I will be speaking to the Rusk County Poetry Society at their March meeting on March 19, 2026 in Henderson, Texas. My topic is “Line Breaks and White Space.” Hope to see y’all there!
Category: Lifelong learning
I’ve been very bad about tallying up all of last year’s writing, but I think I’m finally done with it.
- In 2025, I wrote 104,303 words. Of those words,
- 5559 were for this blog (29 short posts),
- 3,660 were in 2 essays
- 26,396 were for my journal,
- 43,436 were for handouts, scripts, and slides for lessons (15 lessons),
- 15,692 were on various social media accounts,
- 12,094 were poetry (68 poems – a lifetime record),
- and 7,566 were in short stories (36 pieces of flash fiction).
- If you tally all those numbers up, I wrote 150 discrete items, not counting social media posts and journal entries because those don’t really get published. (So 150 items in 215 days, which means about 1 item every 1 and a quarter days)
- There were only 120 days that I didn’t write anything, mostly due to illness, travel, or moving my kids from house to house. So I wrote on 2/3rds of the days of the year, which basically comes down to working on writing 5 days a week and leaving myself weekends for living, if I were the kind of person that followed a schedule like that. I mean, I try, but there were loads of weeks where I missed several weekdays and wrote straight through the weekends.
- I only submitted about 5 items all year because it was just sooooo much chaos. I had 2 acceptances and the last 3 items are still well within their response timezones (there’s a better word for this, but the phone in the next room keeps ringing and ringing and I cannot think of it). The two acceptances will be published in early to mid 2026.
- I had 15 speaking engagements last year. The vast majority did not pay, but were for a group that both feeds my soul and lets me practice my topics with them. Two were for free for the library (who I love and who graciously supports two of my writing groups), but I got several paid teaching side gigs out of them, so that about broke even in terms of payment, really.
- As for reading, I finished 65 books and read parts of another 13, mostly for research, but also a couple of things I’ve had to mark DNF because I didn’t like their take on the topic or the writing style or something.
That’s it! One more year as a writer in the books. 🙂
In November, I wrote 16,268 words! Yay! Finally a good writing month after months and months of delays, trips, moving kids, etc. I’m so happy I finally got to sit down and just write. Of those words,
- 409 were for this blog (2 short posts),
2777 were for my journal, - 1234 were the essay for that anthology I talked about last month,
- 2426 were answering questions to help make my essay for the anthology, many of which did not end up in the anthology because they were excised from the first draft to make way for words that did not sound like they were answering questions,
- 0 were for handouts, scripts, and slides for lessons (I reused an old one for the Open Door Writing Group),
- 1572 were on various social media accounts,
- 3327 were poetry (16 poems – a new record!!),
- and 1073 were in short stories (2 pieces of flash fiction).
There were only 12 days that I didn’t write anything, but that’s not bad because I wrote A LOT on the days that I did write. I did host part of Thanksgiving and a board games night at my house this month, as well as building shelves and moving my husband’s entire board game collection from The Living Room to The Library.
Another one of the books I beta read for came out this month, so once again I’m feeling that weird sense of accomplishment about that.
As for myself, I had one piece accepted for an anthology that will come out early next year (probably around graduation season, I’m guessing, since the topic of my essay was “advice I’d give a teenager who wants to become a volunteer coordinator for a non-profit organization”).
As for reading, I read parts of:
- Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer(audiobook; non-fiction)
- West of Yesterday, East of Summer by Paul Monette (e-book; poetry – I finally got it back on Libby!)
Memory’s Daughters: The Material Culture of Remembrance in Eighteenth-Century America by Susan M. Stabile (hardcover; non-fiction – written by my Women’s Diaries professor at TAMU while I was taking her class) - How to Read Poetry Like a Professor: A Quippy and Sonorous Guide to Verse by Thomas C. Foster (e-book that I have AND trade paperback at my dad’s house; non-fiction)
- Poetry’s Data: Digital Humanities and the History of Prosody by Meredith Martin (e-book; non-fiction)
…and I finished reading:
- The Viscount Who Loved Me by Julia Quinn (audiobook; historical romance)
- Poetry Magazine Jan/Feb 2025 by Poetry.org (paperback; poetry)
- Let Loose the Dogs by Maureen Jennings (e-book; historical mystery)
- The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie (e-book; mystery)
- The Comfort Book by Matt Haig (audiobook; self-help)
- The Carrying by Ada Limon (e-book; poetry)
- Stargazy Pie by Victoria Stoddard (e-book; cozy fantasy)
I really am trying to finish most of the unfinished books I started earlier in the year. I have finished 56 books so far this year (and read parts of another 12, again mostly for research, but also a couple of things I’ve had to mark DNF.).
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
I’ll be speaking tonight at the meeting of the East Texas Writers Guild on “Sounds in Poetry” at the Tyler Area Chamber of Commerce Building at 6:30pm.
Tomorrow night I’ll be leading a lesson on “Beginner Calligraphy” at the Tyler Public Library at 5:30pm.
A busy week – I’m so excited! 🙂
I’ve been asked to lead a a couple of sessions of the Tyler Public Library’s “Try It Tuesday!” programs. On March 11, 2025, I’ll be teaching a beginner calligraphy lesson and on April 8, 2025, I’ll be teaching a beginner crochet lesson. Both sessions are free to the public. They run from 5:30-7:30pm in the 3rd floor Makerspace at the Tyler Public Library. Hope to see some of y’all there! 🙂
Today I’m giving a lesson on Sounds in Poetry over at the Tyler Public Library at 1pm in the Makerspace (behind the computer lab on the third floor). But don’t let that scare you away if you’re not a poet. I’m covering poetry, a little bit about songwriting, and how to use lyricism in your prose as well.
Hope to see you there!
I will be speaking at the Open Door Writing Group (at the Tyler Public Library) at 1pm on January 22nd on the topic of “Sounds in Poetry”.
If you think this sounds familiar, it’s because I’ve been talking about doing this lesson for about three years now, but we needed more poets in the audience. We have more poets now! 🙂 YAY!
Come on over and join us!
I know, I know…you almost forgot I worked here. I have the usual excuses, all tied up with string, sitting under a cat somewhere. Last year was a doozy of a year, filled with all manner of distractions, procrastinations, and other sundry explosions of my life.
I’ve spent the last couple of days thinking about what my writing goals are for this year. One is to make my usual chart of what all I wrote last year, but that isn’t done yet because the transcribing isn’t done. So no numbers today. Maybe tomorrow. After I’ve written, of course.
I’m on the schedule with an editor for September, so my big goal is to finish the latest draft of my big epic fantasy novel and polish it up. This is the novel y’all have heard me refer to as Caro’s Quest in the past. I still need a better name for it, but that will come. 🙂
Smaller goals include finding homes for my poetry and short stories, finishing putting together my first poetry anthology, finishing my research on the best time to release it, and then publishing that anthology. I’m aiming for sending off at least one poem and one short story a week. We’ll see if that’s a manageable goal as time goes on and reassess after the first quarter is over.
I’m no longer on the board for the East Texas Writing Guild, nor my UU church board. Those were positive decisions for me, based on me needing more time to write. I’m continuing on as a moderator for the Open Door Writing Group at the Tyler Public Library for the foreseeable future, which means writing and giving a presentation for a monthly lesson about writing.
That’s about it, y’all. It’s my first day back at the writing desk. I’m planning on starting off all my weekdays from here on out at my writing desk, working on stories or poetry for the first half of every day before moving on to social media, lesson writing, and marketing in the afternoons.
Yay 2025! I hope this year will be so much better than the last. 🙂
I will be speaking at the Open Door Writing Group – Night Group today at the UU Fellowship (1629 Old Omen Road in Tyler) at 6pm on the topic of “Humorous Writing”. Come on over and join us!
Lisa Holcomb 