Category: Writing

health, The Past Comes Back to Haunt Me, Writing

BYOB Delays

My posts for BYOB have not turned out to be daily. I have been having health issues again, the same brain and blood issues that I had last year and the year before and the year before. It always seems to get worse this time of year. You would think I would be used to it by now, but I am not.

So, I am up to day three now with my posts and today is the thirteenth. I don’t imagine that I will catch up, but I did have a phenomenally productive day yesterday with writing, so there is still hope.

My whole publication over at Medium.com can be found here: https://medium.com/life-according-to-lisa.

Computers and Internet, Lifelong learning, Writing

Artist Dates

Another one of Julia Cameron’s big things is taking yourself on an Artist Date. Julia describes them thusly: “The Artist Date is a once-weekly, festive, solo expedition to explore something that interests you. The Artist Date need not be overtly “artistic”– think mischief more than mastery. Artist Dates fire up the imagination. They spark whimsy.”

A bajillion years ago when I did my first Julia Cameron experience, I had no kids, I lived in a big city, I wasn’t immunocompromised, and there was no pandemic going on. So there are big changes in the here and now version of my life.

I’m really not leaving the house much these days. I go on walks around the neighborhood, the grocery store occasionally, and Wal-mart even less often than that. Not much more than that. So Artist Dates are hard to imagine right now. Fortunately, the group I’m doing this with is awesome and came up with a list of alternate ideas for artist dates, some of which I’ll share below:

For this week, I did an Artist Date with my youngest son. We painted “pawtraits” of some local rescue cats as part of a charity fundraiser to raise money for O’Malley Alley Cats in Tyler (the group we fostered for this spring and summer).

Writing

New Critique Group – Pineywoods Critique Group

Over the summer, both of my critique groups faded away to until it was just me and one other person, so we advertised for new writers to join us. We’ve named our new group the Pineywoods Critique Group. I’ve been doing critiques this afternoon and am so happy with the first half of our new members (we’ve got so many that we split into groups of four that send submissions every other week). I could just cry. Such good writers! 🙂❤️❤️❤️

Computers and Internet, My Own Personal Weirdness, The Past Comes Back to Haunt Me, Writing

BYOB

I am taking an online writing class called BYOB – Blog Your Own Book. It’s thirty-one days of blogging with a goal to use the posts to make an e-book at the end of the month. I’ve decided to blog my own adoption story from start to finish, with a few meanderings here and there to talk about Adoptee Rights, the psychology behind healing the emotional wounds of adoption, websites that help people search, and other adoption related topics. I plan to send copies of the resulting e-book to my family members when it is complete.

I am telling the story from just my point of view, I am leaving out possibly salacious bits of information that might upset anyone involved, and I am not posting the given names of those who are featured in my story. Everyone named will be given a pseudonym to protect their anonymity.

I’ve chosen to post my pieces on Medium because there is the possibility of getting paid for my posts there. If this series works out, I will write more stories on Medium about other topics.

Here is the link to the first piece: https://medium.com/life-according-to-lisa/my-quick-and-dirty-adoption-story-e44ecc9a79db

Around the House, My Own Personal Weirdness, Organizing, Writing

Organizing all the things

Over the weekend, my family cleaned out our garage. All four of us at once. Usually it’s just me and one kid or the other, dragging things out and throwing them in the trash. It takes all day, sometimes two. This time I put my foot down and made everyone work together at once. Two hours later we were nearly done. Two dumpsters were filled with trash, the van was filled with donations, and more donate-ables were put out at the curb for people to take. Later that afternoon, I pulled some memory boxes inside, one by one, and dug through them. More papers were added to the recycle bin, old bills were shredded, and folders were made and labeled with dates and kid names. I knocked out 3 of the 7 that were left before the end of the day.

While I was going through all that paper, I found 6 new poems, notes on two novels that I’d never seen before (one which tied up a plot hole I’ve been edging around for months), and a rough draft of a short story I cannot remember writing (but it’s in my handwriting). And all that doesn’t include the four notebooks I found that I hadn’t had a chance to dig through yet.

This afternoon, I typed all that into the computer. Between the random sheafs and the notebooks, I ended up with 14 poems across the last decade. While I was putting those in order, I discovered 22 other poems that had been mis-foldered at some point in the past. Since I was on a roll, I went through all the rest of the notebooks in the bedroom and checked for poetry. Found 5 more pages of one novel, written longhand, and three pages of notes on another one.

After all that nonsense, I opened up my old yWriter files from the current novels and translated a bunch of character/location/item templates into Scrivener, then updated my three current Scrivener novel Outliner Columns/Keywords/Custom Meta-data so they all had matching information to work with.

(I also went to the doctor and shopped at three stores today. I’ve been hyper-productive.)

Computers and Internet, Speaking, What I Love, Writing

Today’s Speaking Engagement at TPLWC

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}

Computers and Internet, Speaking, What I Love, Writing

Speaking Engagement at TPLWC on 07.29.20

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}

Lifelong learning, What I Love, Writing

Thinking about what I should write

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.

What I Love, Writing

Critique Group Opening

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!

Computers and Internet, Speaking, What I Love, Writing

Today’s Speaking Engagement at TPLWC

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}