Falling toward fall

August 31, 2026September 1, 2026 ~ sharon ~ 2 Comments

Are you a take-it-easy-in-the-summer-and-jump-back-in-when-it’s-over type? Or are you an everything-else-slows-down-so-I-revel-in-summertime kind of person?

Personally, I always get antsy for a refresh when autumn gets close. I guess my rhythms are still tied to the school year. I want new books and new pencils and new calendars. And I want to think about new stories, which makes it hard to focus on the fixes I need in my work-in-progress.

This year, I’ll be on the road for my refresh-month. Instead of staring at my keyboard, watching words stretch across the screen, I’ll be squinting at my GPS and trying to get on the road early until I reach my destination–wherever that may be.

I am looking forward to the time at the end of the road, visiting family and friends. But I still hope to squeeze in some time on my writing. I hope that doesn’t sound too selfish. But I have been waiting all my life to put stories to words, to polish my prose until it resembles poetry.

I’m inspired by stands of corn turning yellow, and by leaves, curling and crimson. By vivid red sumac leaves. And those first days of rime on the marigolds.

I want a pinch of purple prose in my life. But a pinch every day.

When I retired–and I’ve said this before–I was so used to being busy I volunteered for a dozen or more “small jobs” for groups I belong to or thought I could help. It took most of my time for four years. (I can hardly believe I’ve been retired for going on five years. They’ve flown.) But last fall the inkling of “spare time” glimmered on my personal horizons. I’ve gone back to the beginning. (See my February and March posts for details, if you’re curious.) I’ve replanned the novel I decided to focus on at Bouchercon in New Orleans last September. And I’ve been inching toward a much revised draft since then.

Inching because I’ve still let a few “small jobs” slip into my life. One has had me looking for free (or reduced price) illustrations since last spring. I am reworking some small booklets, but even though I have words on the new templates, I have yet to find appropriate new illustrations. That’s the biggest new job I’ve taken on. And when it’s done, it’s done.

Another new task (Note to IRS: one with a small paycheck) is a feature story for a trade publication. That could go on indefinitely, but it’s not too time consuming so far, and I enjoy doing it.

But none of that sates my annual urge to curl up with a good book–even if I’m “curling” at my computer and writing my own book. And this year, as I gear up in my usual way, I will be putting the brakes on my progress.

I’ve talked with some of my writing buddies. They are supportive, encouraging me to try to write at least one sentence every day while I’m gone. We’ll see how that works. I’m hopeful. And my fingers would be crossed, but it’s hard to type that way.

À bientôt!

Summer time, slack time

July 28, 2026July 28, 2026 ~ sharon ~ Leave a comment

July has been a fast, lazy month. I had high hopes of getting a lot done, but my eyes have not been as “back to normal” as I’d hoped after my cataract operations. Yes, I can see well, but my eyes seem to tire more easily than I remember them doing in the past. So, I don’t have the staying power on my computer. That’s slowing down progress on my novel, as well as a couple of projects I’ve taken on for others.

I did have a great few hours with my youngest and his family when they came through on their way north for a couple weeks. I hope next year they’ll have time to stay for a couple of days.

I have made small but measurable progress on my decluttering, and on getting estimates for some house maintenance. All things that need to get done.

But I feel like the month has just slipped away with little to show for it.

I didn’t even really like any of my book club reads this month. Not liking them, of course, doesn’t mean I didn’t learn from them. Mostly I learned things I wouldn’t want to do myself.

I’ve had some fun this month reading the Victoria Thompson Gaslight Mysteries. I’m almost to the end of the ones she wrote before she died, just in time, I’ve learned for the one her daughter is releasing this fall. It seems Ellen Thompson finished her mother’s last book, City of Promises, thus keeping a promise.

Friends and I have been talking about the success and failure of various franchises being kept alive after the original author’s death. Most of my friends, it turns out, don’t think the efforts have been worthwhile. Personally, as someone who didn’t know until I was an adult just how many Carolyn Keenes there were, I’m ambivalent about continuations. Apparently as many as 20 authors wrote the Nancy Drew mysteries. I didn’t read many of them, but from what I read, I could detect no significant differences.

I’ve read a few of Sophie Hannah’s Poirot stories. She was officially approved by Agatha Christie’s heirs to write new novels. I might read more, but so many books…

I have yet to try Robert Goldsborough’s additions to the Nero Wolfe series. Again, the heirs of Rex Stout approved his continuation. I had not read any Nero Wolfe stories when I met Goldsborough at the last Love is Murder conference in Chicago years ago. He was a charming man, and the conversations I had with him sent me to the original stories. I haven’t yet finished them, so I may get to the new books eventually.

But the book club novels this summer have been in genres I wouldn’t have picked in my own. Or, sadly, they’ve been poor examples of the genres I like. For the most part they’ve wound up in the “unfinished” bin.

How am I doing all this reading while my eyes are still bothering me? Ah, that’s the wonder of audiobooks. I began reading them in the car while I commuted to work years ago and I’ve almost completely converted.

I did actually read Molly MacRae’s recent Haunted Shell Shop Mystery, All Shell Breaks Loose. That was as much fun as its two predecessors. In this one, Maureen, the shell shop owner, and her personal ghost, Emrys, an 18th century pirate who died off the coast of Okracoke, North Carolina, meet another spectral visitor. The new ghost is tied metaphysically to a sword that is used in a 21st century murder. Molly’s books are generally fun cozies, good for light summer reading and for curl-up-with-cocoa winter reading. I always recommend her books.

I also read Jacqueline Winspear’s latest, The White Lady. Hers are a bit weightier, in both subject matter and length, than a cozy mystery. In this one, we range from Belgium during the first World War, to England and France during the second, and back to England in early post-WWII years. The main character is a quietly fearsome woman who finds herself connected to London mobsters in order to protect the young family who are her neighbors. I gather it’s a stand-alone although I could see room for additional stories featuring Elinor White (or Elinor De Witt or “Miss White”). It has some gruesome and dangerous war scenes, but Winspear has never shied away from the realities of war in her books.

So, that’s where my July has gone. And I haven’t even brewed a big batch of my summertime favorite iced tea. Well, there’s still August.

À bientôt!

A variation on artist’s dates

May 29, 2026July 28, 2026 ~ sharon ~ Leave a comment

Artist’s dates are an idea from Julia Cameron, the woman who created a movement with her book, The Artist’s Way. I started working through her twelve-week course earlier this year. (I wrote about it and a few other things in February.) Cameron suggests solo artist’s dates weekly to refill the well we draw on when we create art–whether visual or verbal. She describes them as solo dates “to do something fun.”

While the idea of doing something fun is certainly a good one, I spend enough time on my own. I’ve been an “empty nester” and a widow for quite a few years now, so doing things by myself is my norm. Planning more time alone isn’t as much fun for me, especially when I’m trying to feed my inner artists.

This month, though, I had a chance to do a couple of group crafts, and I realized those are my perfect artist’s dates.

The first one was at our local writing group’s “Day Camp for Big Kids.” One of our newest members is a professional graphic artist and a crafter. She offered to lead us through a process that recycles junk mail into folios. She imagined they would be ideal for snippets of stories, inspirational pictures, character notes and anything else we might want to save for stories we’re working on. She also said we could take them to conferences or other gatherings to hold business cards and other small memorabilia we might pick up there.

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The difference focus makes

March 31, 2026July 28, 2026 ~ sharon ~ Leave a comment

At the rate I’m going this year, I may actually have a completely revised (and possibly ready to pitch) manuscript.

Since I started working through Jim Jackson’s revision and self-editing process in January, I’ve made it through the total read-through and identified the major changes. Yes, I’ve been at it since January, but it’s not like I’ve put in eight hours a day on the project. In fact, I did some rough math and calculated I’ve actually spent a little more than week and a half on this project. If I didn’t have other “retirement” activities, I might have finished the entire revision by now.

But I do have other activities and, frankly, I don’t plan to drop too many more of them. I have a couple of board memberships that will expire next spring, but by then I may have a solid revision plan to work with.

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And the changes are sticking

February 28, 2026March 2, 2026 ~ sharon ~ Leave a comment

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 a good plan 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 of Julia Cameron, the author of what I’ve taken to abbreviating TAW, was 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 groups, 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 in 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, as a pantser, I just 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 that 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. Because I wrote them as I thought of them, 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.

A bientôt!