Tag: poetry

In November, I wrote 16,268 words! Yay! Finally a good writing month after months and months of delays, trips, moving kids, etc. I’m so happy I finally got to sit down and just write. Of those words,

• 409 were for this blog (2 short posts),
  2777 were for my journal,
• 1234 were the essay for that anthology I talked about last month,
• 2426 were answering questions to help make my essay for the anthology, many of which did not end up in the anthology because they were excised from the first draft to make way for words that did not sound like they were answering questions,
• 0 were for handouts, scripts, and slides for lessons (I reused an old one for the Open Door Writing Group),
• 1572 were on various social media accounts,
• 3327 were poetry (16 poems – a new record!!),
• and 1073 were in short stories (2 pieces of flash fiction).

There were only 12 days that I didn’t write anything, but that’s not bad because I wrote A LOT on the days that I did write. I did host part of Thanksgiving and a board games night at my house this month, as well as building shelves and moving my husband’s entire board game collection from The Living Room to The Library.

Another one of the books I beta read for came out this month, so once again I’m feeling that weird sense of accomplishment about that.

As for myself, I had one piece accepted for an anthology that will come out early next year (probably around graduation season, I’m guessing, since the topic of my essay was “advice I’d give a teenager who wants to become a volunteer coordinator for a non-profit organization”).

As for reading, I read parts of:

• Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer(audiobook; non-fiction)
• West of Yesterday, East of Summer by Paul Monette (e-book; poetry – I finally got it back on Libby!)
  Memory’s Daughters: The Material Culture of Remembrance in Eighteenth-Century America by Susan M. Stabile (hardcover; non-fiction – written by my Women’s Diaries professor at TAMU while I was taking her class)
• How to Read Poetry Like a Professor: A Quippy and Sonorous Guide to Verse by Thomas C. Foster (e-book that I have AND trade paperback at my dad’s house; non-fiction)
• Poetry’s Data: Digital Humanities and the History of Prosody by Meredith Martin (e-book; non-fiction)

…and I finished reading:

• The Viscount Who Loved Me by Julia Quinn (audiobook; historical romance)
• Poetry Magazine Jan/Feb 2025 by Poetry.org (paperback; poetry)
• Let Loose the Dogs by Maureen Jennings (e-book; historical mystery)
• The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie (e-book; mystery)
• The Comfort Book by Matt Haig (audiobook; self-help)
• The Carrying by Ada Limon (e-book; poetry)
• Stargazy Pie by Victoria Stoddard (e-book; cozy fantasy)

I really am trying to finish most of the unfinished books I started earlier in the year. I have finished 56 books so far this year (and read parts of another 12, again mostly for research, but also a couple of things I’ve had to mark DNF.).