We recently connected with Sharla Hallett and have shared our conversation below.
Sharla, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?
From the time I was a little girl, I knew that I wanted to be a teacher. I went to college and was one of the very few people I knew that did not change my major. I graduated with my teaching degree and eagerly entered the teaching world. I loved it, and I enjoyed a twenty – three year career as an elementary school educator.
However, I think in this world we often confuse purpose with what we do. I met and married my husband at the age of forty-six and pivoted to being a wife and mother to two beautiful children my husband and his late wife had adopted. When my husband and I married, they were ten and fourteen. While I had enjoyed teaching, I was ready to leave it behind, and I shifted my focus to being a wife and mom.
Even though I was ready to leave my teaching career behind and do something different, I was not prepared for how much of my identity was wrapped up in being a teacher. It took a while for me to separate who I am as a person from who I was as a teacher.
I think my true purpose in this world is to love and seek God with all of who I am and also, love people well. If I am doing that, then however I choose to fill my days I am glorifying God.
One thing I have always wanted to do was to write. The benefit of my life beyond teaching was now I had time and brain capacity to do so. So I took a leap of faith and set up a website and began blogging. Through blogging, I developed the confidence to write a devotional. After writing the devotional, I had the confidence to embark on writing a fiction novel. God dropped the idea for the book in my heart as I was driving down the road one day, and I couldn’t not write it. At the time of this writing, the book is making its way through publishing channels and will come out later this year.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I was an avid reader growing up. I loved books, and I loved a good story. I would often think about writing my own book, but with everything I had on my plate as an educator, this desire would go into the “someday” pile in my mind.
I loved writing the devotionals. I think it helped combine my two strengths, writing and mentoring. I feel that God has been so intentional with my life. As I look back, I can see His hand leading and guiding me even if at the time I thought I had made a wrong turn. Writing the devotionals allows me to share what I have learned in my journey with the Lord while hopefully teaching the reader how to go deeper with God.
As I began writing my first fiction book, there were days it was hard to continue. There were often thoughts of whether anyone would ever even read it. And also, writing a novel is a lot of words. How am I ever going to get that many words down? How was I going to get all that was in my head onto paper? I have never been a good outliner. I am more of what they call a “pantser”. I write by the seat of my pants. I had ideas in my head, but how would I ever get them all down in an organized fashion?
To overcome the overwhelm, I would often sit at the computer and make a deal with myself. I would tell myself I had to write for fifteen minutes. If after fifteen minutes, I had nothing else to write I would go do something else. As I progressed through the book often an hour would go by before I knew it, and the words would pour out of me.
I do think the practice of writing regularly on my blog for over a year before I wrote anything else did help me. It helped me become a better writer as well as grow in confidence in my writing. Since I turned in my first manuscript to a publishing company, I have written a second devotional and have started on what I hope to be my second fiction book.
I am excited for the first book to make its debut in the world.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
When I first began writing, I was told that if I ever want to publish a book I need to have a large platform. So basically in order to get noticed by a publishing company you don’t need to work on your craft or produce great writing, you need to work on becoming social media famous.
This sounded just awful to me. Social media in and of itself, while it has its place, can be a full-time job. And what did having a big platform have anything to do with how good of a writer I am or what kind of message I want to release into the world?
At first I did begin to try and grow my following, but as most people know this is a lot of work. I finally had to ask myself what I felt called to do. Did I feel called to write, or did I feel called to have a big social media following? I felt called to write.
I also heard a writing mentor once say something like writing is serving your reader. If you have ten people show up at your house for a Bible study, would you turn them away because it is only ten people, or would you invite them in and serve them?
I have hosted Bible studies in my home for a number of years. This statement resonated with me. No, of course, I would not turn them away. I would welcome them into my home.
When I write a blog post, I do promote it on my socials, but I have quit obsessively checking the numbers of how many people have read it. If it reached and resonated with one person, I did my job. I was obedient to God in what I felt like I was supposed to write, and it reached a person who needed to hear it.
The amazing thing about living in these times is that there are many paths to publishing a book. A writer is no longer at the mercy of a traditional publisher picking their manuscript. Writers can now pick the publishing path that fits them and their journey whether they have a large social media following or not.
As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott. I began reading this book right around the time I began writing the fiction book. She is both direct and funny as she shares her journey as a writer and a writing teacher.
There are a couple of things she said that stood out to me. One was that writers should not write to get published. Writers should write because they love writing. This statement helped me pull back and analyze why I was doing what I was doing. It helped me determine my motivation for writing.
She also said in fiction writing you are not supposed to know your characters from the beginning of your writing. You will get to know them as you write about them. As you go on this journey with these characters, you will understand how they react and why they do what they do.
This freed me up a lot. As I went through the first revision process of my book, there were a lot of revisions in the first part of the book. I had gone on a journey with my characters. Who they were when I first began writing them was a bit different than who they were at the end of the story because I had gotten to know them.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.sharlahallett.com
- Instagram: @sharla_hallett
Image Credits
headshot and family picture by Andrea Carter Photography
