Five Things - July 28, 2025

Welcome to my blog titled ‘Five Things’ where you can expect just that - five random musings or reflections from the previous week or so. I’ll also share a quote I find meaningful as a point of focus for the week. For a photo gallery of our life on the road, our pets, and miscellaneous things I find interesting, you can follow me on Instagram @tabithalord.

So here are this week’s five things, starting with the quote of the week…

1. “I want to think again of dangerous and noble things.

   I want to be light and frolicsome.

   I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,

   as though I had wings.” ― Mary Oliver

2. It’s been a minute since my last blog! July has been a whirlwind, and I just finished my second year of residency for grad school in Gunnison, Colorado, so I’ve been a bit behind with my posts. My head and heart are full from being with my amazing classmates, workshopping our projects, attending useful craft talks, listening to incredible readings, and decompressing together when the jam-packed days were done. I’m taking a couple of weeks to enjoy our August travel plans, and to finish up a romantic suspense novel I started writing over a year ago, before I dive into my thesis and the other classes scheduled for this September.

3. Speaking of travel, we’re still in Colorado, currently in the Denver area for another week where we plan to catch a Rockies game and go to the Colorado Renaissance Festival. Yes, our Renaissance costumes made the cut when we pared down our wardrobes for the RV. After Colorado, it’s on to South Dakota, one of the four states in the lower forty-eight we haven’t visited yet.

4. I’ll be at Chicago Fan Expo August 15-17 signing books with a few of my RI writer pals. If you’re in the area, come visit us in booth AP26. I’ll also be moderating a bunch of panels, so check out the Chicago Fan Expo website for more info!

5. While in Western Colorado, I had the chance to both hike and drive through groves of Aspen. These trees are truly magical. According to the US Fish and Wildlife Services, Aspen trees are known for their ability to reproduce through their root systems, creating interconnected groves of trees that are essentially a single organism. Aside from that, they’re really gorgeous!

Five Things - July 30, 2024

Welcome to my blog titled “Five Things” where you can expect just that - five random musings or reflections from the previous week or so. For a photo gallery of our life on the road, our pets, and miscellaneous things I find interesting, you can also follow me on Instagram @tabithalord.

So here are this week’s five things…

1. You may have noticed you’re receiving this on a Tuesday instead of Monday. It's been more and more challenging for me to get my Monday blogs up on time due to my school schedule and the fact that Monday’s are often travel days for us. With that in mind, I’m experimenting with posting on Tuesdays for the third quarter of 2024. We’ll see how it goes!

2. I’m back from my residency, and wow, it was everything I could have imagined and more! Our cohort is just an amazing group of people. We bonded quickly and spent nearly every waking moment together. The class workshops were positive, productive, and supportive. It was like having your best beta readers, who care deeply about you and your work, live with you for a week. I’ve never formally workshopped my writing before, and with this group, it was a fantastic experience. The rest of our days were filled with craft talks offered by the graduating class, readings from their theses, and faculty craft talks, which were superb. It was a lot of work, but so satisfying. I feel confident I made the right choice with this program. We all have a couple of weeks off before the more intense fall semester begins, so I may just sleep for a few days straight!

3. “I define connection as the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship.” - Brene Brown

4. I’m on a cleaning spree. While we’re stationary for a while, I have a list of all the cabinets, drawers, and storage spaces that needs sorting. Since I packed nearly everything I own for my trip to Colorado, unpacking provided the perfect opportunity to tackle the first project. I cleaned my clothes closets and drawers and produced a giant garbage bag full of stuff to donate. I don’t know how things accumulate so quickly, but living in such a small space, there’s only so much that can fit. My remaining clothes are now sorted by type of clothing and color, and it makes my little OCD heart very happy.

5. Sometimes, I forget what airport I’m flying into. It’s a strange phenomenon. Although I am going home, our home isn’t stationary. I remember when we started this journey, we marveled that when we shut the shades at night and our pets curled up on the bed with us, no matter where we were in the country, we were home. Being back in Rhode Island, where we actually owned a home for decades, I wondered if we would feel differently. I am pleased to say our tiny, mobile home still feels like home!

Five Things - July 15, 2024

Welcome to my blog titled “Five Things” where you can expect just that - five random musings or reflections from the previous week or so. For a photo gallery of our life on the road, our pets, and miscellaneous things I find interesting, you can also follow me on Instagram @tabithalord.

So here are this week’s five things…

1. We are officially in Rhode Island for the summer! In some ways, it feels like we never left, and in others, I feel a little displaced. It’s home but not really home anymore, if that makes sense? Regardless, summer is in full swing here, and since it’s the Ocean State, I look forward to lazy days on the beach, barbecues with family and friends, music, concerts, and lots of laughter. I know time is going to fly, so I’m attempting to live in the moment, soak up the sunshine, and enjoy it all – just as soon as I get back from residency.

2. Residency is almost here! I’ve completed the rather daunting reading list, caught up on all my assignments, participated in the summer online classes and discussion boards, and I am finishing up the short story due in a few days. I’m really excited to meet my cohort in person and dive into the coursework more deeply. I’ll let you know how it goes.

3. One of the fun things about this grad school program is the discussion board conversations we’ve been having online. We recently had one on vulnerability, something I’ve blogged about many times in the past. I’ll share my small part of the conversation here as I think it’s relevant to all creative types.

   We are not our work, but creative work can feel more personal to us, closer to our hearts. Even when writing genre fiction to entertain our readers, there is still something of ourselves woven into it in a way that's different from other types of work. Layer onto this the fact that in the writing/publishing field there is a very real intersection between art and industry, and that space can be uncomfortable. I've learned I need to behave differently, and think about what I'm doing differently, when I'm creating vs. when I'm working on the business side of things. When I'm writing, I do so with discipline but also with the heart of an artist. I am creating. It's my process. It's my art. I want it to be the best it can be, but I am not thinking about my agent, the publishing house, the current trends, marketing, promo etc. Not yet. But I will think about those things, and I will have to shift my mindset. Rejection is part of the process. Bad sales are an opportunity to learn more about the market. A bad review might have a nugget of truth worth thinking about, or it might be an opportunity to remember my work isn't for everyone. It's always a choice to take things personally, to be upset, angry, frustrated when things don't go as we'd hoped, but it's also a choice to show up and do the work professionally, to be open to learning, and to keep creating.

4. The short story I’m working on is a creepy horror piece. I don’t write a lot of horror but every once in a while the dark side of my brain latches onto an idea, and I can’t let it go. Sinking into that space is a little unnerving, but there’s also something very satisfying about writing outside my comfort zone. I have to share this piece at residency, and I honestly don’t know how it will be received, but I do feel like it will be an opportunity for me to grow as a writer, and that’s the whole point of my new endeavor.

5. "We may never be strong enough to be entirely nonviolent in thought, word, and deed. But we must keep nonviolence as our goal and make strong progress towards it." - Mahatma Gandhi