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!

Turning pages, making changes

January 28, 2026 ~ sharon ~ Leave a comment

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.

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!