Category: writing

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!

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!

Death knell for news

~ sharon ~ 2 Comments

My hometown newspaper died Aug. 6, 2025.

No cause of death was reported as the news flew through social media, but I suspected sagging subscriptions and ad sales, coupled with rising materials costs as likely culprits in its demise. A press release reported later by area television stations and a regional daily said as much.

One more small piece of the formerly ubiquitous press is part of history. And I find it saddening for many reasons.

It was the first place I ever saw my words in print. In grade school, after I learned to read, I scanned every newspaper and magazine that came into our house. There were lots. We had a subscription to the now deceased local paper, which was actually two papers. The News and The Leader carried separate nameplates when I was growing up. The News was printed on Tuesday, with home mail delivery on Wednesday. The Leader came out Thursday, with Friday delivery.

(Pexels photo, Maxim)

I read lots of the articles, and looked at all the pictures. When I was elected scribe of my Camp Fire group in fourth grade, I copied the format of the new officer announcments from the adult clubs and wrote a short article. I recopied it in my best penmanship, carried it the four blocks from my school to the newspaper office, and handed it in. A week later, I read it in the paper. I remember the editor changed one word. (I learned early not to be too attached to my prose.)

The firt time I worked with a newspaper photographer was after I wrote to an area daily’s kids’ column, “Ask Andy.” I’ve always suspected my question was drawn from a hat, not selected because it was so interesting. But I won a set of World Books, which I still have despite its being hopelessly out of date. I remember going to the local newspaper office, the same one I carried articles to, for a photo shoot. The picture still shows up from time to time on my hometown museum’s Facebook post.

I grew up respecting our local newspaper photographer. We all knew to step over the cables in the high school gym because he brought extra lighting to the basketball games so he could get good shots. By the time I was taking sports pictures for the paper, we had strobe flashes for the cameras we carried but I don’t think our shots were as good as his.

I kept writing stories for school groups, from the seventh-and-eighth grade civics club to high school drama club, walking them downtown, and seeing my stories in print. I guess it’s no wonder I kept writing for newspapers for a good chunk of my life.

My first full time job was at that newspaper. I started in the backshop as a typesetter, eventually graduating to page design. I also got to help fix page negatives with a special red pen, “stuff” papers coming off the press, counting and tying them as I went. I could flip a stack of 100 papers back then. I even got to help change “dink” rolls on the press.

My boss in the back shop knew my goal was to work up front, so he helped me organize my schedule to attend classes at Northern Illinois University. Eventually I got a journalism degree there, but not until after my hometown paper had been sold to a young man my age who had dreams of building a nationwide newspaper group. He hired me as an editor for a county weekly, also owned by my hometown paper.

That was 1975. And 50 years later, his company closed, shuttering the papers in Rochelle, several other small towns in Illinois and in other states throughout the U.S.

But he really ended a tradition in my hometown that started in the 1800s. There were newspaperswhen the town was called Lane, before railroad progress required a name change. The Lane Leader ran from 1858 to 1859. The Lane Register was published from 1863 to `1865. The University of Illinois Newspaper Project says Lane changed its name to Rochelle on April 10, 1872.

The earliest papers I could find labeled Rochelle were the Herald, 1865-1877, and the longer-lasting Register, 1865-1926, although both seem to predate the changing of the town’s name. I think the records just include some of the Lane years.

The Library of Congress lists 1921 for the founding of the Rochelle News. According to the U of I Newspaper Project database, the Rochelle News succeeded the Rochelle Independent and the Rochelle Register when those nameplates died in 1926.

The News went into business with the .Rochelle Leader in 1934 but each continued under its own nameplate until 1994 when the two papers became the Rochelle News-Leader under the ownership that just closed its doors.

Sadly, no services have been scheduled to commemorate the loss.

À bientôt