Tag: poem

Around the House, Books, Lifelong learning, My Writing, poetry, What I Love, Writing

July 2026 Stats

In July 2026, I wrote 4018 words. Of those words,

  • 223 were for this blog (1 short post),
  • 1207 were for my journal,
  • 777 were for handouts, scripts, and slides for lessons (one for the Open Door Writing Group),
  • 833 were on various social media accounts,
  • 751 were poetry (6 short poems and 2 long),
  • and 450 were in short stories (3 pieces of flash fiction).

This month was chock full of things, like Independence Day and my dad visiting for a solid week, two different days of flash flooding in my area where the power went out and the streets were insane, an online poetry conference with the Poetry Society of Texas, learning how to play Mahjong for the first time and then teaching like three other people my limited knowledge, adopting an orange cat from O’Malley’s Cat Rescue Lounge, preparing for my dad to visit and then he didn’t, keeping one of the other cats from killing the new one, and trying to write poems in new forms I’d never heard of before. There were only 12 days that I didn’t write anything new. I spent nearly all my waking moments this month selecting and revising poems for the Poetry Society of Texas Annual Contest. I had two poems published and got four poems submitted to other places as well. It was a really good month as a working writer.

As for reading, I read parts of:

  • The Virgin Who Ruined Lord Gray by Anna Bradley (e-book; historical romance)
  • Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune (e-book; fantasy)
  • The Hurting Kind by Ada Limon (e-book; poetry)
  • Writing Creativity and Soul by Sue Monk Kidd (e-book; non-fiction)

…and I finished reading:

  • Poetry Society of Texas: Student Award Winners 2025 (trade paperback; poetry)
  • A Sense of Stars by Cade Huie (trade paperback; poetry)
  • Barren Years by Amanda Russell (trade paperback; poetry)
  • The Resistance Knitting Club by Jenny O’Brien (e-book; historical fiction)

So I have finished 49 books so far this year (and read parts of another 12, mostly for research, but also a couple of things I’ve had to mark DNF.). 

Around the House, Books, Lifelong learning, My Own Personal Weirdness, My Writing, Organizing, poetry, Short Stories, Speaking, Writing

Happy 2025!

I know, I know…you almost forgot I worked here. I have the usual excuses, all tied up with string, sitting under a cat somewhere. Last year was a doozy of a year, filled with all manner of distractions, procrastinations, and other sundry explosions of my life.

I’ve spent the last couple of days thinking about what my writing goals are for this year. One is to make my usual chart of what all I wrote last year, but that isn’t done yet because the transcribing isn’t done. So no numbers today. Maybe tomorrow. After I’ve written, of course.

I’m on the schedule with an editor for September, so my big goal is to finish the latest draft of my big epic fantasy novel and polish it up. This is the novel y’all have heard me refer to as Caro’s Quest in the past. I still need a better name for it, but that will come. 🙂

Smaller goals include finding homes for my poetry and short stories, finishing putting together my first poetry anthology, finishing my research on the best time to release it, and then publishing that anthology. I’m aiming for sending off at least one poem and one short story a week. We’ll see if that’s a manageable goal as time goes on and reassess after the first quarter is over.

I’m no longer on the board for the East Texas Writing Guild, nor my UU church board. Those were positive decisions for me, based on me needing more time to write. I’m continuing on as a moderator for the Open Door Writing Group at the Tyler Public Library for the foreseeable future, which means writing and giving a presentation for a monthly lesson about writing.

That’s about it, y’all. It’s my first day back at the writing desk. I’m planning on starting off all my weekdays from here on out at my writing desk, working on stories or poetry for the first half of every day before moving on to social media, lesson writing, and marketing in the afternoons.

Yay 2025! I hope this year will be so much better than the last. 🙂