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}
Category: Writing
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.
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}.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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*
Here’s what I love about my critique groups:
- We have so many kinds of writers, so everyone has a different way of looking at stories.
- Everyone has a different thing they’re serious about, too. One hates adverbs, one obsesses with having enough romance, another is super descriptive about what she likes and what doesn’t work, one loves my sticky words, another one tells me every time I have a good hook…
- I can go through all four critiques and still have things to work on by the time I’m on the fourth one. It’s amazing how that works.
- No one can tell me why transferring from Scrivener to Word destroys half my apostrophes and half my italics. No one knows. It’s a mystery. I look at it in Scrivener, and they’re fine. Move stuff into Word, they’re not. WHAT EVEN IS GOING ON?!?!?!
- They would all get onto me about my excessive use of exclamation points and all caps in the last point. I can’t help it –I’m excitable.
- People in my groups know the difference between all three dashes and can talk about it. I have to have it in a file on my desktop and remind myself every day. I still don’t remember. Also, the shortcuts for them vary across apps and that drives me insane.
- Sometimes people draw pictures on my critiques. I love that.
I’m sure you’ve been wondering where I’ve been lately. Here’s the scoop:
Toward the end of 2018, just before my mother passed away, I joined a local professional writing group. I’ve spent the last year waiting for a spot in one of their critique groups to open up, and meantime I (and my friend E from NANOWRIMO2018) started attending a weekly writing group at the public library as well. The library group has writers from many genres, but doesn’t critique the work we bring in. Mostly we do several writing prompts for 10 minutes each. It’s been fun stretching my writing skills with them.
In December, a spot finally opened up. Two, actually. I brought my friend E with me to this group. We got started and then a week later, our library group started an off-shoot group for critiquing as well. E and I both have multiple novels in our back pocket needing critique work, so we joined this group as well. Both groups meet every other week. One group has five ladies and one has just three for now. One group has no other speculative fiction writers, the other is all about that.
I also joined two book clubs. One with the Unitarian Universalist church my mid-kid and I have been attending. It meets in person once a month and they have a full 12 month schedule plotted out—most of the books are some historical fiction or something similar. Last month it was The Secrets We Kept. This month it is Rules of Civility.The other book club is a feminist book club with an old college friend and some of her other friends. It meets online twice a month, and is covering an Audible book Warriors, Queens, and Intellectuals: 36 Great Women Before 1400.
In between all that, there’s been the usual PTA/BPA stuff, family events (Board Game Extravaganza! SuperBowl!), and the kids had band All Region events. We visited an event at NASA that my dad’s cousin spoke at (he was one of the Gallaudet Eleven) and got to spend time with him, then went back to BCS and visited with my sister, her new girlfriend, and my best friend.
I lost my planner sometime in the middle there. Finally gave in and bought a new one, so now I’m back on schedule. Literally. I wrote out a new schedule. Expect more blog posts, FB, IG, and Twitter from my author accounts. I even set up Hootsuite to help me keep track of it all.
Hope everyone’s doing well out there. Drop me a comment if you’re interested in seeing any photos from the NASA event. 🙂
Lisa Holcomb 