Sherrie Lea Morgan Blog - Sherrie Lea Morgan

Sherrie Lea Morgan

Running to the River - First 3 days

4/17/2022

On the second day, we went on a lovely walking tour that took us right past the store we had searched for the day before. Yes, it was much closer to the hotel! On the way, I spotted this little shop with its treasures. But no time to shop now. We had a ways to go.

That afternoon, we headed on over to the Anne Frank House. There wasn’t any way I’d go to Amsterdam and not stop here. The images of her life were bittersweet and scary.

I remember reading her diary when I was younger. There in this museum, they had a copy under glass. Very humbling. Have you ever read it? If so, did it make an impact on your life?

Running to the River - First 3 days (cont'd)

4/16/2022

Since we knew of a closer grocery store, you’d think we’d go there. But, nope. We decided the walking and sightseeing was an opportunity too good to pass up. The weather was beautiful too.

Did I mention the hotel we stayed at? It's where John & Yoko stayed for their honeymoon. (see image for more info)

Amazing places to see!

This is only one of very many decorated bikes we saw on our walk. If you didn't know, Amsterdam is also known for their biking!

Running to the River - Time to Board!

4/15/2022

One of the first things I found which tickled me pink is the "Viking Daily" -- a newsletter of sorts which gave us a Nautical Term of the Day, along with informational tidbits on where we were, where we were going, menu of the meals for the day, onboard events and scheduled excursions. Love it! I never thought to take a picture of one of these, so there you go. No pic to show you. Sorry.

Let me tell you about this picture, though! This is the bar area. In this room, every night, we gathered to hear about the next days events and such, while also enjoying a cocktail. Live music nearly every night. This is before it filled up. At different times throughout the cruise, you could find folks relaxing in here, reading books (gasp) or simply visiting with each other.

How exciting to start this trip with a welcome toast! On our first night, we were introduced to the major players of the crew (captain, etc.). All very pleasant, but the excitement came with the idea of actually getting started on this adventure.

On the top deck of the cruise ship, we found not only the putting area, but also their herb garden. Fresh mint along with many others they use in their culinary delights!

Running to the River - Arrival

4/14/2022

Late afternoon on a Sunday, we got started. With a short layover in Philadelphia, we were on our way to Amsterdam. This isn’t the first overseas flight for me, and I find that sitting in coach isn’t so bad when you’re full of excitement for the days to come. This is my first river cruise. My stomach tickled at the idea of doing something like this at least once in my life. Here’s a view from the restaurant’s outdoor patio at the hotel.

The flowers enhanced the ambience with their beauty and scents.

That afternoon we decided to get a few staples for the boat and went in search of a market. Of course, left means right…or is it the other way? Either way, we ended up way out of the way, but we found a street market! Shopping time!

This is my sister buying fabric. She's a quilter and could not allow herself this opportunity.

Is there a hobby of yours where your stock can be purchased anywhere in the world, if you should go visit there? Or, is it limited to one locale? Let me know!

Running to the River

1/26/2022

Running to the River to Relax and Recharge!

Viking River Cruise Website

Finally, after a cancellation and two reschedules, we finally got to head onto our Rhine River Cruise planned long before the pandemic hit. Why, you ask? Firstly, to celebrate my father’s birthday. Secondly, because, hey…I saved the money and who doesn’t need a break?

So come along with me and share my journey. Maybe some of these images can help you recharge too.

For the next few blogs, I'll be sharing via pictures taken and my notes on the whole trip. I hope you enjoy the trip.

By the way...have you ever been on a river boat cruise or to any of these places? Fell free to comment below if you have and please share a photo too. I'd love to see them!

Two Minutes...that's all it takes?

4/4/2021

I think it was about four years ago. Someone once told me that she doesn’t go to any more writer’s meetings nor take anymore writing courses. Her reasoning? “Because I don’t learn anything new.” The weird thing is that I sort of agree. I don’t always learn something NEW when I attend these programs, but I ALWAYS get a light bulb moment. It’s usually something I forgot about or even an idea to look at, something I typically do differently.

So, with that said. Has anyone heard of Skillshare? (https://www.skillshare.com/) I recently discovered it, and the first class I watched was on productivity. Aren’t we all in some way working on this? There was a lot of information I’d heard before, but I was hearing them said differently. For example, one of the things he talked about was a two-minute rule. Meaning, if something takes less than two minutes to do, do it now rather than putting it on a “to do” list. I started doing this, and it really gave me those “I’ve done something” moments—a positive reinforcement type of thing. I try to do this every day with anything decision I face. If it takes less than two minutes, then I just do it. Now…what about those things that take longer? Well…we default to the five-minute rule. What this means is: If you’re faced with a task that you’re struggling to get done, tell yourself, “I’m only going to work on this for 5 minutes, and that’s it.” Now, you’re thinking, if this task takes longer than five minutes to complete, why even start? Good question!

Newton’s First Law of Motion – If something is still, it will stay still. If it’s moving, it will continue moving unless an external force acts on it. So, we must start. Ergo, your five-minute rule. So, let’s apply this to writing, shall we?

How do we make these five minutes less stressful?

We start by prepping the area, get our stuff together and turn on the computer. Open the files we need, pull up a blank document or the current document.

This starts the motion. Think about it. You’ve already got everything set in place to write. Continue that motion by writing.
Okay, I’m giving everyone two minutes to get something to write with. That means a paper and pen, or even pull up a word document.

So, you’re going to start with the words above and think about your current or new manuscript. Now, complete this sentence and go on to explain in detail what you want to happen. You can tell it, no need to focus on showing. But, if you get into showing, that’s fine. Now, I’m setting the timer. Ready, set, go! (Go on…I’ll wait while you try this)

Time’s up!

Okay, so count your words. It’s okay if you only got 20 words. Now, you did this many words in only two minutes! How many of you could’ve kept writing if the timer hadn’t stopped you? That’s the external force stopping the motion. You wouldn’t have stopped unless told to do so. Let’s say you give yourself five minutes towards writing new words…you’d have double this amount. If you set up another five minutes, you’d get more, and so on and so on. Think about it.

I’d like to recommend a book: Atomic Habits by James Clear This book is exciting.

One more thing from this class that I thought was really interesting:
Pareto Principle – 80% of the results will result from 20% of the effort. OR 80% of output will result from 20% of the input.
So, basically, first draft (crap draft) is 20%,
next round of edits is 20% (focus on active verbs & dialogue),
next round 20% (focus on plot arc),
next 20% is the character arc.
Think about this for a moment. You only need to input 20%, and you get 80% done afterward with the edits.
It goes back to what we hear all the time: You can’t edit a blank page.
We all need that 20% to start. If you’re a new writer or beginning in a new genre, or anything really. Remember getting those words on the page will get you 80% closer to a final draft.

Although this is focused on writing…you CAN apply it to anything else in your life. Let that stew.

Then, let me know how it worked out for you. I’d really like to know!

Something to think about.

1/10/2021

Recently, I got the chance to get a one-year subscription to Masterclass. As soon as I got my account set up, I immediately looked for those done by authors. My first class I listened to was created by Walter Mosely. He intrigued me. I genuinely enjoyed listening to his thought processes and belief’s regarding creating a story. I then went on to watch James Patterson’s course. Let me tell you something…this man is amazing! He kept me glued to my computer for his entire class. One of the things he said was that a writer writes every day. Even if they’re writing only a couple hundred words (yes, I’m paraphrasing), they write every single day.

A class I’m taking in school is on television writing. To get myself in the mode, so to speak and updated on the thought processes of writing scripts, I chose to watch Shondra Rhimes’ Masterclass. She is another great speaker and kept me hooked on every word. One of the things she mentions is when someone is asking themselves if they can call themselves a writer or not. Her position is that you can only say you’re a serious writer when you write every single day. Writing notes on a pad, or in your phone, or on a napkin. Every day you must write in order to call yourself a writer. Otherwise, (again paraphrasing), you’re not a writer.

Both of these highly successful people made me stop and think. Ever since I seriously started writing my books, I’ve taken hundreds of classes, workshops, etc. and have heard, on occasion, that as long as you write, you’re a writer. Not often, but there are those who say we are not required to write every day to be a writer.

Therein lies the conundrum which hit me today. Reflecting on my past, I discovered during those times in my life where I wrote every day, every week, my word count became more solidified, my ability to write better increased substantially and I completed books. Those times in my past where I didn’t write every day, resulted in incomplete stories, half-written stories, craft mistakes I thought I’d never make again.

All of this made me stop and think about what James and Shondra said. As much as I didn’t want to admit it at first, I’ve realized in order for me to produce better stories, more books and overall higher quality writing, I must write every day. When I mean “write”, I mean creating new words. Whether this is done via typing or dictating, it doesn’t matter, as long as there are visible new words being documented.

Another thing is I learned to really release that internal editor when writing a first draft. Kicking that editor out the door allowed me to really get more words down. Forcing myself to ignore typo’s, misspelled words, missing punctuation and such actually felt good…after a while. The English major in me kept wanting to let that darn editor slip into the room. But I can now say, I really do create crappy first drafts and it’s totally okay. By getting these words on paper (so to speak) quickly, my books are written faster and more time can be spent for editing and polishing. And for me? That’s the fun part of writing a story. I love going back and cleaning up, adding in special things here and there, sprinkle my stories with new words and creating special scenes.

So, if you’re a writer, consider if you write every day. If you don’t, try it for two weeks. Write every day and see if it changes your thought process too. I’d love to hear back from you if you try this. You can do it!

Traditions

12/22/2020

I'm sure every year, everyone has holiday traditions. Mine started with my children when they were very young and I wanted to take pictures on Christmas morning without them wearing their most comfortable pajamas. Pajamas that consisted of favorite worn T-shirts sometimes with or without pants. So, I started a tradition on Christmas Eve. All my children were allowed to open up one Christmas Eve gift. A “Santa” gift. It was always a new set of pajamas. When the kids were younger, they loved the idea of opening at least one gift early, even though, as they grew older, they knew it what that gift contained. This tradition satisfied two major things for me. The first being my children got to open at least one gift early, and second, my Christmas photos consisted of children dressed in a matching pair of pajamas. As the years have gone by my children have grown, yet we still maintain this tradition. A tradition which now brings a chuckle to everyone as they always ask: “Gee I wonder what Santa will bring us this year?". It has become a challenge now for everyone to have the most surprising reaction when they open the box and see their new pajamas.
As always Christmas Eve is celebrated at my house. Along with another tradition we have of decorating Christmas cookies. In the past this is brought a challenge to see how many Christmas cookies I could bake and make them decorate on Christmas Eve before opening up that first Christmas eve present. These decorations have ranged from the traditional pretty decoration to morbid decorations due to my children's odd sense of humor. Those evenings are always full of laughter, jokes and general family goofiness. This year will be no different, I’m sure, as each of my family members who gather have always been close. In fact, we are looking to have nine adults eight dogs and one two-year-old this year. It will be a very noisy and fun filled evening. On Christmas day everyone takes their gifts and heads out to spend the day with other family members. This is fine with me, because I know, every Christmas Eve my children are here and I am one lucky lady. In fact, this will be the second year in which there will be four generations represented in one room. For that, I am blessed for the holidays.
I hope whoever reads this has a tradition they can count on for the holidays. Especially this year, where we all need something, we can count on to be certain. Happy holidays and take care of you and yours.

OH…Shiny idea! - So many to choose from!

11/17/2020

Shiny Things!

Part of my grad degree involves taking courses outside of my concentration of creative writing. One of the classes I’m taking this semester focuses on writing for social media. Which, let’s face it, if you’re an author like me, you need to know this stuff, right? To start, we learn about various social media platforms, then we get the chance to create content based on what we’ve learned to make successful posts. “Rules” to follow, mistakes to avoid, etc. are also covered. I already have a presence on Facebook, Twitter, my own website with a blog, and last, but not least, Instagram.

I’ve read and learned about my social media platforms, except Instagram. I wanted to have a presence there, but I didn’t consider consistency when I started. This class made me think about that. I’ve posted about my dad’s railroad building (because he’s a blast to watch and I wanted to document his progress). I’ve posted about my dogs and my family’s dogs whom I love dearly. I’ve even tossed in a few posts about my books, my writers conferences and food. The latter because I was seeing that on Instagram and thought it’d be cool to share. I’ve learned I need to focus here. This class has really made me think about my brand. Who am I and what do I want to share with my readers? Since all my books (save one co-written book) have ghosts in them and I love to watch paranormal movies/videos, I thought to myself “Hey, I’m not afraid of ghosts and I love these types of investigations, why not try it myself?”

OH, shiny idea! I’ve decided to dedicate my Instagram to 3 main subjects: Dad’s train building, dogs and my favorite new shiny thing: Spirit Seeking (aka ghost hunting/paranormal investigations).

While doing this, the class studied YouTube videos, so I thought I’d like to do a YouTube channel documenting my experiences being a Novice Spirit Seeker. So, that’s two social media platforms talking about Spirit Seeking.

But wait…here comes along another shiny for me to look into. Podcasting! How cool would that be? I could talk an ear off anyone once I’m comfortable. Being “invisible” would be like icing on the cake. An idea popped in my head about what the podcast would be on and how to keep it consistent and entertaining. Oh, the ideas started flowing in like a dam breaking. It’s like when I write my stories, scenes started popping in my head.

Now, I’m stuck because after taking a moment to really think about all of this, I’m now wondering if there are too many shiny things catching my eye. Can I do it all? Should I do it all or go back to simply the three originally suggested?

Realistically though. I need to decide here. Let’s break it down.

FB and Twitter are permanent must haves (plus I have an assistant who helps me with those two platforms).
My website/blog is already something else I’m committed to and is only set for a once a month time slot.
Instagram isn’t difficult as I’ll be going on investigations and can easily post about those events at that time they occur.

That gives me one more platform I genuinely think I can commit to doing outside the Instagram, as I still need to write my stories. That’s what started this whole thing, right?

So, which one would you recommend?

1. YouTube
2. Podcast

I’d really like to know your answer.
Comment below if you have a moment.
Thank you & have a great turkey month!

Tip: Most often when writers are starting out, one key thing that is always mentioned and, in todays society, required by authors is to have a platform you participate in. It’s important because once you publish, your readers are going to want to know about you and your writing. They’re going to want to be able to contact you. Publishing companies expect you to be on social media and help promote yourself and your books. You’re told to pick 1-3 that you’re “good” at and stick to those. Don’t overextend yourself. Remember this last sentence here, I say to myself, repeatedly.

Bennett: "Say What?"

Ellie: "Did you say "Shiny" or "Snack"?

Perseverance is key!

10/5/2020

Ten years ago, last spring, after a lifetime of creating stories in my head and on paper, I decided to seek publication. A friend overheard me talking to a coworker in the next cubicle. She walked over and asked me "Are you serious about wanting to get published?" I answered "Yes!". She then told me I needed to join her local romance writers association. So, I did, and I wrote all summer on a book I thought was great. I didn't get it all finished, but I signed up for a pitch appointment, to an editor only three months away. Those months, I spent (outside of my day job), learning how to create a blurb, and expectations of an editor during these appointments. I even read all about my assigned editor. I saw other books he published and loved them. They were a bit darker than my story, but all the same, they rocked. At the conference, I went to a special session to make my pitch even more perfect than I thought possible. Soon, it was time to meet with the editor!

I sat down, said five words and the editor stopped me. He told me, kindly, that he wasn't interested in my type of story. Well, after all the research I'd done, I wasn't going to leave right away. I took the time to thank him for coming, then went on to say how I researched other books he’d published. I mention a few I liked and in a moment of utter surprise, I told him I had an idea for a book that involved dead bodies and dead languages, since I studied linguistics in college. His eyes widened and he pointed to me saying "Now, THAT's a book I'm interested in."

This was in October 2010. I spent all November (using National Novel Writing Month to help) and wrote that 72,000+ word book. Unbeknownst to me, I was still in the early stages of learning the craft and had a long way to go. January 2011, I sent off my manuscript. The following April, I received my first rejection letter. Again, unbeknownst to me, it was more of a revise/resubmit. But I didn't know that. I only read that it wasn't acceptable. So, for the next nine years, I fiddled with it on and off, while I wrote more books and more stories. In 2016, I submitted a different story to a different publisher and it got accepted. I'd become a published author. Then I wrote another in that series and it got published in 2018. Both of these books had characters I wrote in that first rejected book. So, when it came time to submit a third book of the series, I finally had the chance to bring this book to life! Talk about happy dancing! It's finally getting published!

Dead Bodies, Dead Languages is now available for pre-order! Release date is perfect as it is set for October 28, 2020! Since the book takes place around Halloween, this is the best release date I could hope for. This is, by far, my favorite of the series and I hope it will be yours too. Check it out and know I'm giggling just to see it live!