Writing – Page 16 – Lisa Holcomb

Six Weeks into the Pandemic

It’s about six weeks into the quarantine/social distancing/pandemic. I’ve been thinking about doing Morning Pages for about a week or more now, but never started because I was having bad hand days or Nick was being too loud, etc. Downloaded a template for Scrivener this morning and now I’m off!

Right now I am missing church. I can’t get the Internet to keep going long enough to do a video this morning. I’m actually disappointed about that. I dressed up, got everyone else out of the house, and then nothing. *sigh* At least I have my new keyboard to type on, right? Right. Still getting used to that, though. My left hand fingers feel like they are flying away every time I lift them from the keys.

And now my husband is mowing right outside of the room. This always happens, btw. Not the mowing necessarily, but someone interrupting what is supposed to be my private time. The downsides of a pandemic, first world problems.

Everywhere But Home, Speaking, What I Love, Writing

Speaking Engagement on 04/29/20

I will be speaking at the Tyler Public Library’s Writer’s Club Facebook Group on April 29, 2020 at noon. My topic will be “Scene Crafting.” You can join the group here.

Computers and Internet, Speaking, What I Love, Writing

Today’s Speaking Engagement

I spoke today at the Tyler Public Library’s Writet’s Club Facebook Group on “World Building.” I wasn’t as nervous this time and it went really well! If you are a member of the group, you can see the replay of the live video here: {link}

Everywhere But Home, Speaking, What I Love, Writing

Speaking Engagement on 04/01/20

I am once again speaking at the Tyler Public Library’s Writer’s Club! I will be speaking on April 1, 2020 at noon and my topic will be “World Building.” All are welcome to join the Tyler Public Library’s Writer’s Club Group on Facebook.

Computers and Internet, Speaking, What I Love, Writing

Today’s Speaking Engagement

I spoke today at Tyler Public Library’s Writer’s Club Facebook Group on “Writing Conferences and Writing Books.” I was pretty nervous at first because I’ve never done anything like this before online, but I felt like it went really well! If you are a member of the group, you can see the replay of the live video here: {link}.

Around the House, What I Love, Writing

Co-working woes will continue

I had no idea my husband was on the phone so much. Or in meetings. No, really. I know what he does in abstract. I’ve seen the engineering charts, I’ve watched him work during family vacations. I just had no idea being my husband’s newest co-worker would be so loud. Thankful that today is a half day. I’m seriously starting to go nuts here. I have gotten very little writing done and writing is what I do.

Next week the kids will be home doing what they’re calling Distance Learning. The kids will have classes through their Google Classroom Portals, I guess. They’re making a plan this weekend and will let us know on Monday.

The silver linings are that: 1) my sister ordered my kids a Yum box, so we have weird snacks from Brazil to eat, 2) my dad randomly sent me an awesomely creepy Mouse King nutcracker/music box and the kids are mesmerized, and 3) we are ordering pizza from Top it Off Pizza for lunch today. YAY!

The funny box the Mouse King was shipped in.

Mouse King with dancing mini mice soldiers

Everywhere But Home, Speaking, What I Love, Writing

Speaking Engagement

On March 25, 2020 at noon, I am speaking at the Tyler Public Library Writers Club about “Writing Conferences & Writing Books” via Facebook Live on their Facebook Group.

Around the House, Computers and Internet, Writing

Writing Group, Facebook style

Back before all this coronavirus craziness hit, our public library had asked our writing group to consider having an online presence. People had complained that they weren’t able to come at noon on a Wednesday, not to mention for a two-hour period all at once. Some people in wackier places, like the Phillipines, wanted to join our group as well. A poll of the current group took place –the people attending said they couldn’t meet or didn’t want to meet in the evenings, so we were at an impasse.

The library decided to set us up with a Facebook Group page, with our four in-person facilitators (myself included) as moderators. Today we started our online writing group adventure a little earlier than we had planned for, due to coronavirus closing our library. One of our facilitators figured out how to pre-schedule posts so they could go up when she wanted them to, just in case she turned out to be unavailable at the right time. Prompts got posted several times over the two-hour time slot we usually met. People could come and go, writing at whatever time worked for their schedules.

Personally, I was having internet woes by that point in the day. Having extra people at home using the internet constantly means that sometimes the internet goes wonky when you least expect it. So I wrote on the prompts later in the day. Other people have joined in, several of which I haven’t met in person before. I think it went pretty well, so I’m going to volunteer to moderate for next week. 🙂 Let me know if you want to join us and I’ll shoot you a link to the online group.

Around the House, Family Time, Lifelong learning, Music, Parenting, Writing

Social Distancing

Today was supposed to be a several things that it wasn’t.

Kids were supposed to be back at school, but the district is having what they call a “Community Mitigation Period” instead. They’re cleaning the schools and we’re supposed to be back on schedule next week. Ree is a little bit wumbly over it because he left his instruments at school because of the wisdom tooth removal. He’s already heard from his band director that this weeks pass offs are still due. *sigh*

We were also supposed to have our belated Lindale Critique Group meeting today. Since we usually meet at a McDonald’s off a busy highway and two of our members are immunocompromised, we decided we should probably all stay home this time. So we exchanged critiques by email, which is never as enlightening as meeting face to face is. Ah well, hoping next time goes better.

I was supposed to finally have at least an afternoon at home alone, which didn’t happen. Instead I talked to kids about the coronavirus and what the schedule at home would look like. We’re going on a modified summer schedule for now. Morning are quiet movies, exercise, and chores. Afternoons are video games, some outside time, instrument practice, and reading. Evenings will be mostly as normal as they ever get. One teacher has offered online flute lessons. We shall see how that goes.

Finally, our East Texas Writer’s Guild had its usual Nutz & Boltz meeting online via Zoom. We had some good conversation about things. (I have notes if anyone is interested.) 🙂 At least one thing went off like normal.

Around the House, Everywhere But Home, health, My Own Personal Weirdness, Writing

Pneumonia and other disasters

My youngest has pneumonia — they diagnosed it on Monday. My family of five had four dentist appointments and one doctor’s visit scheduled this week even before that happened. We’ve been to the doctor every afternoon this week besides that. I still made it to a critique group on Tuesday and led a lesson on the Snowflake Method at the public library group on Wednesday. My eldest son sat with the smallest so I could go. Other than that it’s been pills and breathing treatments and trips to the pharmacy over and over. In one five-minute window, while sitting in the doctor’s office and overseeing a breathing treatment, I spoke to one other doctor’s office about how the scan from last week showed that my thyroid was “super enlarged”, the dentist about my husband’s recovery from minor dental surgery, and the endodontist to schedule an appointment for my abscessed gums, all while texting with the flute teacher about her own bout of pneumonia and the French horn teacher to say that we really couldn’t make it this week. Today I had to reschedule two other appointments because of bad schedules at the places I was going (how do they manage to schedule people onto days the doctor won’t be there?). All this to say that there has been no writing this week, other than the four-page document I wrote about the Snowflake Method. *sigh*