Blog

Around the House, Computers and Internet, Everywhere But Home, Friend Time, My Writing, Organizing, The Past Comes Back to Haunt Me, Writing

September catch-up post

It’s been a hot minute since I last posted. I’m torn between telling you all the things that went on in the background that kept me busier than usual or just sticking to the writing related things. What do y’all want more of? Comment below and let me know.

Week 1: Outside of mopping up all the cat pee in the universe, I worked on making my own mystery beat sheet that covers the kinds of mysteries that I like, which are cozy, no sex, a little romance, and a quirky town, with a smidge of magical goings-ons. I’m sure somewhere out there is a specific genre label for them, but my brain said “no, let’s make up our own beat sheet” so we did. (me and my brain = we sometimes. I don’t make up the rules. I just follow them.)

I had all my kids home one day, which was wacky, and I got to drive my friends foreign exchange student around, as well. I also had a wacky project that involved making clean copies of all the lessons taught at the library writing group, which no one asked for, but I couldn’t get out of my head until I was done. Want copies of them? I will send them to you. Just comment below and let me know where to send them.

The spouse and I started watching The History of Imagineering, which was fascinating and a little bit frightening all at once. I’d not given a lot of thought to any of that behind-the-scenes stuff at Disney. But also, my heart beat was going super fast for no reason at all on and off all week, so that accounts for the frightening, I think.

Week 2: The cheap, magical 2012 MacBook arrived and I played with that all week. I had to rework my writing schedule because I spent too much time on that, but I just love setting up a new laptop, don’t you? So many options to change and things to try out. It’s just fun.

I also tried out the new coffee shop/wine bar that’s opened up close to my house. Besides the friend I was meeting, I ran into two others from different parts of my life while there. It’s always trippy when that happens. My writing peeps don’t generally know my art peeps who don’t generally know my PTA peeps. The chai latte was fabulous, but my sandwich was not quite what I wanted. Next time I’ll try the breakfast sandwich because the other Lisa H said it was fantastic. 🙂 Also, I went to a genealogy conference over the weekend and they encouraged me to look into the fact that the other Lisa H’s family (who has a last name that coincides with one of my family names) has ties to Wisconsin as well, and maybe some of my Wisconsin birthfamily relatives are related to her Wisconsin relatives. Stay tuned to find out.

Week 3: My spouse’s birthday, which he likes to ignore. Writer’s Guild stuff, Open Door stuff, genealogy stuff, getting new phones – which took three hours in store – and setting up an old printer in my studio and figuring out how to make a TikTok video rounded out my technology craziness for the week. I also worked on setting up my Lisa Holcomb Literature business stuff so that I can do business as that and have a bank account that’s separate from family finances, etc.

Week 4: I rearranged my studio again because I just was unhappy with little things. I attended far too many meetings for things, helped one of my kids dye his hair a weird red color, tried out the new fall themed Blizzards at DQ, and freaked out over the fact that Scrivener has secretly not been able to make updates and wasn’t giving me an error message about it, so I have no backups for any of my projects. After many hours of looking things up and changing settings and figuring out why all my drives kept saying they were full, I finally figured it out and got back-ups started, but that took additional hours to do that I would have been happier to have written during.

Last Week: Sent off some submissions of poetry, a recipe, and a short story to different venues. Also wrote my President’s Corner column, an article about Preptober, and a poem for the ETWG newsletter. Went through all the writing lessons I’ve taught so I can make a list of what I can offer other groups, should the occasion warrant it, also made a spreadsheet of all my other time commitments so I can see where I’m losing so much time (answer: I say “yes” far too often to tiny things that sound like they’d take five minutes that end up eating an hour or more of my day).

I’ve also been meeting with another fantasy writer and doing brainstorming sessions, making How To files for the next ETWG President, and trying to not go crazy driving my kids all the places they need to be. Wheeeeee!

Uncategorized

A little more balance

A dark haired woman with glasses, wearing a blue tank dress, stands in front of a door with a curvy chalkboard sign hanging on it with some jute rope. The sign says, in cursive light blue chalk, "The Writing Studio".
Me, outside the door to my writing studio

During the course of the last month, I feel as though I’ve been on a giant learning rollercoaster that’s emblazoned with the word “Balance”. There have been some good days, so many bad days, and some in between. I’ve tried writing randomly as the mood stuck me all around the clock, just in structured time slots with one specific task at hand, doing different kinds of jobs in different parts of the house and yard, working with people in coffee shops, working without people in coffee shops, writing during writing groups, and so many other things.

Mostly, though, I didn’t get as much writing in as I had hoped for. I didn’t get as much of everything done as I wanted to, for that matter. I tried to do too much. Again.

So two weeks ago, I started keeping track of what threw me for a loop. I tracked my time throughout many days in 15 minute increments. I wrote down both what I was supposed to be doing and what I ended up doing instead. Threw all of that into a spreadsheet. Re-learned how to make a pie chart. Fascinated my kid, who wants to make one of his band director’s life now (sorry Mr. Labordus).

Last weekend I bought a little wish bracelet from a shop in the mall. It serves as a reminder of what I’m trying to do: be balanced in all things. It’s cute and designed to fall off the moment you achieve your wish, which means this baby’s going to be around forever. Hahaha.

From my pie chart, I learned that the amount of time I want to spend on things is, in fact, fairly balanced, and when things go my way, I’m good to go. Things rarely go my way, though, and most interruptions to my flow come in the form of kids needing to be picked up or dropped off outside of their regular hours, my spouse’s job scheduling his meetings over his lunch hour so he has to come home at a different time, and small explosions here and there from organizations or friends unexpectedly needing something.

So I’ve started a new plan, which is basically to schedule everything into those 15 minute blocks I talked about before. Quite a lot of my life can be arranged in 15 minute periods. It takes about 15 minutes to get to each kids school and from one school to the other. The library and building where my other group meets are about 15 minutes away. It takes about 15 minutes to do a round of dishes in the sink or the dishwasher. 15 minutes to vacuum & mop one room. 15 minutes to make an image for social media. 15 minutes to plan which updates need to be done at what times. 15 minutes to set my tasks and alarms for the week, etc.

Writing, however, can’t be tamed into 15 minutes at a go. It needs more like an hour and a half per shorter non-fiction item written. An hour and a half to edit something the same length into something usable and send it off. Same for poems. Short stories can take a solid week of those hour and a half slots just to write. Novels are nigh near endless.

So I’ve chucked my original goal to be done with this novel by the end of the year. I have too many other shorter obligations to finish in the meantime. I will finish out the year working on those items, working on the marketing class my friend Marsha and I are taking, meeting with my new brainstorming partner Debora to help me figure out the itty bitty plot details I’m trapped in, and running last years NaNoWriMo novel back through to write, since I did not manage to do more than one short chapter last year.

Here’s hoping that I achieve some balance soon.

Around the House, Everywhere But Home, Family Time, health, My Own Personal Weirdness, My Writing, Organizing, What I Love, Writing

Back to School, Back to Work

This whole summer was one big logistical nightmare. We got the kids all moved, got my writing studio space all finished, and I mostly sat around and tried to breathe like a normal human being. I couldn’t, so I started seeing all the doctors and having x-rays and heart testing procedures. I ended up not doing any teaching at the library at all and quit a couple of other volunteer board positions that I just couldn’t physically handle as well.

I spent a lot of time just sitting and scanning or taking photos of my old journals, digging through and purging old files of art and school notes from when the kids were in elementary school, and making Scrivener files for all of the random writing I found within every stack of paper I touched. It was all very interesting to me from a “I’m always writing something, even when I shouldn’t be” perspective. I enjoyed that project a lot, even though my family got sick of me asking them to lug boxes around or to take another stack of papers to the recycle bin or “Can you read this thing that I wrote a decade ago that I can’t quite make out?” In the end, I counted 76 used notebooks and planners, plus two giant 3 inch binders full of loose-leaf paper and page upon page of stuff written on the backside of something else.

The floor plan of the house for one of my stories written on the backside of a page of PTA notes from 2013.

Summer band started a month ago and I’ve spent all of my time either taking two kids back and forth and back again between high school and college campuses for band practices and student orientations or in doctor’s offices letting them take yet more of my blood or more pictures of inconceivable places inside my body.

Now everyone’s back to school. My youngest started his sophomore year in high school last Monday and I thought to myself “Oh, I’ll get so much done!” But our black cat had other plans. I ended up taking him back and forth to the regular vet and then the emergency vet and then his regular vet again. Once he was better, my youngest slipped on the band field and had to go to Urgent Care for a sprained ankle. So this very wet Monday morning my midkid started his freshman year of college, but I was walking my youngest into school, carrying his enormous amounts of stuff while he swung in on crutches. My eldest took the midkid to his first day of college. I did get a “first day of college” selfie via text, so there’s that.

After that, I had nearly four hours to myself. I checked in with my Accountability Partner, and then I got to work. I made myself a more reasonable schedule of writing and writing related work (for those non-writers among us: finding short story and poetry markets, matching already written work to those submission guidelines, editing those pieces to fit word counts or to play up a theme, then writing cover letters and packaging my work so I can send them off, communicating with publishers and/or editors, doing edits for the places that bought my work, looking over proofs before things go to print, making images for new things and updating my webpage – hahaha – and my social media with images and links to the new books that have my work in them, etc.). I put everything into my Google calendar and Tasks list, but also wrote them into my paper planner, which helps me remember things better than the online stuff does (but the online versions keep me from getting too paranoid about losing a planner again, like what happened 5 years ago).

The Goals corkboard above my writing desk. I have two corkboards, but the other one is filled with things I like to look at, which I do not own the rights to for posting purposes, so we’ll leave that one just for me. 🙂

All of the planning now out of the way, I can get started with the first goal on my list: make a list of markets currently buying the kinds of stories I write. Off I go!

I also worked out weekly goals for the last six weeks of this quarter and all of the final quarter of the year. I’m hoping that I added in enough rest and recuperative time. I basically doubled the amount of time that I gave myself for similar things last year. We’ll see how that goes.

Around the House, My Own Personal Weirdness, What I Love

My new office space…

We have finally come to a stopping point. The midkid’s room and the youngest kid’s room are both finally painted and set up. I am having some ongoing health issues, so we chose not to repaint the space that’s become my office because I cannot handle the lingering paint fumes at the moment.

So while I’m not done, exactly, we’ve come to a bit of a standstill. Here’s a sneak peak of the space so far.

Looking into a small home office space from a doorway. There is a window in the center of the frame. to the left is a dark wooden desk with nine drawers. It has a laptop with an extra monitor on top, plus a tiffany style lamp on the left side. In front of the desk is a teal fabric chair. On the wall above the desk is a couple of small square corkboards and some small card-sized pieces of art with fairies and dragons. To the right of the window is a three foot tall, narrow bookshelf filled with small spiral notebooks. Sitting on top of it is two small white vases filles with greenery and a large watercolor painting of a pineapple. To the left of the shelf is a twin size bed draped in a white blanket with blue, green, and teal paisley. The sheet and pillows on the bed are navy. Above the bed are four white, floating shelves, which have dragons, pineapples, a writer's block emergency kit, and a many pointed star lamp.
Looking in from the doorway
In front of a mint green wall, a three foot tall by four foot wide golden wood bookcase is sitting on top of something draped in gold and blue fabric. The bookshelf is filled every which way with books. A small orange fairy, a small black typewriter, and a stack of books sit on the fabric. To the right of the bookcase, on the wall, a decorative black branch with many leaves and gold paint hangs above a yellow ceramic star-shaped light switch cover. Below that sits a three-tier corner shelf that has been painted turquoise. On the top shelf is a dolphin oil lamp. The second shelf contains a red square box and a box of tissues. The bottom shelf holds many different colored binders.
To the Right of the door.
There is a six foot wide closet without doors. It has purple curtains pulled back to the sides. Inside the closet is a small black desk with yellow magazine holders on the shelves below. Leaving against the wall above the desk is a mirror with several panes that look like a window. To the right of the desk is a black metal bookshelf filled with paperback books and a couple of brightly colored full-page hole punches. On a shelf above the desk, there is a small white castle, a wire paper tray, and a blue/black/white storage cube. In the foreground, ther is a desk chair covered in a beige crocheted shawl, some more magazine holders, and a small, but deep golden wood shelving unit with a teal file box on each of it's two shelves.
To the left of the door.

The room is currently furnished with things found around the house. The twin sized bed is staying in case we have overnight guests (it will be replaced with a wire framed trundle bed soon). I have a different tall bookcase that I may be picking up this weekend (or maybe not – one of my kids just got diagnosed with Covid) to replace the big one in the room.

I have a plan to take out one of the closet shelves so there is more light shining on the desk. That’s my project desk, which I can leave things out on and just close the curtains on if I am having people over.

I’m so excited about this little space. It’s been nearly two decades since I’ve had a room of my own to work in. I’m hoping it will up my productivity level in the days to come. 🙂

Around the House, Organizing, Parenting

Painting and Moving and Painting, Oh My

My middle child graduated from high school last month. He’s starting out at the local community college five minutes down the road, which is known for its fantastic band program, with the intention of heading to an even bigger band program a couple hours down the road to get a music education degree and become a band director. In any case, he is moving this week.

For those of you new here, my father has a house around the corner from me, in addition to his main house in College Station. Our eldest son moved over there his second semester of college, just before Covid hit. We never got his room repainted, he eventually decided he liked a different room better, and he never completely unpacked in either room so now he has stuff in two different bedrooms.

What the room looked like when my eldest lived in this room.

So last week we started consolidating the eldest back into one room and prepping the walls in the other one for painting. My husband and youngest kid primed the deep maroon walls with Killz.

This week we (my husband, me, my younger two in pairs over three days) painted the room mint green. The midkid started packing up his room at this house, in between Freshman Orientation and working at Studio Movie Grill. So far, he’s entirely his mother’s child and has only packed books and stuffed animals.

So refreshing now! To be fair, we haven’t really moved anything in yet.

In the meantime, his little brother, who is taking over his room here, has been picking out paint for his new space. Just imagine the opposite of this happy light green. This kid wants to live in the depths of the evil forest. He’s already weeded through all his worldly goods and is halfway packed. Yesterday he stood by his brother most of the day and made him keep putting things in boxes. I love him so much.

halfway packed and has .

I’ll also be moving — all my office equipment, writing, and craft stuff over to the youngest’s old room — so I have been picking out paint samples of my own, buying decor, and trying to find some bookcases that don’t have to be built by me. I was sorely tempted by a color called Love Poem just to be silly, but I don’t think I should live in a color so lurid.

No writing has been done in the last couple of weeks, but I have touched nearly every book in the house at this point. Hahaha. It’s exciting around here, to say the least.

Around the House, Everywhere But Home, health, Parenting

Putting This Off

This morning I woke up, light streaming in from the edges of the blackout curtains hitting my eyes. I swore, stumbled to the bathroom, and heard the car engine start outside. I ran out and tapped frantically at the window of the small red car. My husband rolled down the window, a look of concern on his face.

“This life we lead is unmanageable.” I croaked, my voice decomposed from the lack of sleep.

“I know. You should go back to bed.” He reached a kiss from his lips to my arm with his hand.

“I can’t. I have to take the child back to work for opening shift. He had keys they need in his pocket when he left last night. No, this morning. ” I brushed my hair back.

“I have to go. The beef needs to be traded out. My sister is waiting.” His eyes are tipped down at the corners, stress of the day already pulling them down. It’s 8:05am.

“I know. Say hi to her for me.” I smoothed down the edge of last night’s dress as I turned to go inside.

I heard “I love you” simultaneously with the rolling of the window and the crunch of the tires on the driveway.

Around the House, Computers and Internet, Lifelong learning, My Own Personal Weirdness

Keyboard Tracing

While waiting at the hairdresser, I read an alarming article this morning that claimed that my mechanical keyboard was putting me in danger of having my writing stolen. So naturally I had to go try out the software they said was so advanced that every sound of a touch on my keyboard could be tied to an exact letter.

The “sentence” I typed, which could only be lowercase and spaces, no other characters, was this: “the dark sky really looks bad she said altering the way she looked at the code on her phone”

There were seven pages of one sentence results and these were the closest ones:
1. “he see and i was the of little and the soon of the their press alreally in there water inter been a ”
2. “h walls none and streemed iioie hthe latter anhere in the that and the see this worth they really o”
3. ” c s of there and and looked to ea and therent of it and i had feeling seen this the s and rho”

Whee! Needless to say, my fears have been allayed.

My Own Personal Weirdness, My Writing, Organizing, Writing

This Week’s Word Count

I don’t know if I mentioned my wacky word count project before or not, but I made a Google workbook that has a spreadsheet for every current writing project I’m working on, plus one for the blog, ETWG related writing, ODWG related writing, journaling, etc. It was insanely intricate and I nearly lost my mind making it, but it’s done and it’ll let me figure out my word count across all my projects in one glance of an Excel file, as long as I remember to update it every day. Which I totally will, right? *dies laughing* In any case, this weeks word count was a palty 954, mostly because I spent all that time making the workbook. Here’s to hoping next week’s word count is better!

Essays, My Writing, poetry, Short Stories, The Past Comes Back to Haunt Me, What I Love

Two books for sale, one to go!

I honestly wasn’t expecting all the pieces I sold last year to come out all in the same week. They originally had publication dates that gave me a few weeks of breathing room in between each one, but one came out later and another one sooner and BAM, here they all are. So thank you for being patient with all my posts being about these books for sale. And thank you for supporting me and my writing for so long. Y’all are the best!

Now on to the books. One came out earlier last week and one came out today and the last one will be out tomorrow, but I was just too excited to wait. Here are links for the first two, along with a little description of what to expect from my piece in each book:

https://amzn.to/36qEyjY

This book has my poem “Last Family Vacation” on page 116, which is a peek into the heart of a mom with a kid in his senior year of high school. 🙂

https://amzn.to/3OvLLAF

This book has my essay “Revealing Rainbows” on page 74, which is a more in depth personal look at encouraging not just my sons to be themselves, but all the other boys they know as well.

Computers and Internet, Everywhere But Home, My Writing, Writing

Several Quick Things

  1. I am not dead, just super busy – still teaching at the library, running the ETWG, on the church board, etc – but also we had all the visitors in March, then Easter and now all the birthdays, too.
  2. I also have pieces in three books coming out all at once this week.
  3. Go look at my Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for more info about all that – posting there is quick and easy from my phone, but the blog? Not so much.
  4. I have also been writing this week, finally, after months of drought.