Category: Writing

Around the House, Books, Crafts, Everywhere But Home, Family Time, Lifelong learning, My Writing, Organizing, poetry, The Past Comes Back to Haunt Me, What I Love, Writing

January stats

This month, I eked out 8,749 words, but a lot of it was poetry, so when I think about it that way, that’s a LOT.

I prepared and presented two lessons at ODWG. I also worked some more on the Lake House Mystery and made a whole new system for tracking my poetry and short story submissions.

I also rearranged my entire writing studio again because it turned out that one of my bookshelves could not stand up without the support of the two on either side and books were everywhere.

In real life, one of my kids had an MRI for migraines and also sliced open his foot badly, all in one month. My dad visited for a long while. I started crocheting the Pineapple Peacock shawl, took it apart and restarted it twice more, then finally gave up. Knitted a scarf for my spouse instead.

We had a polar vortex hit and had several “ice days” I started reading “Barbara and Susan Talk About Empty Nests” once a week as a kind of devotional for therapy homework. I also read “Shadow and Bone” and “Lessons in Chemistry”.

My Own Personal Weirdness, My Writing, Organizing, What I Love, Writing

Done with Plotting My LHM!

Look at my beautiful graph!

(Actually, you couldn’t. Something went wrong with the embedding. But go here to see my Pacemaker.press plan about it.)

Everywhere But Home, My Writing, Organizing, Speaking, What I Love, Writing

Upcoming Speaking Engagement at Open Door Writing Group on January 24, 2024

I will be speaking at the Open Door Writing Group at the Tyler Public Library at 1pm on January 24, 2024 on the topic of “Using Pacemaker for Writing Schedules”. Come on out and join us!

My Own Personal Weirdness, My Writing, Organizing, What I Love, Writing

Happy 2024!

It’s the first Monday of the first full week of 2024 and my official start to the new year. I always like to start off a new year looking back at the last year and seeing what I accomplished and try to plan for what I think I can do better in the upcoming year.

2023 in Review:

  • Overall, I wrote 160,202 words
  • January – 14,454
  • February – 33,559
  • March – 27,344
  • April – 6,387
  • May – 29,548
  • June – 8,742
  • July – 25,341
  • August – 1,671
  • September – 1,571
  • October – 5,100
  • November – 5,119
  • December – 1,456
  • 3,105 written for this blog
  • 40, 036 for Caro’s Quest
  • 13,676 in my journals
  • 45,436 for the Hannah Project, which makes my heart sad
  • 3,024 in poetry
  • 7, 723 in little flash fiction bits during writing groups
  • 1,495 in short stories outside of other writing groups
  • 2,250 for a non-fiction essay which was accepted for publication in an anthology about chronic illness
  • 15,838 in my social media accounts
  • 24,083 in lessons and worksheets and speeches for various writing groups
  • And 4,022 at the end of the year on the Lake House Mystery
  • (Most of this did not include background writing for various novels in progress – just writing that ended up in the draft)

So, I did pretty well for the first half of the year…and then health woes (both mental and physical) slowed me down considerably. So for next year, I will work on powering through the pain and not letting myself get distracted by non-writing side projects as much as I did this year.

Everywhere But Home, Lifelong learning, Speaking, Writing

Upcoming Speaking Engagement at the Open Door Writing Group on January 10, 2024

I will be speaking at the Open Door Writing Group (at the Tyler Public Library) at 1pm on January 10, 2024 on the topic of “How I Use Scrivener to Plot and Write”. Come on over and join us!

Open Door Writing Group

Around the House, Everywhere But Home, Family Time, Finding My Birthfamily, Parenting, Short Stories, What I Love, Writing

Midsummer Murmurings

I’ve got some exciting news, y’all! In November I’ll be attending the 20 Books to 50K Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. The lovely folks in charge of that conference gave me a scholarship for the conference ticket, so I’d like to publically thank them for that. Thank you, 20Books Conference Committee!! Nick and I will travel to the conference together and use it as a combined work trip and 25th wedding anniversary rolled into one. By day, he’ll be working remotely while I attend the conference. By night, we’ll paint the town red with whatever author friends we make along the way. I’m so excited about this conference. Everyone says it’s fabulous!

Before we get there, though, there’s still the rest of the summer to get through. I’d thought this summer was going to be quiet because my youngest ended up making the hard decision not to travel with DCI this year, due to a myriad of reasons and circumstances that I’ll not go into here. So traveling to see him performing across the US fell off the list of things I’d do this summer. In the meantime, I’ve been finishing the short story I mentioned last month, teaching my midkid to drive, adopting a kitten, planning two trips, working on my speaking engagements, helping with both planning a conference and installing a new treasurer for the East Texas Writers Guild, and juggling all the schedule changes unexpectedly sent my way. Which is why those that know me in real life have started to wonder if I exist at all. I do, I’m just constantly in meetings or driving lessons or keeping the Foxglove the Wonder Kitten from biting all the things.

A twelve-week-old tuxedo kitten wearing a lime green collar sits ensconced in a turquoise and grey crocheted blanket. She is looking directly at the camera with her golden eyes and looks content.
Obligatory Kitten Picture – Foxglove the Wonder Kitten

So I said I was planning two trips – the other one is a pilgrimage with my 80-year-old father to see my mother’s grave. She was buried amongst family in their hometown — Superior, Wisconsin — which is sixteen hours away by car. Along the way, he wants to stop in Lincoln, Nebraska, to see his brother, Platteville, Wisconsin to see my birthfamily (who he hasn’t met yet), and Eau Claire, Wisconsin to do some research with a former student (and maybe see my cousin and his family?). On the way home, he’s hoping to stop in Minneapolis to see his cousin as well. All in an eight-day whirlwind trip that includes four days in his hometown for two reunions and a chance to see the rest of the family. Eight days isn’t enough, y’all, but I have the ETWG Conference on one end and a speaking engagement on the other, so that’s all the time we’ve got. Being my dad, and therefore the source of my personal time blindness, he’s scheduled a bunch of stuff for days we won’t actually be there. Whee! This trip is ripe for stories that will make it into my adoption memoir, I’m sure. I will be taking notes and pictures. Follow me on social media for all of that.

Lisa Holcomb, wearing a pink and purple print shirt and multi colored glasses, stands hugging her father, David Larson, who is wearing a dark grey shirt with black suspenders, and also a plaid hat.

Me and my dad

Around the House, Crafts, Family Time, health, My Writing, Parenting, What I Love, Writing

Early Summer Musings

The fact that it is already summer break just astounds me. It feels like it was only yesterday that it was Mother’s Day.

Me and my kiddos

May went by in a flurry of tornado warnings, band concerts and banquets, color guard contests, kids’ auditions or testing for various activities, and all the sayings of “goodbye” to people and places we’ve loved spending time with.

I started helping out the worship team at my local UU church, both developing services and speaking during services. I also agreed to serve as vice president of the church board next year.

My eldest child acquired a car, passing his old one to his younger brother, who just started driving solo, and just like that *snap* life changed overnight. I no longer have to drive anyone anywhere unless there’s an emergency.

I spent a couple weeks preparing for a speaking engagement for the Open Door Writing Group at the Tyler Public Library about writing lyrically. I read or re-read so many books on writing poetry. Two didn’t arrive on time, so I still have those to look forward to.

Unfortunately, all that activity sent my diseases into overdrive. I got a sinus infection, then my joints flared up and I spent the last half of the month in too much pain to think, let alone set down words. It took me an entire month to finish a short story that I’d had outlined and ready to go. *sigh*

Last week my father was in town, so we spent time indulging in watching “Only Murders in the Building” (while I did cross stitch, since my hands had finally returned to normal) and taking time to look over his house here and make lists of future maintenance needs.

He went back to his primary residence yesterday afternoon and now I am back at my writing desk today, updating all the social media things, preparing for my two speaking engagements that are coming up later this month, and trying to sneak in a few new words in my next novel. Hope all of y’all are having a wonderful start to your summer! Let me know in the comments if you plan to join me at any of my events this month.

Available Now, Books, Lifelong learning, My Own Personal Weirdness, My Writing, What I Love, Writing

Reflections on the one-year anniversary of being published

Last month marked the anniversary of my first published work. Well, my first published work in over two decades, I should say, not counting unpaid blog posts and articles for local area newsletters. I had a few small bits published right after college, but then I had children and did not get back into writing for many years. Even then, I was too scared to send anything off to see if it was good enough for publication. Two years ago, I finally had enough positive feedback from other writers to get my courage up, and I got the ball rolling on submitting and by May last year, I had pieces published in four anthologies.

Click here for links to buy these books.

It’s been a good year, all told. I’ve had the chance to experience an anthology being built from the ground up, worked with several personalities of editors, set up Amazon Author Central and Goodreads Author pages, met a lot of fantastic and helpful new people, learned thousands of things about writing and marketing, attended my first book festival, changed my logo, and also discovered what the difference between people who had my best interests at heart and those who didn’t looked like.

2023 has been a hard year for me, logistically speaking. A prodigious number of things have gone wrong between the two houses I help maintain, my little family has had some big trials I’d rather not mention here, people and pets I love have passed away, my best friend had her whole life overturned, and groups that I help run have all had their own wacky disasters as well.

My word count is still really high compared to most years. My connections to other writers have grown stronger, and the number of writing opportunities I’ve had have multiplied exponentially, but I’m still struggling with time management. There’s just not enough of me to go around dealing with all the disasters and to get all the writing related activities done (so many of which are not, in fact, actually writing). Which is why my number of published works remains low – I just haven’t had time to submit anything anywhere with everything else that’s been going on.

That changed this morning. Despite a looming writing deadline for a short story that’s going in the back of someone else’s book, I sat down and made sure that I’d submitted at least a few poems and stories for publication in literary journals, anthologies, and zines. Just that little effort was enough – I’m feeling positive about writing again for the first time in a couple months. I can’t wait to see where my pieces end up. I’m looking forward to a fruitful second year of publishing.

Around the House, Everywhere But Home, health, The Past Comes Back to Haunt Me, Writing

All the Appointments!

It’s Doctor Appointment Season! Since I have a billion and one health issues, I see a lot of specialists. One year I decided it would just be easier if I saw them all in February – who knows why at this point? Since they usually are 6 months or a year apart, I end up seeing at least one doctor every week through February and into March. So far I’ve seen the neurologist (my brain is apparently fine, even if it doesn’t feel like it), the ENT (my sinuses are still gross), and the rheumatologist (oh so much wrong with me). The rheumatologist referred me to the orthopedist (is that a word?), and I see him on Monday.

In between all that, I’ve been:

  • dog-sitting,
  • teaching lessons at Open Door Writing Group (who had a fantastic turnout this month!),
  • writing ALL THE VILLAIN SCENES for Caro’s Quest,
  • critiqued an entire paranormal romance novel for a friend (I’m so excited for that one to come out!),
  • drove my youngest to work and back about 30,000 times,
  • chaperoned a winter guard contest,

The awesome mascot statue at the winter guard contest

  • attended my kid’s pre-UIL concert
  • figured out that I’m way ahead on my word count compared to last year (thanks Sprint Club!),
  • painted the hallway bathroom, then painted the backs of the built-in bookcases the same color because I loved it so much,
  • got a fun haircut
  • started repotting plants and tidying up my yard for the spring,
  • and spent far too much time troubleshooting iPad woes.

That’s it for the end of February and early March.

What have y’all been up to? Let me know in the comments below. 🙂

Around the House, Lifelong learning, My Own Personal Weirdness, My Writing, Writing

It’s been a doozy of a year so far!

Y’all. I thought I was going to be so on track with my writing this year, having made a decent schedule, with lots of breaks for fun family times, illness, injury, and whatever. What I didn’t plan for was for all of that to happen in the first month of the year.

My year so far has included a totaled car, a busted dishwasher pump, mysteriously broken microwave, and wonky electrical system all in my house, plus a flooding under the kitchen floor, worn out electrical outlets that weren’t working, and a leaking hot water heater in the house my college kids live in, there was a major ice storm in my area, so we were without power for almost five days, and then the van we borrowed while we are looking for a new car had it’s battery die. So eight major crisis’s in a six week period.

Oh, and my college kid rescued a puppy that had been dumped in his friends yard, so there’s been puppy babysitting as well.

Obligatory puppy picture. Meet Indy! She’s sweet and feisty all at once.

Needless to say, I’m a little behind on my word count. I have, however, figured out all the plot holes in the current novel, have made a list of all the scenes needing to be written, and put it all into a handy-dandy word document that I can access from any device I own. So now I can write literally from anywhere. Which is good because the puppy cannot come here to my house, so I must go to hers. (It’s the puppy’s house now. Bwahahah.)

Also, Indy has been a welcome inclusion in my life because my current novel has a little dog in it, a puppy only a little bit older than her, so I’m using my time with her as inspiration for dog-related comic relief in bleaker parts of my story. 🙂 Plus puppy kisses! Win-win!

Hope y’all are all doing well. Let me know in the comments below. 🙂