I’ll be speaking tonight at the meeting of the East Texas Writers Guild on “Sounds in Poetry” at the Tyler Area Chamber of Commerce Building at 6:30pm.
Tomorrow night I’ll be leading a lesson on “Beginner Calligraphy” at the Tyler Public Library at 5:30pm.
A busy week – I’m so excited! 🙂
In February, it felt like I had written practically nothing, so it was sort of a surprise to find out that I wrote 13,543 words. Of those words,
There were only four days that I didn’t write anything. I was sick for a lot of the month. So, I didn’t get any poems or short stories submitted anywhere.
As for reading, I read parts of:
I finished reading:
PS. It is totally do-able to read Legends and Lattes #1 AFTER you’ve read Legends and Lattes #2 (Bookshelves and Bonedust) if, like me, you didn’t know it was a series.
I have been rescheduled to speak at the March meeting of the East Texas Writer’s Guild on March 10, 2025. They meet from 6:30pm-8:00pm in the Genecov Room of the Tyler Area Chamber of Commerce Building (aka The Blackstone Building) in downtown Tyler. I’ll be speaking on Sounds in Poetry. Hope to see some of you there!
In January 2025, I wrote 9,847 words. Of those words,
I sent off three poems and three short stories for publication, but haven’t heard back from any of them.
I also read parts of these books:
And finished these books:
January is always a tricky month, I think. The first couple weeks are still half-way holidays and then there are a few random at-home days for my school-age kiddo as well. Which means that you don’t get a full month of writing days, but I managed to write at least a little something for 26 out of 31 days in any case. I think that’s pretty good. 🙂
I have been asked to speak at the February meeting of the East Texas Writer’s Guild on February 10, 2025. They meet from 6:30pm-8:00pm in the Genecov Room of the Tyler Area Chamber of Commerce Building (aka The Blackstone Building) in downtown Tyler. Hope to see some of you there!
Today I’m giving a lesson on Sounds in Poetry over at the Tyler Public Library at 1pm in the Makerspace (behind the computer lab on the third floor). But don’t let that scare you away if you’re not a poet. I’m covering poetry, a little bit about songwriting, and how to use lyricism in your prose as well.
Hope to see you there!
I will be speaking at the Open Door Writing Group (at the Tyler Public Library) at 1pm on January 22nd on the topic of “Sounds in Poetry”.
If you think this sounds familiar, it’s because I’ve been talking about doing this lesson for about three years now, but we needed more poets in the audience. We have more poets now! 🙂 YAY!
Come on over and join us!
If you know me in real life, you know I love analyzing things. One of my favoritest things to look at is my writing data. I love seeing which months I had the most success in and in which category and then what that looks like over time. So here’s what 2024 looked like.
140,352
January: 9,017
February: 19,253
March: 9,440
April: 6,562
May: 6,166
June: 9,417
July: 13,961
August: 23,215
September: 5,966
October: 13,824
November: 22,477
December: 1,054
Blog: 2527
Essays: 1,063
Lessons: 43,549
Lake House Mystery: 36,258
Journal: 21,503
Miscellaneous: 16,939
Short Fiction: 13,664
Poetry: 4,434
Blog: January at 546
Essays: June at 487
Lessons: February at 12,031 (that surprised me – I really thought it’d be October)
Lake House Mystery: November at 18,468 (that did not surprise me)
Journal: April at 3,811
Miscellaneous: October at 2,890
Short Fiction: June at 2,494
Poetry: February at 2,157 (that poem about teeth was LONG, y’all!)
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. 🙂
I spoke today at the Open Door Writing Group – Day Group (at the Tyler Public Library) on “Elements of Crime Writing”. Despite some technological conundrums early on, I got my slide show up and running and the lesson ran smoothly. Several writers piped in with good bonus information, which I always love to hear…and add to my notes for later presentations. I’m always improving on my lessons, y’all.
You should definitely come visit this group sometime! More information here: opendoorwritinggroup.com
Lisa Holcomb 