Category: inspiration

Turning pages, making changes

~ sharon ~ Leave a comment
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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!

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!

Mysteries on Canal Street

~ sharon ~ Leave a comment

What could be more fun than celebrating mysteries in New Orleans?

I just got home from the World Mystery Convention, commonly called Bouchercon, in the Big Easy at the Gulf end of the Mississippi River, and it was a great gathering.

To say Bouchercon, for those who are unfamiliar with the event, start with BOW (like what the butler does), followed by CHUR (like church), then CON. (not pro). Bow-chur-con.

The event this year, I heard, drew something like 1,600 people — readers and writers, book sellers and book buyers — from around the world for five days of fictional murder and mayhem, with panels, interviews, awards, and more.

And swag! Lots of swag. I came home with a (buried in the picture) Mardi Gras themed tote bag in purple, green and gold, filled with books, book marks, jar openers, a bottle opener, candy, key chains, book marks, a pair of socks (because we adopted a “pound puppy” when my kids were young), pens — always a favorite of mine– and (also buried) a t-shirt celebrating Blood on the Bayou–Case Closed. Authors bring the swag to remind readers of their books, and I picked up a bunch of it during one of the two Author Speed-Dating sessions. I went to the early-riser event with my roomie, Sharon Michalove (“City Sharon” to my “Country Sharon”), who was one of the authors introducing her work to the fans who attended.

The New Orleans case was finally closed. I originally planned to go to Bouchercon in New Orleans years ago, but COVID cancelled that trip. I had my fingers crossed that we would see no resurgence in September, and that a relatively calm hurricane season would also pass us by. Thankfully, neither calamity struck the city and “City Sharon” booked us a huge room an easy trolley ride from the conference hotel. One generous trolley driver who had to wait for a light even took my picture for me.

We came early and settled in for a week. On our first day in town, she took a cooking tour while I volunteered to help with conference set up. She loved the tour to the city’s School of Cooking, with a traveling beverage tour afterward. I’m lucky enough that my first trip to NOLA was for a food writers’ conference, so I figured I could pass on the tour.

Court of the Two Sisters
Bourbon House

We had a few meals in and around the French Quarter. One night I joined a group of several Blackbird Writers at the Court of Two Sisters where I had a great steak dinner with bread pudding for dessert. A few in our group, though, ordered the flambeed Bananas Foster, which was a show in itself.

Another night, I went to Bourbon House, which was also good. The highlight there, I thought, was the red-gowned woman entertaining with her trained parakeets just outside the window where we sat. Sadly, I didn’t get any pictures of her birds in action.(I was plying my fork, not my camera.)

The Creole House, next to the conference hotel, was handy for a breakfast, a lunch, and a dinner on different days of the conference. And the hotel, the Jung, where I stayed with my roomie, had a lovely weekend breakfast service, too. Next door to Tulane University Department of Medicine, and just blocks from the Superdome, the old hotel has a touch of elegance that newer hotels, for all their modernity, can’t touch. Our double-queen room would have been considered a suite in many other places. And the staff, who greeted us my name by the second morning, proved most helpful when we needed tips.

The meals and sidetrips were fun, but the best part of the conference was seeing old friends and making new ones. On most of those occasions I tended to get caught up in conversation and forgot to take pictures. But I really enjoyed them.

One new friend, Linda Amey, even helped me decide which of the many novel drafts I have to work on now that I’m home for a while. (Well, I will be heading to Stevens Point, Wisconsin, for the Wisconsin Writers Association conference next month. But that’s just a long weekend.) It’s lovely when a brand new friend helps you set a goal you’ve been dawdling about for months.

Next Bouchercon is in Calgary. I hope they have a great, big crowd of fans and writers!

In the meantime, I’ll be writing!

À bientôt!