I have been rescheduled to speak at the March meeting of the East Texas Writer’s Guild on March 10, 2025. They meet from 6:30pm-8:00pm in the Genecov Room of the Tyler Area Chamber of Commerce Building (aka The Blackstone Building) in downtown Tyler. I’ll be speaking on Sounds in Poetry. Hope to see some of you there!
Category: What I Love
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! 🙂
In January 2025, I wrote 9,847 words. Of those words,
- 830 were for this blog (six posts)
- 3121 were journal entries
- 3149 were lessons, scripts, and slides (for one ODWG lesson)
- 2045 were on various social media accounts
- 151 were poetry (one poem)
- and 651 were short stories (three pieces of flash fiction)
I sent off three poems and three short stories for publication, but haven’t heard back from any of them.
I also read parts of these books:
- A Poet’s Guide to Poetry by Mary Kinzie (paperback; non-fiction)
- Call Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman (hardcover; poetry)
- The Wonder Engine (Clocktaur War #2) by T. Kingfisher (audiobook; fantasy)
- The Green Man: Tales from the Mystic Forest edited by Ellen Datlow (e-book; fiction short stories)
And finished these books:
- The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop by Fannie Flag (e-book; fiction)
- Just Dying to Glamp by April Nunn Coker (e-book; mystery)
- When She Returned by Lucinda Berry (e-book; thriller)
- Peace is a Practice by Morgan Harper Nichols (e-book; non-fiction).
January is always a tricky month, I think. The first couple weeks are still half-way holidays and then there are a few random at-home days for my school-age kiddo as well. Which means that you don’t get a full month of writing days, but I managed to write at least a little something for 26 out of 31 days in any case. I think that’s pretty good. 🙂
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!
If you know me in real life, you know I love analyzing things. One of my favoritest things to look at is my writing data. I love seeing which months I had the most success in and in which category and then what that looks like over time. So here’s what 2024 looked like.
All Writing Combined:
140,352
Number of Words By Month:
January: 9,017
February: 19,253
March: 9,440
April: 6,562
May: 6,166
June: 9,417
July: 13,961
August: 23,215
September: 5,966
October: 13,824
November: 22,477
December: 1,054
Number of Words By Category:
Blog: 2527
Essays: 1,063
Lessons: 43,549
Lake House Mystery: 36,258
Journal: 21,503
Miscellaneous: 16,939
Short Fiction: 13,664
Poetry: 4,434
Best Month for Each Category:
Blog: January at 546
Essays: June at 487
Lessons: February at 12,031 (that surprised me – I really thought it’d be October)
Lake House Mystery: November at 18,468 (that did not surprise me)
Journal: April at 3,811
Miscellaneous: October at 2,890
Short Fiction: June at 2,494
Poetry: February at 2,157 (that poem about teeth was LONG, y’all!)
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!
How is it already September? The summer went by so quickly and I’ve spent so much of it rushed off my feet with all the background, real-life stuff that is hard to cover in a blog post.
Here’s an update on my word counts from the last few months:
June: 8,880
July: 12,807
August: 22,434
Look at how I’ve improved! I’ve triple-checked that last one, but it is correct.
June’s improvement mainly came from writing more short stories. I stayed pretty busy with all the behind the scenes stuff from the other house, getting my eldest ready to go spend a month in China, teaching at both the ODWG writing groups, etc.
July’s word count bump came from not only more writing days in front of the computer on short story work, but also in the category I call “Lessons”, which I write for my local area writing groups. I was trying to get ahead for the busier times of the year when I’d have less time to prepare a lesson. It’s wild to me that I had any kind of improvement at all, really, because my spouse and I spent two weeks flat out with Covid.
August’s giant improvement came in the form of a road trip with my husband. For our anniversary last month, he surprised me with a trip to a little town in the middle of nowhere, which had a fantastic vibe, lots of fun things to tour, and quirky town oddities. Well, that tied in to the long-neglected Lake House Mystery in my brain. So I pulled out that old manuscript, updated a few bits here and there, and then started adding some fun stuff that popped into my head during the trip. After six days of adding little bits here, there, and everywhere, I had an extra 16,000-ish words added, all easy-peasy, which was amazing because that literally doubled the size of this manuscript.
I’m not done there, though. This mystery needs about 30,000 more words before it’ll be done. I’m wanting to finish that this month, while the mood is still is the air, so to speak. Crossing my fingers and hoping real hard.
-L
I will be speaking at the Open Door Writing Group – Night Group at the UU Fellowship of Tyler next Thursday, July 25, 2024 on the topic of “Story Beats and Echoes”. This is an updated version of what I taught at the day group, so come on over and join us!
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 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!
Lisa Holcomb 