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Sharon Michalove is the author of the Global Security series of thrillers, and most recent has a short story collection, Relatives and Relationships. You can find out more about her on her website, coffeeandeclairs.com, or by clicking here, read her last post here, and buy her books here.

Once upon a time, there was a girl. Not a fairytale princess—she hated pink and sparkles. Just a starstruck reader who wanted to be an author. But she didn’t know how to sustain a story, and all her ideas came from the books she read.

She tried on and off to write books and spent a year or two creating bad poetry, but reading was always more satisfying because she got to travel to other lands and other times, relying on the power of others to spark her own dreams.

On and off, over the decades, she’d get a half-formed idea and the motivation to start writing. The flame would quickly burn out, though, since she wanted to have already written, not to be in the middle of writing. Work and home, finding new authors, travel, and being a cat mom seemed more satisfying and took far less motivation than writing.

But in the back of her mind, the itch was alway there. Autumn marked the real new year, when she stocked up on new pens and notebooks, most of which remained unfilled. For ten years, she kept a daily diary in which she recorded the highlights of each day. She also worked in academic libraries, took a variety of graduate courses, and wrote history papers as her main outlet.

Her book-a-day reading habit persisted. Stacks of library books sat next to her chair, mostly mystery series—the Lockridges, Catherine Aird, Ruth Rendell, Marion Babson. TV mysteries filled her evening hours when she was too tired to do anything else. Planning a trip abroad was easier than trying to plot a book.

Earning a Ph.D. meant writing a book. Her early research project was a biography of a courtier in the reigns of Edward IV and Henry VII, and she used her research to present conference papers and publish articles. Her dissertation, four years later, yielded a contributed chapter to a book on early modern women’s education. She continued writing and teaching history until 2006, when she retired.

Priorities changed and by 2010, she had given her last paper and published her last history article. Now her time was devoted to teaching, knitting, traveling with her husband, and going to plays and concerts. She bought a road bike and rode thousands of miles each year. That seemed to be enough. The dream of writing a novel faded.

Late in 2013, five and a half years after being diagnosed with cancer, her husband died. She had a new identity—widow.

This new status motivated her to renovate parts of the house, have the yard re-landscaped, and learn to live alone for the first time. But staying where she was, even with all the changes, even with the friends and activities, was too hard. So she went back “home,” to Chicago, the city where she was born. Having her brother still in the area gave her extra reason to move, although she told everyone it was to go to hockey games and hang out at Eataly.

She made new friends for going to the theater, eating out, attending concerts. Nights alone were still hard. The idea of writing crept back. Characters flitted through her head, offering a kind of companionship. She took online classes on plotting, conflict, setting, and began writing with others at least three days a week. Words flowed and the more she wrote, the more motivated she was to write. By the end of 2018, she had the first draft of a novel.

COVID messed up her progress She couldn’t meet her friends to write and wasn’t sure how to set up an effective work area at home. A rewrite and resubmit from a publisher sapped her spirit. For months, the manuscript remained untouched. When the next October arrived, friends asked what had happened to the book. Goaded, she found new purpose. Her new motto was: One MOre Try.

She bought a desktop computer, turned the sunroom into an office with her dining room table as a desk, and rewrote her book. On October 22, 2021, a little over a year after she re-found her mojo, she published it independently. Motivation and commitment came on the heels of success and she turned out two books the following year.

The question is, when did motivation and commitment turn to overcommitment? A surprise invitation to write a short story for an anthology started what became a landslide. An overachiever friend introduced her to a realm of anthologies, and while she only planned to contribute to one, that became two, then four.

Signing up for eight stories in 2024 and again in 2025 (plus a novella) has meant contracts and deadlines. Lots of them. And the deadlines have been squeezed together in some cases. Books have been pushed back. The pull of new possibilities has swamped everything. The more overcommitment, the less motivation.

So how did this writer move the needle in the other direction? Come up for air? Grab a life preserver? She could have bailed, but that was not in her wheelhouse. Instead, she thought long and hard, and took the following steps, They helped, so now she’s sharing them with everyone.

• Set long-term goals that move your writing career forward. Reject anything that interferes with those goals.
• Make a list, with deadlines.
• Remember that bright, shiny, and new is a fleeting impression. At some point it will become dirty slush against the curb.
• When something exciting is offered, don’t say yes right away. Look at the pros and cons as well as current commitments.
• Make sure you have a strong concept, ample time, and a solid path for each project.
• Rely on cheerleaders to keep you on track.
• Carve out time to do the non-writing things you love.

If you are the type to never say no, try to cram in too much, then collapse, overwhelmed, remember, you can step back anytime. Don’t wait for the avalanche.