And the changes are sticking

~ sharon ~ Leave a comment
Sharon P. Lynn’s photo

I wandered through January making small “resolutions” as I thought of them. Having got most of my calendars figured out–I’m pretty sure the pocket sized one will get bigger for next year–I started some new projects. About three quarters of the way through January, I decided to get serious about jumping on my treadmill more often. I even bought some colored stars (I guess those gold stars in school really impressed me.), and I have a star on six out of seven days through February. Moving a bit every day is good working for me.

I also found The Artists Way workbook that I bought a couple years ago and let sit on an end table in the TV room. I started reading, and I’ve been doing morning pages for a full month! I remember hearing about them years ago from friends who swore by them. But I didn’t really understand the way they are supposed to work until I read the explanation in the workbook. I love the way they help me unload the mind-mess I wake up with. I’ve taken to ending them with a couple–just a couple–of things I want to accomplish that day or the next. I really believe writing one or two daily goals made me more productive. I certainly feel more productive this month.

I will say some of the thinking Julia Cameron, the author of what I’ve taken to abbreviating TAW, were initially off-putting to me. She speaks in a language of recovering: recovering a sense of safety, of identity, of power, and so on. To me recovering implies a loss, or a sickness of heart. But when I substituted discovery for recovering, the book felt much homier and welcoming to me. I think I’m discovering more of the artist inside that I’ve always know was there, but that I didn’t give time to because I was busy working and trying to be a good mom to my kids. Now that I’ve retired, I feel like discovering the potential I’ve left dormant for decades.

I haven’t done as well on the solo artist’s dates as I might. That’s partly because my schedule is already so full. I have writing groups six days a week, three book clubs every month, plus a couple of study group, the League of Women Voters, and a social gathering or two. And I feel that many of those events feed the artist in me without going it alone. I’ll try to fit some of the prescribed dates, but I’m not too worried about that.

And the other thing I started doing was working through a revision course I took four years ago through the Sisters in Crime Guppy chapter. Our former president Jim Jackson taught the course. (He teaches three and I’ve taken them all.) I used the same novel I’m working on now for the course, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to focus a lot of attention on it because my “big volunteer job” started about half way through the course.

I kept every note, though, and I printed them out at the end of January and started with the first step–rereading the entire draft. This time, I learned so much more than last time! With nothing competing for my time and attention, I was able–finally–to discover that I won National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) with the first draft because I wrote words as they came to me. The point of NaNo was to get 50,000 new words in the 30 days of November. I did the year I drafted this novel, but only because I wrote whatever came to mind at any given writing session.

Reading through this time, I realized how much is way out of order, how much is backstory and info dumps that don’t need to be in the story, and where the big and small plot holes are. I also made a list of all the scenes in the book. I got into the early triple-letters (AAA, BBB, etc.). I’m working on my list of minor characters as I close out February. I wrote them as I thought of them, and in previous revision attempts I fixed some minor problems without fixing the big ones. As soon as I finish the “character census,” I’ll make a new scene chart and put the scenes in the right order and start by fixing the plot problems

I can’t believe how much fun I’m having finding the problems in the story. And knowing I’m building a strong plan for my revision.

I’m not so foolish as to believe I’ll be creating a “perfect” draft this time around, but I think it will be good enough–with help from my critique partners–to try to shop it to an agent again. I really wasn’t ready for the pitch in October, but I wanted to give it a try. She, rightly, declined it. But the pitch was great for practice and I know the general outline of the plot and characters are good, or she wouldn’t have told me to send her pages. One of the big changes that will come in this draft is losing a good chunk of the very beginning of the story. Maybe I’ll have good luck next time, too.

Turning pages, making changes

~ sharon ~ Leave a comment
Canva image

For some reason, I’ve been feeling a bit sentimental with this year’s calendar change. In part, I know, it’s because the employer I retired from is apparently finally convinced I’m not coming back. I went in to finish cleaning out my office space a couple of months ago, and my (dot)org email seems to have been disconnected recently.

Yes, I did just get a note late last week from someone who wanted to publicize a chili supper. The “outside world” hasn’t quite forgotten me. But I passed him on to my more-than-able successor. (And it may mean my old phone number is still connected, too.)

Another “milestone” this year was realizing I’ve been doing a prompt blog (January, OUR Writing Month) for ten years now. I’ll wrap up the eleventh year in a couple more days. I have thought for some time that once I had 366 prompts, I could quit. I think I crossed that mark this year, but now I think an even dozen would be a better place to end the tradition. I’ll see how I feel about it next December.

Realizing how long I’ve been doing “JanO,” I started to wonder how long I’ve kept this blog going. September 2025 marked 13 years since I launched it. And I still haven’t published a novel. (Can you hear my rueful laughter?)

That sent me back through some old blog post drafts. I found a few that I finally hit “publish” on, which is why some of you got several in a single day. (No, I wasn’t hacked.)

About the same time, I started this blog, I also started participating in the now-defunct National Novel Writing Month. I didn’t “win” every year, which means I didn’t manage to write 50,000 words in November. But I have the start of more than a dozen novels, and fairly full drafts of several of them. I’ve been playing around with revisions for three of the novels since then. I’m working on one of my favorites right now and hope to have a good version by the end of February. (If you don’t see me much next month, you’ll know why.)

I started this novel–working title, Lovely, Dark and Deep: A Fever River Mystery–with an eye toward writing a cozy mystery from the point-of-view of the main character. But I don’t have the funny bone that some of my favorite cozy writers have and I was getting too “dark.” I gave up and decided to call it a traditional mystery. In an early revision, I decided I wanted to add some accurate policing details, and thought I needed a second POV. But I wrote that POV in third person. Now I’m trying to make the whole novel third person and I’m toying with adding one more POV. We’ll see how things go.

Sharon’s pic

Anyway, I have new calendars on the walls. The main one is next to me in my writing corner. And I have a new pocket calendar that I can drop in whatever bag I’m using when I leave the house. It started out a lovely shade of pink but it’s already showing wear. I may have to consider a darker color next year.

I also updated my planning grid. It’s a spread sheet with a 24-hour grid for seven days. Recurring events, like my writing times, are blocked out. I’ve got a great routine of online writing times Monday through Saturday. Most are with friends who live in Illinois and Wisconsin, say, within a hundred mile radius of my house (although one is in Champaign). The Friday bunch is headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, and on Saturday group members could be from anywhere in 13 Midwestern states (as defined by Mystery Writers of America).

I just joined a group from the Shut Up & Write community. I needed an early afternoon “push” in the middle of the week, and a wonderful gentleman in Scotland hosts a Wednesday session that starts at 12:30 p.m. in my time zone. I’ve only attended a couple of times, but it seems to be just what I needed.

So, yeah, the calendar changed. And I’m looking back and looking forward today.

Here’s to a good year for you and for me!

À bientôt!

Farewell and hello

~ sharon ~ Leave a comment
Photo by Suzy Hazelwood: on pexels

December has flown by in my life. I didn’t get as much writing done as I’d hoped, although this week I started a wonderful adventure at the Winter Writing Sanctuary, offered by British woman named Beth Kempton. My friend Sharon Michalove, a writer I see nearly every day in online writing groups, spent a week last winter with Beth and told several of us about it Monday.

It’s only Wednesday (yes, New Year’s Eve), and I’ve already made some critical discoveries about the main character in a novel I’ve been trying to revise for several years now. I don’t think Sharon M. knew just how serendipitous her suggestion would be for me.

For example, the novel’s working title is Lovely, Dark and Deep. I took it from Robert Frost’s poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost. Amazingly (to me), that poem opened the welcome message for this year’s sanctuary.

The main character, after a few trial names, is now called Beth. That decision I made long before I ever heard of Beth Kempton.

The exercises–really suggestions for things a writer might try this week–have focused on the palette of winter, greens, greys, golds and more. And each day’s inspiration has taken me down a path, when I journey as my character, has helped me really understand my MC much better than I have. I wrote the first draft of this novel for National Novel Writing Month (a now defunct event) in 2020. Other things have gotten in the way of my finishing–including wonderful family distractions this month. But just a couple of hours these past few days have really helped me get back into the revisions.

I’m going to be distracted yet again with an impromptu family dinner tonight, and, no doubt with some surprise that will come up tomorrow. But I think this week’s writing exercises will make the beginning of 2026 much more productive than I imagined.

So, farewell to 2025. It was a great writing year for me.

{In fact, I added a page to this website to post my short stories. Check out “Blood on the White Rose” if you haven’t read it yet.)

And hello to 2026. I’m hoping for more of the same.

À bientôt!

And we’re off…

~ sharon ~ 4 Comments
(Pexels photo by Andrea Piacquadio)

When my friend Mary and I headed north for the Wisconsin Writer’s Association conference in Stevens Point on Oct. 2, little did I know that I would cross one of the first hurdles in any writer’s life. A hurdle that would make me want to be glued to my keyboard for the rest of the month. But various life events and previous commitments turned into the second hurdle between me and the end of this particular race.

So, about that first hurdle. Writers who want to try to be traditionally published must first find an agent. I figured I’d try one of the practice pitches offered early in the conference, and, what the heck, I signed up for a real pitch, too. That was on the last day of the conference and I figured it would be good practice, too. I’d have a chance to talk to an agent about what she was looking for, how I could improve my pitch, what I should plan for next time.

But as I paused in my initial statement — my mostly bungled log line and a bit about the plot and main characters — she grabbed a sheet of paper and said, “Here’s what you do next.” She actually asked to see my first fifty pages! I was astonished. (And to save us both embarrassment in case I trip over the next hurdle, I’ll keep her anonymous.)

But, after accepting congratulations from Mary and other friends at the conference, I got home and started polishing those pages. I’m still polishing with just a few days left to send them to the agent.

They were rougher than I remembered. And all in first person.

I made the decision months ago but didn’t act on it because I was busy with some short stories that had more immediate deadlines. So, on Oct. 6, I started changing the point of view from first to a version of third person, variously called “limited” or “close” third person.

I’ve had to fight two tendencies as I’ve revised. One battle is to keep away from the omniscience that is, frankly, a natural POV for me. I’m making it up, after all, so of course I know everything. The other is to let the reader into the head of my POV characters. In other words, I have to convince myself it’s okay to read my character’s minds and share all that with my readers.

Another problem was a decision to add the second POV, and that meant moving a discussion from a later chapter up closer to the front. Based on what my wonderful critique partners have said–independently, I might add–that seems to be my roughest chapter.

I should be working on that, not this, right now. I only have a few more days to get it done.

But in all the years I’ve been writing this blog, this is one of the key moments in my fiction career. And it may go no further if the agent who decided to take a chance on fifty pages decides they’re too rough for her to take any on. (Fingers crossed she likes them.)

Still, an agent let me cross the first hurdle and I’m still aglow with joy and hope. This is my celebration. (I’ll break out some wine after I send the pages.)

À bientôt!