How A Psychic Writes Fiction

 

Created by Pauline in Canva

An interesting thing happens when I write fiction. The characters talk back to me. Well, they aren’t belligerent or anything like that. They just have opinions about things. I spent part of this morning talking to Gloria, my lead female character in the piece of fiction I’ll be writing in November. I suppose you might call this the equivalent of a vacation for anybody else, but I am looking forward to it. Will it ever be published? I don’t know. I’m tending toward doubtful, but you never know. Why am I doing this? Well, I love reading fiction. Old fiction, contemporary fiction. Just all kinds. I’ve not written much of it, though. So, this will be mostly new for me.

Anyway, I was asking Gloria’s opinion on the story, on names, on possible settings. The idea, with this book, is to have two people who keep reincarnating together. It’s like they can’t get away from each other. They also love each other, but in this story, they’re going to be coming back as married folks. I think.

I’m wondering how much of the story holds water before the writing begins and how much of it is invented on the fly. Are there any hard and fast rules, or rules that mostly work.

I did write a piece of fiction many years ago, long before I ever started channeling. There were a couple of spots where the characters got up and walked around on the pages. Not literally, they just had opinions of their own. I’d never, in my life, heard of something like that happening to a writer.

Turns out it is a thing.

Maybe I need to do the big piece of paper thing. That’s where I state the story's premise in the middle of the paper, then draw a circle around it. This becomes the middle of the flower. Then, I begin adding things that might or may not end up in the story. Like I could have a woman go west to start a new life. Then, branching off that thought are ideas related to her. Like one might be stranded in a snowstorm on a train in the middle of the prairie, or another one could be building a sod house. Or another one could be alone in the world with three children. These vines that trail off from the center may or may not be included in the finished story. It’s just spit-balling. So, today I was spit-balling with Gloria, my main character. Much more so than I’ve done before. Here is an excerpt from my notes:

This is me talking: Okay, Gloria, now’s your opportunity to speak up.

This is Gloria: Me?

Yes, of course.

Nobody has ever invited me to be part of the planning process before.

Well, I am. You are going to be doing some heavy lifting in the story, and you should have some say-so.

In the past, I’d have to sneak in.

No sneaking necessary. You are welcome to contribute.

I like that better than butt in.

Well, I figured I could be polite. We’re just now meeting. So, what do you think? What would you like to see happen in this story?

Let me think. There needs to be some humor. Lots of it. It can’t be all serious all the time. Life is funny. It’s also scary, but having fun and being funny in your life is good.

Okay, I agree.

It can also be odd. Like you are.

Excuse me?

Well, you are odd. Not many people go around having conversations like this with fictional characters.

Which reminds me. Did you like the idea of similar traits between lifetimes?

Yes, that’s good. I like that. Also, somebody should have some villainous qualities.

Okay. Like people sometimes have to work through patience, like I do, for more than one lifetime.

Sweetie, you’ve been working on patience for the last 2,300 years.

Okay, don’t get carried away.

No, I mean it. You’ve gotten a lot better at it. Patience begins with yourself. Once you’ve got it down pat, it is easier to apply it to others.

Okay, we can come back to that. What about times? If there are four stories. I don’t know how long people have between lifetimes. I sort of think it’s long enough to get some studying done in Heaven, but it’s been suggested that folks who have violent demises come back sooner rather than later. Also, babies sometimes come back quick.

Who Are You and What Do You Want?

 

Created with the help of Spirit in Canva by the author

How this title came to me, I do not remember. At the time, it was significant. Now, I cannot remember. Does it matter? I don’t think so. Perhaps, this might be thought of as an exercise in writing. A teacher could think up any number of likely titles for a short essay, perhaps printed on a piece of colored paper. Would it need to be the same piece of paper? I’m not sure how random the game should be.

Technically, this would be an assignment, yet even I, a 70-year-old lady, feel the fun that lies around this lesson is more of a game-like nature than that of an academic assignment. Let me ask you: would you prefer candy or carrots?

Enthusiasm for anything is worth more in terms of getting something done rather than grousing around about it.

If fire eating were a fun thing, then everybody would be doing it. Right?

I’m not sure that’s a good example. I can hear my husband’s mother saying, “If your friends think it’s a good idea to jump off the Park Street Bridge, would you do it, too?” The bridge in question wasn’t all that high, if I remember the story correctly. I don’t think he made up the story. No, Mary assures me it is a good story. She did say that.

Mary?

Yes, Dear.

Hi. I didn’t expect to be hearing from you.

Well, you were talking about me. Why shouldn’t I show up?

Thanks. I wish I knew you better.

You know me as well as you were supposed to.

Okay, Dear Readers, if you are wondering about this abrupt change in the story, I am pretty much as surprised as you are. I’m a channel. Not a waterway. I am a psychic channel. Sometimes, people call us oracles or soothsayers. I can get into the experience of channeling as easily as anyone. Typically, I don’t change much. Like, I don’t swoon or gasp. Spirit just steps in.

Perhaps that is where the title comes from because Spirit really does just show up. See, you don’t have to be a psychic channel to have that happen. Yes, just little ole’ ordinary you has Spirit around you all the time. They just don’t do plain talk with you. You’ll get a hankering for some of your great-grandmother’s cookies. You had them last when you were seven years old. Then, she passed away. There was a funeral that you went to. Everybody was dressed in black, and you didn’t understand why everybody was crying. Fast forward 20 years, and you find yourself standing in your kitchen looking at a pretty much empty refrigerator with lots of takeout boxes, wondering why nobody sells cookies that taste just the way your Geema used to make.

The moment passes, and you grab a beer. But that was your Geema checking in with you.

By the way, when Spirit talks in the pieces I write, I put their parts of the discussion in a bold font.

Mary, if you have guessed already, is my mother-in-law. She was the first person who told me that older people don’t sleep well. She seemed bitter about it at the time. I, however, have embraced this sleeplessness and will either get up and write something or turn to whatever book I am reading at the time. Nowadays, my writing leans more toward personal adventures rather than much else. Lessons from an old lady, which actually rings of grand title-worthiness too. I keep a file where I put these titles just because I forget so much these days.

It's sort of like keeping a job jar with titles rather than chores, which is what I started writing this story about.

Who are you and what do you want? Oh, shoot, now I remember when I last said that. It was a telephone call that came in yesterday. The stinking phone rang at least five times yesterday while I was writing. There was nobody on the other end of it; however, on one occasion, there was. I could hear her breathing. She mumbled something I didn’t understand. That’s when I said it. She hung up. Stinking phone calls are great interruptions. If I take a metaphysical look at the issue, I would say two things. I need to not get so irritated about minor things, and two, I should turn the phone off. Dennis knows how to get hold of me if I don’t answer. There’s another thing. If there is a disaster, somebody will come and tell me. Or, I’ll smell smoke. So, I should stop worrying.

Yes, it is worry at the root of it.

See what happens when you write about stuff? You figure stuff out. Hey, thanks for reading. I appreciate it. Leave a comment if you want.

🌺Pauline Evanosky 🌺

🌺My Links:

 The Best Stuff for Kids on YouTube
 Just Passing Through on YouTube
 Talking To Spirit on YouTube
 Pauline Evanosky on Medium
 Talking To Spirit on Substack
 Talking To Spirit — my website
 Facebook
 My Table of Contents for Medium — Updated Monthly
 My Table of Contents for Substack — Also Updated Monthly

Thinking of Fiction

 

Created by Pauline in Canva

                                                     

Okay, it’s on my mind right now because in a few days, five to be exact, I’m going to start writing a book. The original rules at NaNoWriMo – which is now defunct – were that you write your heart out in November on a novel. Quickly, rushed, no holding back. The goal was not only a novel, but 50,000 words.

Okay, so a novel is likely to be more than 50,000 words, but you do the best you can on this first stab. You will be doing rewrites as time goes by, and you move into either finishing it, and with the polishing and editing that happens after November has come and gone.

When I first started doing the November challenges with NaNo, I could hardly conceive of writing that much in a month. Interestingly, among all the platforms I write on the internet now (I’ll list them below), as of today, 10/25/25, I’ve written about 65,000 words this month. I deliberately pushed myself this month because it was probably about two weeks ago that I decided to do a November writing challenge on my own.

At this point, all I’m thinking about is a piece of fiction. Two people who have known each other in other lifetimes and who are able to recall all those lifetimes are together again. There are all sorts of psychic activity that resounds between them. Like any long-married couple, they finish each other’s sentences and know when the other is calling on the telephone. Standard stuff, except that it is intensified because one will lambast the other with accusations of an infidelity that happened 350 years before. Sort of funny. The other thing I know is that one of the character’s names needs to start with the letter G. This is thanks to somebody in Spirit who suggested that the seventh letter in the alphabet was a lucky letter.

I have all intentions of drawing upon my FIS (Folk in Spirit) to help me out on this one. I also expect that my characters will be as in-your-face as Spirit is. This idea of your characters veering off on their own agendas is nothing new in the writing community. It happens all the time. When Diana Gabaldon was writing Outlander, Claire, a main character, appeared and had ideas of her own about what was going to happen with the story, just like that.

I know what it is like, because I’ve had characters do that in the past. I wasn’t a self-declared psychic in those days, but I was able to experience the magic of writing when that happened. Now, it happens all the time. So, I’m looking forward to that part.

You might think that Spirit deserves every bit as much credit for writing the book as I do, perhaps even a share of the revenue if it gets published and makes any money. We had a discussion about this a long time ago, and I seem to recall Spirit wanting their portion to go to charity. I’m still thinking about it. As I began writing this paragraph, I could see somebody in Spirit rubbing their face with their hands. They do funny things like that.

Oh, now here’s something totally different. I was talking to my husband yesterday and said to him that I thought I might have written over 6 million words in my lifetime. He agreed. That seems like a lot, doesn’t it? I’m counting everything, including notes for books, journals, and just everything. So far in 2025, I’ve written 659,907 words, and there are still five days left in the month. It’s likely to be 700,000 words by the end of the year.

Writers need to support other writers. You need to be left alone to write, but the idea of good company is worth considering. Other writers will help you, will support you, just as you will be there for them.

Hey, thanks for reading. You can find me elsewhere on the internet. I’ll list them below.

🌺 Pauline Evanosky

🌺My Links:

 The Best Stuff for Kids on YouTube
 Just Passing Through on YouTube
 Talking To Spirit on YouTube
 Pauline Evanosky on Medium
 Talking To Spirit on Substack
 Talking To Spirit — my website
 Facebook
 My Table of Contents for Medium — Updated Monthly
 My Table of Contents for Substack — Also Updated Monthly
References I recommend on your path to more psychic awareness

Spinning Words

 

Created in Canva by Pauline

Saying you are a writer without any books to point to is sort of lame. I’m one of those people. However, this is the year that I finally got my own author’s website. Right now, it isn’t much, but I’m turning over new leaves left and right and have been on a relatively strict writing regimen.

I used to think that a writer needed ideas and a great story from somewhere outside of themselves. Like I could see myself staring off into a beautiful sky and suddenly, abruptly start pounding out the first draft of something that would inevitably end up as a Pulitzer Prize-winning book.

Nope, that doesn’t work.

Writing is noticing things. It’s being able to grab onto a fragment and then turn it into a whole 20 yards of beautiful material. Spinning words out of dreams. Sounds like a good title. I’ll use it for this piece.

Writing is also believing in yourself. I went for many years as a wanna-be writer. As I am generally uncomfortable in large groups, I would use what I wanted to do with my writing as an opening gambit to what may or may not turn into nice cocktail party chattering. “Someday, I will be a writer,” I said it a lot. In those days, I also drank a lot. Now, I don’t drink, and I no longer go to parties. I write instead.

Anyway, it was 1989 when I started working at the last job I’d ever have before I retired. I was happy to get the job. We needed two incomes for our family. It was work I enjoyed, and the job changed over the years to the point where, just before I retired, I was a boss. Not the boss, just one of them. Eventually, I would learn where all the bodies were buried. I remember that first day. I was a clerk. The lowest of the low. And, rather than being happy, I was dismayed. I thought to myself, “How many more years am I going to go around saying someday I want to be a writer?” I realized the ill-conceived plan of being a writer without actually being a writer.

That was the day I began to write. It took me three years to write a swashbuckling, sword-swinging, dragon-slaying, astral-traveling book. There was also romance, mystery, and intrigue involved. It was everything I wanted to read but couldn’t lay my hands on. So, I wrote it.

It took three years. It’s still on a bookshelf in the house somewhere. I also think there might be a copy of it under the bed. It turned out to be about 80,000 words. I spent a year and a half making the rounds of seven different publishers, sending the manuscript over the transom. Nobody wanted to publish it. There were some compliments on the writing. I’m still not sure that anybody actually read it. I do admit to being a much better writer now, but that was my first attempt at writing something intended for more than my eyes only.

You don’t need to have an education to write. You do, though, need to read. Stuff. Everything and anything. Whatever interests you. You need to read fiction. You need to read fact. The facts are what you use to make your stories believable. Even if you are on a planet where there is no air, you need to have some sort of grounding in chemistry and biology to make it sound just the tiniest bit real. At least, that’s what I think.

You don’t actually need to be an expert in anything; however, having life experience is good. Which means you need to make many attempts at growing up. Also, you need to read the bad stuff. This will inform you of how not to write.

From my own perspective, as a 70-year-old lady, I understand now just how difficult it is to grow up. Growing up is not a matter of having years. Growing up is having difficult life lessons and being able to cope with tragedy, with heartbreak, and with disappointments. These come into anybody’s life, and if you haven’t already encountered the pain and heartbreak of living, you will be hard-pressed to convince a reader you know what you are talking about.

Besides that, learning something isn’t a one-stop process. Many times, the things we learn as human beings take years. It’s like therapy. You go to a therapist and say, “I can’t do this and I want to.” They ask you some questions. You answer. The therapist, who is trained to be observant, realizes that this one particular thing is something you can’t or won’t talk about. They think to themselves that eventually he or she will lead you back around to the thing so that you can begin to stop telling yourself lies. In the meantime, there are other things that you can talk about.

It is all a gradual process. The therapist gives you tools that you can use on your own to cope or to heal whatever it is that is bothering you at that moment in time. Notice I didn’t say "cure you forever"?

A person can only take so much of anything at one time. You get past your original complaint. At some time, you say to your therapist that you think you are done and that you don’t want to continue therapy. The therapist agrees, and you go about your merry life.

Until something happens.

It might be years down the road, or it could be months. Suddenly, you feel the need to get yourself back into therapy. Is this where you say to yourself, “They were no good, I need a different therapist. The last one didn’t do the job, and I want nothing to do with them anymore.” Fine, be that way. Yes, it happens that you might like one therapist over another. That’s being human. But these are trained people, and what has happened has absolutely nothing to do with your therapist. It has to do with you.

Together, you and your therapist got you to a point where you could function adequately. You were happy. You were productive. Things were peachy keen. Then, the bottom dropped out of your world. Somebody looked at you sideways or said something that hurt you. Whatever it was that pushed your buttons initially, pushed your buttons again. You think the therapy you had the first time didn’t work.

Well, it did work. You were able to crawl out of whatever was holding you down. You got back to “normal” again. You were happy. You had the tools you needed to continue being happy. What the hell happened?

Your higher self, or inner self, decided that you were now strong enough to learn more. So, go learn some more about yourself. Get back into therapy. Dust off the tools you were given before (deep breathing, meditation, journaling, support groups, physical exercise) and either do it yourself or find somebody who can help you.

It was nobody’s fault. 99% of the population has some sort of mental issue. Why are you so special that you don’t? Even psychotherapists get regular counseling. Whether they need it or not. It is mandated.

So, how does any of this help a writer? If you can tell yourself the truth, if you can understand yourself, then you can also develop complex characters and wonderful storylines. I had no idea that would be the case when I originally wanted to be a writer.

It is what happened to me.

So, thanks for reading. Leave me a comment to see if you have experienced some of these things too. Tell me where you write and publish. 

🌺Pauline Evanosky 🌺

🌺My Links:

The Best Stuff for Kids on YouTube
 Just Passing Through on YouTube
 Talking To Spirit on YouTube
 Talking To Spirit on Substack
 Talking To Spirit — my website
 Facebook
My Table of Contents for Medium — Updated Monthly
My Table of Contents for Substack — Also Updated Monthly 

Taking Stock and Accountability

Created by Pauline in Canva

I know traditionally we take stock at the beginning of every year. It is not yet January 1st, and I feel the need to take stock sooner. The reason for this is that I feel the march of time more so than I did when I was 27 years old. Now, I am 70 years old, and the one thing, right now, that I regret is that I haven’t published any books.

To that end, I need to take stock more than once a year, and I need to get busy on getting some books published.

I tend to see problems where none actually exist. It’s like I deliberately put bumps in the road that are going to jar my teeth once I roll over them.

I think that’s the idea of life. You’re supposed to have bumps and bruises. Maybe that’s the only way you can learn to ride a bicycle.

Without losing face.

Okay, it’s a deal I’m making with myself. I will post a list of five things that I want to do that I really want to do. Have them on my wall. Promise myself that I will look at them every day and then work on them.

I know this doesn’t have anything to do with psychic channeling, but I’m a person, just like anyone else, and I also have a lot of stuff I still want to do. I tend to get wrapped up in things and don’t know where the time flies.

However, writing is important to me. Since 2021, I’ve had a steady diet of daily writing. These are mostly personal essays from the point of view of somebody who is old and has seen a lot of life. I’ve found a number of places that I’ll put links to at the bottom of this article, where I write on a regular basis. Now, I write here too. I’m thinking of a nice blog post twice a week to be published on Sundays and Wednesdays. These will be more along the lines of what it is like to be a psychic and some channeling. Then, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I publish for Medium.com. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I publish on Substack.com. On Fridays, I publish on Facebook. I also have my journal, where I hash out private things, and my Do-Good File, where I like to begin my day with something short and upbeat. Or thoughtful. It is designed to help me start my day with a good outlook.

And, I've got my writer's website set up too. This will be the first substantial post there. So, a decision needs to be made about just how often I plan to post stuff here. Maybe once a week to start. Then, we'll see. 

Where, oh where do I fit in writing a book?

I have to remember the best diet you can ever get going is one where you add things and don’t make yourself feel deprived. If you concentrate on everything you can’t eat it’s going to be difficult. If you add things, like five minutes of stretching before you go outside for a walk, or more vegetables or whatever, you will have a better chance of losing some weight.

Maybe it is the same with writing. To keep myself accountable, about a year or so ago, I began listing a daily count of the words I wrote. I track all of the above places where I write. The thing is, I don’t write on the day I publish. I might have a day where I write four articles. Then, there might be a day where I am not feeling well, and I just take the day off to read, which is also important for a writer.

If I hold myself accountable on a daily basis with my word counts and have a generalized goal monthly of about 60,000 words, then, if I write 2,000 words a day, I’m pleased. It’s sort of like exercising my writerly muscles. Good output, both in the quality of my writing and in the quantity, too.

However, I just asked my husband what his thoughts on all of this were. He said you have to hold yourself accountable to another human being. This person cannot be a friend or your spouse. He told me this was how he was able to train and run marathons, which are 26 miles long. 26.19 miles to be exact, but yeah, 26 miles long. He broke his back in November of 1992. At the time, he had been training for a marathon. The doctors told him he would never run another marathon again. There was a chance he also might never walk again.

But my husband, Dennis, has a determination that made me fall in love with him. Nobody, absolutely nobody, tells him no about anything. Since then, he has run eight marathons. Less than 1% of the population on Earth has ever run a marathon, let alone eight of them.

He is also a writer and an historian. We both love books. He has written several of them. So, I asked his advice just now.

Accountability.

With that in mind, I will revisit a website called Shut Up and Write. They have groups around the world. The idea is that they meet periodically for the members to introduce themselves, tell what they are working on, and then write. Nobody talks while you are writing, although the meetings are held on Zoom and you can only see the tops of people’s heads as they write during the two hours of the group I’ve participated in.

I did this a few times and found it to be a nice push to write. No blank paper freeze for me. But, at the end of the meeting, they go around the group and have you say what you got done during the session and what you will be working on until the next meeting. These are real people. There are members in the group who have been there for years. These are also professional writers who have been published. There are also people who are wanna be writers, like I consider myself to be, even though I’ve got over 1,000 articles published here and there all over the internet. And five books were written but not published. Perhaps this is the push I need to hold myself accountable.

It's something to think about. Oh, and I have been an active participant in the old NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). The magic of Google. I began to look around to see if there was anybody who was doing a writing thing this November. I found WritingMonth.org and signed up. My username is paulineevanosky if you’d like to sign up and be buddies. That’s where the community part comes in. It will be a new project, which I haven’t decided on just yet. I’ll go have some breakfast and think about it.

But here’s a place writers can gather to write hard and fast. First draft stuff. Any genre. There is an “other” selection too. Where I learned about it was from a writer on Medium. That’s good enough for me. From what I've read, signing up means this will not be limited to November. I’m looking forward to it.

If you’ve got an urge to really stretch yourself as a writer, come join us.

Thanks for reading. Check out my other links on the internet below.

🌺Pauline Evanosky🌺

🌺My Links:
 The Best Stuff for Kids on YouTube
 Just Passing Through on YouTube
 Talking To Spirit on YouTube
 Pauline Evanosky on Medium
 Talking To Spirit on Substack
 Talking To Spirit — my website
 Facebook
 My Table of Contents for Medium — Updated Monthly
 My Table of Contents for Substack — Also Updated Monthly

First Entry to the New Site

 

Created by Pauline in Canva

Early days yet, but I wanted to get a start on my new Author's Website. Eventually, I will hook up my URL, PaulineEvanosky.com, to the blogspot ThisIsPaulineEvanosky.Blogspot.com. Which has been done as of 10/25/25.

This is something I've been wrestling with on my other website www.TalkingtoSpirit.com. Mostly that works, but there are some aspects of it that are not working. My lessons in not panicking, I suppose.

So, I'm a writer. I've been a writer, or at least I've enjoyed writing, since my teenage years. Never much, nothing that I ever wanted to show people, and actually, not something I believed I could do. It wasn't until I retired in 2016 that I realized I had a shot at being a writer. Finally. 

It's been a long road. Mostly, it was about me learning to believe in myself. 

To write, you need to write. It sounds simplistic, but it is necessary. It's also true that the first things you write are dumb. It's dishwater. It's not exciting, but it is writing. There is also a process where you learn about yourself as you push yourself.

You need to make time to write. When I was working full-time jobs, I had to make time to write. I couldn't cut into my work time, so I used to get up at 4:30 am every morning. You get used to it. Now, almost ten years after I retired, I'm still getting up that early. I did so this morning.

This, my 70th year, is the year I've promised myself that I will start self-publishing books. Likely, they will be through KDP or Amazon.com. 

So, an intro, and as time goes by, I will be adding and arranging things on the site. Thanks for reading, and please stop by for more.

Pauline Evanosky