I was supposed to speak to the Tyler Public Library’s Writer’s Club Facebook Group today about “Selling Your Short Fiction to Anthologies.” Instead, I had a long series of disasters, which lead to me posting the text of my speaking notes, offering writing prompts, and sending links to some good places to submit short stories. It was so frustrating. But no one seemed to mind, so I guess that is something, right?
Category: What I Love
I will be speaking about “Selling Your Short Work to Anthologies” at the Tyler Public Library Writer’s Club Facebook Group on August 26, 2020 at noon. You can find us at: {link}
Before I knew I was going to be running behind on my BYOB project, I’d already signed up for this writing class/workshop/book discussion group covering Julia Cameron’s The Vein of Gold. I have done a book by Julia Cameron before, many many years ago, called The Artist’s Way, and then several years ago, I also went through her book Blessings. So I was pretty sure I was going to enjoy this when I saw it come up as an option on one of my book groups.
Today’s the first day the group is meeting (and coincidentally also the kids first day back to school). I just discovered that, sadly, I’m already a little bit behind. Apparently a calendar went out over the weekend when I wasn’t paying attention to the group yet, starting daily personal activities last Sunday. Ah well, it looks like it should be pretty easy to catch up, as I actually already have a Morning Pages and Daily Walk habit. I just have to catch up on the very small amount of reading. 🙂 I cannot wait to get started!
I spoke today at the Tyler Public Library’s Writing Club Facebook Group on Humor in Writing. I shared a handout on writing humorously and we did some writing exercises. It went really well! If you are a member of the group, you can see the replay of the live video here: {link}
I will be presenting a writing lesson on “Humor in Writing” at the Tyler Public Library’s Writing Club Facebook Group on July 29th, 2020 at noon. If you’re a member of the group, you can find us here: {link}
I get emails all the time from various writers trying to sell their latest books about writing, writing courses, etc. Sometimes they are full of interesting things, sometimes not so much. Today’s message from bookfox.co caught my eye sent me down this rabbit hole:
Write down your favorite album, your favorite movie, and your favorite artwork.
Now answer a few questions about these selections:
What do your answers have in common?
What kind of art are they?Why do these pieces of art, above all else, move you?
Now to figure out what this means. What do your answers tell you about the type of writing you should produce?
My answers:
Favorite album: Nomads, Indians, and Saints by the Indigo Girls
Favorite movie: Sliding Doors
Favorite artwork: Van Gogh’s Starry Night
What do these things have in common? I chose them all during my college years. They all represent a time to me when I was first starting out, making my first decisions away from my parents, living on my own for the first time. And even with twenty years in between those days and now, I still love them. I still think about them as some of the first things that were really, truly my things.
Other things they have in common is a certain amount of wildness and inconsistency, some questioning of reality, a journey to find what really is true about the world. Those are still things I’m thinking about today, even though some of my thoughts on those subjects have changed, my quest for truth in the world has not. I’m still striving for my own authenticity in a world that wants me to be just like everyone else. But not I can see how different everyone else really is and see what that means in their lives. My world has expanded so much since then.
The next part of the email made me realize that I’d gone off the intended path of the lesson at hand for the day, but that’s okay. I like the answers I found.
Hello writers! I attend a critique group with the East Texas Writers Guild. Our critique group has a couple openings right now. We meet every other week on Friday mornings at 9am to give critiques in person (right now we meet via Zoom). We can send up to 15 pages of short stories or fiction each for each meeting, due by email the Friday before the meeting. We currently have two historical fiction writers and two fantasy writers, but most genres (no erotica, please) are welcome. If you are interested in joining us, please contact me at lisa.holcomb@suddenlink.net. Looking forward to hearing from you!
I spoke today at the Tyler Public Library’s Writing Club Facebook Group on “Writing More Productively.” I talked a lot about From 2K to 10K and shared a lot of links both during the lesson and afterward. If you are a member of the group, you can see the replay of the live video here: {link}
I will be speaking at the Tyler Public Library’s Writer’s Club at noon on July 15, 2020. My topic will be “How to Write More Productively.” Hope you will join us! {link}
My dad came up to spend the July 4th weekend with us. He arrived Friday and we thought he was going home on Sunday, but he extended it to Monday to make some much needed repair calls for his house up here and now he’s extended it one more day to meet the termite people in person. All of which to say that I haven’t gotten any writing done since last Thursday.
So today, I’ve got some time and my brain says “nope.” I am not letting that deter me. For my birthday in April, I got several of those books in the writing thesaurus series and I have not managed to look at a single one until this morning. So I looked up my notes about the scene I was supposed to be writing – “Edward & Minerva talk in hotel room after meeting Sharon. E’s POV, also show how he is more like Stephen/Walt in tenderness towards wife, but how that is a magically manipulated response.”
So then I looked up these key words: “adoration” “apprehension” (both from the “Emotion Thesaurus“) “hotel room” (from the Urban Settings Thesaurus) “manipulative” (from the “Negative Trait Thesaurus“
Then I made notes about each key words and dumped those into my scene document et voila! Half the scene is already done. The part I consider the hard part, usually. Now to add dialogue.
Was it quick? Not really. But it’s a scene started rather than the two sentence outline I previously had. 🙂
Lisa Holcomb 