Nicole Sharp's Blog, page 2

Flowers From the Trash

I was wading through a stack of old photos, trying to figure out what to keep and what to throw when one caught my attention. Just a picture of roses in a vase. I was about to throw it away when writing on the back caught my attention: “Flowers from the trash.” A thunderbolt of a memory: This is a ‘Grandma story’. Grandma Carroll is my mom’s mom. She’s still with us today, 92 years old, a force to be reckoned with. She still dresses for the day, gets her nails done and matches her jewelry. She i...

The Ultimately Achievable List of Resolutions for a New Year!

I like to celebrate the New Year a week or two late. I mean, every New Year’s Eve (around 2pm) I seem to find myself with an insatiable need to reorganize my whole house, lose 50 pounds, paint my living room, minimize my ‘stuff’ and write something spectacularly literary ALL by midnight. So I can welcome the new year with a clean, peaceful slate. I came to the conclusion long ago that each person should have their own new year anyway, and that day should fall on their birthday. I like this becau...

Why I Write…

I would like to say I’ve been telling stories all my life. That somehow I knew writing was my calling. But it was’t. Not exactly. I think I loved the story first. I appreciated the glory of my father reading The Monster at the End of This Book. I hated when my teacher finished reading the daily paragraph of The Borrowers to us in class. I loved listening to adults at parties as they told stories to each other. When I was in 6th grade, a friend of mine was writing. She was writing books. Such a t...

Life is a highway…

My photo background on my computer screen is of a wide-open road as the sun is coming up. I loved the moment and the colors and even the way the specs of bugs on the windshield were visible. It was the middle of summer, in the middle of nowhere, in the wee small hours of the sunrise. We were on our way from a stop off from an in-law’s home in Nevada to Southern California. We’d decided to leave that early because I found out that the Starbucks nearby was open all night. So with a large hot coffe...

The coffee in my books…

I’ve been thinking about coffee. If you know me, or have read my work, you’re probably thinking, ‘of course your thinking about coffee!’ If it’s not Italy and how to get to Italy and what adventure I’m currenting writing, then I must be thinking about coffee. Though, to be fair, I often think about what we’re going to have for dinner, if I’ve switched the laundry, how am I going to juggle all my work with gardening this summer and the intricacies of the latest Beowulf translation in the world an...

Merry and Bright…

I’ve stopped.  Stopped “doing” for the holiday as of this very moment.  The important things are done. The presents are wrapped, and the grocery shopping is finished. And that is a lot more completed than others.  But friends, I decided that the laundry mountain I ‘should’ fold can be shoved in the bedroom and a star placed upon the top. It isn’t imperative to our lives to have neatly folded and organized clothing for a few days.  The floors will not be vacuumed or swept by Christmas morning.  D...

Italian Proverbs and my writing career…

I was recently talking to a few writers and the question went around: What was the biggest challenge in order to self publish. As we theorized and philosophized, I realized my biggest challenge, the thing that changed everything for me, was getting out of my own damn way. You see, I had soooo many excuses. I wanted to publish my books but I had a ton of reasons why I couldn’t publish; and I would recite them as I (meta)physically pulled obstacles clearly labeled “Self Sabotage” into my path. Exh...

Summer Heat…

I’ve been thinking on a plethora of thoughts lately. The heat, however, has weighed me down and I’m not quite interested in following any of them down the road they are leading me. I’ve been reading Madeleine L’Engle slowly this summer, as if every paragraph is a conversation we’re having over coffee. This morning she validated what I know to be true: “Inspiration does not always precede the act of writing; it often follows it. I go to my typewriter with reluctance; I check the ribbon; I check m...

5 Random, Cool Things to See in Florence

So now we’re all aware of the fact that I’ve been to Florence several times and that I love the place so much, and love Italy so much, it’s a major character in three of the books I’ve published. As you can imagine, because of these things, I often end up with people asking me for tips and tricks when they head to the place of my ancestors, aka: the birthplace of the Renaissance. So, I thought it would be fun to talk about a few of the things you don’t always find in guidebooks, but that I think...

The School Dance…

My kid went to the first school dance tonight. I decided to go do some writing while I wait the hour and a half. Or course, the coffee shops are all closed, so I settled for Denny’s. The coffee isn’t great, it’s brown flavored hot water at this point, but I’m kind of loving it. It reminds me of college when I’d cram into a booth with several friends and we’d split stacks of fries and ranch and shakes at midnight and laugh and think we were so wide open with our philosophizing and debates on the ...