering five months of the year
  • Worked with an accountability partner all year
  • Mentored a new-to-writing fantasy writer for 3 months
  • Created outlines for two full novels
  • Learned to set up newsletters and mailing lists
  • Set up my newsletter and mailing lists
  • Redesigned my website
  • Had professional portraits taken
  • Submitted five stories to magazines and journals
  • Wrote around 125,000 words total
  • Read 6 books on writing and implemented their suggestions
  • Started taking a marketing class
  • Wrote alternately on two different novels
  • Had 3 poems, 3 personal essays, and 1 short story published in anthologies

Whew! That’s a lot, especially considering how many health woes I had, moving three kids to different rooms (sometimes in a different house, painting, moving into my writing studio, a kid graduating high school and starting college, and all the family stuff.

I also updated all my reading lists from the last few years. I thought Amazon was automatically updating them for me when I purchased a book or read one as an e-book or listened on Audible, but it hadn’t been. So I went back through my paper lists, Library Elf and Circulation Desk emails, old blog and FB posts, etc and added books back in. I’m sure it’s still not all I read, but it’s much closer to reality now. Looking back, I realized that most years I read about a book a week, some years more than that, and a couple years way, way less than that. I re-read some old blog posts and realized that one of those years I was PTA President and had two part-time jobs, so that made sense and the other time I was just crafting all year long and I hadn’t discovered audio books yet. 🙂 It was very informative to delve back into those lists of the books I loved or hated and see how they influenced the things I wrote those years. It was interesting to see the ebbs and flows of my interests, some years reading great swaths of neuroscience and other years mainly mysteries, but always, always a ton of fantasy and science fiction.

Now that I’ve processed all of that in my journal, I’m back on track with writing my own novels. I’ve got a schedule worked out for the rest of the month on what I’m writing for one and worldbuilding for another one. In the past, I’ve tried to plan out by quarters, but I’ve discovered that I get discouraged when one quarter bleeds over into a second one and that’s where I tend to fall down the rabbit hole. So I made a big general plan on what I hope to accomplish for the year, but I’m only doing detailed planning a month at a time and plan to regroup at the end of the month to rework the schedule for the next month. 🙂

Working on two different projects helps my brain have something to bounce back and forth between when I get stuck on one, so this month, I hope to finish the Caro’s Quest re-write and flesh out new characters for a YA novel I’m working on in a friends universe.

What are y’all working on this year? Leave me a comment about it and I’ll start cheering you on! 🙂

My Writing, Organizing, Speaking, What I Love

Happy New Year!

After slogging blearily through the end of 2022, I’m jazzed about all the new things coming in 2023! Today is the first day back at my writing desk and I’m sitting with my beautiful new Passion Planner and plotting out a schedule for all the stories I plan to write and penciling in all the submission deadlines for when to send them out and dates for the conferences and writing retreats I plan on attending this year. I’m all aquiver with excitement.

Tomorrow I have my first speaking engagement of the year at the Tyler Public Library. I’ll be talking about goal setting for writers at the Open Door Writing Group. I’ve already planned out all my topics for that group for the year, actually, so if you want to know when to find me there and what I’m speaking about, head over to my new Calendar page and you’ll find all that information (and more!) there.