AND we have a writing tips podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! It’s taking a bit of a hiatus, but there are a ton of tips over there.
We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.
Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That’s a lot!
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
We both peered into the sewer grate, me and a nice older man who was off a cruise ship. There near the edge, submerged in the water, was the padlock.
“It made a perfect arch when it fell off the cart,” I said.
“What’s the lock for?” he asked, his back a bit crooked, shoulders a bit slumped, face a little sweaty like he’d had a hard day exploring our little national park.
“We’re starting a new business. Down here.” I motioned at the cruise ship tender line, the series of small out buildings that people like me had staked a claim in for a rental fee, trying to make a business, to become something different or become something more.
“Let’s see if we can get the grate off,” he said, bending and grabbing the heavy metal bars. He tugged. “Nope.”
We tugged together. It didn’t move even an inch.
“That’s so nice of you to try,” I said. “We can buy another.”
“It flew off perfectly,” he said, laughing.
“I wish someone had videotaped it. It was a beautiful fall.”
He kept laughing. “It just went perfectly in.”
We stopped staring at each other’s laughing faces and back down at the lock in the murky water.
“It’s not a bad omen,” he said. “It’s a good one.”
“How is that?”
“Because you’re laughing. If you can laugh? You can get through anything.”
“Even failures?” I asked.
I think I might have made him pause for a second, maybe taken him aback, but then he smiled again, standing up really straight. “Failures especially.” He winked. “But you won’t fail.”
Shaun goes fishing
Shaun’s pretty amazing, honestly. Just like that cruise ship guy.
We have a lot of new things that I’m afraid of failing at and it would be awesome if you checked them out.
First there’s a new LIVING HAPPY blog where we talk about our journey toward happiness despite all the chaos that is our life. We delve into a bit of psychology, too. Also, all the writing tips are over there.
And I have a local news blog.
Finally, we have a super cool new true crime podcast, DUDE NO! I hope you’ll check it out. Our second episode comes out tomorrow. It’s always on Tuesdays.
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
Hi! This year (2023), I’m continuing my quest to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It’s all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I’m scared about still include:
My spoken voice
My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
Holes and Vettes
Bar Harbor. Maine. 2022. A baseball field.
Corvettes line up in rows, engines still
For once and owners preening
From their folding chairs, legs poking
Into the same grass that supports Life
Flight helicopters in emergencies
And soccer cleats. This earth withstands so much.
It’s a yearly gathering that’s paused two years
Thanks to global disease, but now the drivers
Are all maskless and showing off
Their cars to locals who wander
Between the lines, marveling.
“I will never be rich enough
To own one,” says a man
in a black t-shirt to a guy
with a firebird red model.
“I thought that too,”
The guy says. “Work hard.
You’ll get there.”
The first man moves to run
A finger across the car’s hood.
The owner flinches like it’s some kind of assault.
“Try hard,” he repeats. “You’ll get there."
We all try hard
To get there,
Inventing monologues
Of worth based on materialism,
Who owns what, how shiny
Our skins are, our hair, our cars,
Houses. We pretend like any of this
Fills up the holes we dig inside ourselves,
Inside the ozone, inside the earth.
Darkening faces,
Double visions. Horror.
The Vettes represent adventure
And freedom. Not being beholden
Despite the car loans required,
The interest rates. The American Debt.
“There are eight
Generations of car here,”
Says an organizer
With a yellow sunhat
Perched on her head.
“This is the car of dreams.”
American Dreams.
And that’s the thing.
Have you ever hit your head
On a poem or a wall
Or something else hard
And realized that your dreams
Aren’t actually yours?
Have you ever felt like you’re falling
Though you are standing still on a field
Surrounded by excess and shiny paint
Jobs and pride, merciless, assaulting,
And begged for stable ground
Before realizing you’re just making holes, too.
Maybe the holes are in a ball field,
Or in the Earth or the ozone
Or maybe—just maybe—in your own damn heart.
“The term “burnout” was coined in the 1970s by the American psychologist Herbert Freudenberger. He used it to describe the consequences of severe stress and high ideals in “helping” professions. Doctors and nurses, for example, who sacrifice themselves for others, would often end up being “burned out” – exhausted, listless, and unable to cope. Nowadays, the term is not only used for these helping professions, or for the dark side of self-sacrifice. It can affect anyone, from stressed-out career-driven people and celebrities to overworked employees and homemakers.”
That NIH article also has some nice rundown of symptoms:
“Exhaustion: People affected feel drained and emotionally exhausted, unable to cope, tired and down, and don’t have enough energy. Physical symptoms include things like pain and gastrointestinal (stomach or bowel) problems.
“Alienation from (work-related) activities: People who have burnout find their jobs increasingly stressful and frustrating. They may start being cynical about their working conditions and their colleagues. At the same time, they may increasingly distance themselves emotionally, and start feeling numb about their work.
“Reduced performance: Burnout mainly affects everyday tasks at work, at home or when caring for family members. People with burnout are very negative about their tasks, find it hard to concentrate, are listless and lack creativity.”
It’s a lot like depression, right? But it’s not the same. Typically, people with burnout don’t’ feel hopeless, suicidal or have low self-esteem.
So, now that we’ve got that out of the way, how do you get some down time when you’re working so hard that you’re either burnt out or in great danger of getting there?
GETTING A GRIP AND GRATIFY YOURSELF
First you want to look at the patterns of us overachievers who tend to burn out. We often were the ‘good kids’ in school who learned that in order to get praise (and not get in trouble) you had to get all your assignments done and on time. We’re all about the goals and completing those goals.
Chilling out? Resting? That doesn’t feel goal-oriented.
We think that we can delay our gratification and keep delaying it and keep delaying it so that we can get all our goals done. Delayed gratification, we all learn in our beginner psychology classes, means we will have better success in our life. They test children about this. It’s a thing. But when we’re super focused on achieving, we burn out because that delayed gratification equates to us not realizing that we are breaking down physically and mentally.
BE CHILL AND LET GO OF THAT DAMN GUILT
And it’s not just that. We want to get a lot done and to do it well. If our work isn’t awesome, we feel like we aren’t awesome. Resting, we foolishly think, keeps us from getting all our awesome things done. It keeps us from writing, running three miles, finishing the project for work, making the perfect lunch for our kids.
It’s worse than that though. We feel guilty. If we rest, we feel guilty.
We should be working, doing, creating. We should be better than this. We don’t need naps.
TAKE A NAP, DAMN IT
Here’s a secret: Alexander the Great took naps. He still got to be called ‘great.’ Ben Franklin? Took naps.
So, the first step is to realize that.
People who have changed history actually rested. That means you can, too. If you don’t, your performance starts to get kind of crappy. You don’t want that, do you, super goal-oriented one? No, of course not.
Then you have to remember that everything doesn’t have to be a goal and everything doesn’t have to be your job and responsibility.
Make a to-do list, sure. But in that make a top priority list and focus on those.
And remember, it’s okay to not be amazing all the time, to not be reliable all the time, to not do everything for everyone all the time. It’s so hard especially when you’re struggling to survive, but you have to remember it’s okay to suck sometimes. We all do. And it’s okay to nap.
DOG TIP FOR LIFE
Take naps! Only get off the couch for food. No, not really. But do take a nap if you need one.
AND we have a writing tips podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! It’s taking a bit of a hiatus, but there are a ton of tips over there.
We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.
Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That’s a lot!
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
Hi, welcome to Write Better Now, a podcast of quick, weekly writing tips meant to help you become a better writer. We’re your hosts with NYT bestselling author Carrie Jones and copyeditor extraordinaire Shaun Farrar. Thank you for joining us.
Sometimes us writers become a little stylistic. We get addictions. We might fall in love with the ellipses or certain words. Or, we might forget things like what a comma splice is or—gasp—what a sentence is.
Yes, I said it.
Sometimes writers forget what it is to make an awesome sentence. So we’re here to quickly tell you.
LET ME SET THE MOOD.
A good sentence brings the reader into the story and grounds them or gives them information or makes them feel. It doesn’t confuse them. It shows emotion and makes the reader feel sometimes. It creates an image for your reader to imagine via detail.
YOU COMPLETE ME.
A good sentence is complete. What does that mean? It means it isn’t a fragment, but it has a subject and a verb in it and that subject and verb combine to make a thought. In grammarian fancy language we call that complete thought an indepenendent clause.
It’s independent because it can stand all by itself like a mighty sentence. It’s not broken with its leg in a cast and has to have crutches and lean onto other thoughts.
A good sentence doesn’t need other sentences to complete it like an annoying character in a rom-com.
So a sentence fragment is an addictive little poop and it is broken or fragmented because it doesn’t have a subject (what the sentence is about), a verb (what the subject of the sentence is doing) or a complete thought.
Here is an example of a fragment that isn’t a complete thought:
Although Big Foot sits.
Wait. What? We don’t know what happens although Big Foot is sitting, right?
Here is a sentence:
Although Big Foots sits on top of the garbage disposal, nobody can get a good photo of him.
Here is an example of a fragment with no verb
Smelly Big Foot, sexy Big Foot.
Here’s an example of a fragment with no noun
Running through the YMCA like he was human and not 8 feet tall and naked.
Fragments can be fun to throw in your story once in a while for impact, but too many and you just stop making sense.
IT MAKES SENSE.
We are not all James Joyce. We do not need to replicate Ulysses, his novel of massive sentences that are all contortionists. A good sentence makes sense and doesn’t make our readers’ brains hitch up.
For exclusive paid content, check out my substack, LIVING HAPPY and WRITE BETTER NOW. It’s basically like a blog, but better. There’s a free option too without the bonus content but all the other tips and submission opportunties and exercises are there.
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
It’s Writing Tip Time and we’re going to give you three fast and dirty writing tips today that’s going to make your writing more intense. Ready?
Think about your tense
What’s that mean? It means don’t be writing like things are happening now and then shift over to writing like things were happening in the past. If you want the most immediate writing experience, write in the present tense.
Here’s a quick example:
I lost feeling on my entire left side of my body during our long run on Friday. I thought I might be having a stroke.
That’s in the past tense, right? We read this, notice it’s in the first person and figure that the narrator has survived because she’s telling us about this after-the-fact.
Try it out in the present tense:
I lose feeling on my entire left side of my body during our long run. I think I might be having a stroke.
It’s more intense, right?
Let’s make it more intense.
Take out the distancing words.
In first person especially, it’s really hard to get away from a lot of looking and knowing and words that pull us out of the moment and the immediacy of the character’s experience.
Distancing language tends to be the words like ‘seem,’ and ‘look,’ and ‘heard,’ and ‘know.’ When I revise, I think of these words as placeholders for where I can go back and dig in more deeply in certain places.
So, let’s take that sentence again and make it more immediate.
I lose feeling on my entire left side of my body during our long run. I think I might be having a stroke.
Change that up and it looks like:
My entire left side of my body starts going numb during our long run. My left foot numbs first. Then my left hand and arm. When the left side of my mouth starts going numb, I gasp. I might be having a stroke.
You’re in there a bit more with that character now right. Is she having a stroke? What the heck is she running for? SHE IS BROKEN!
Try not to use the same word too many times too closely together.
In the example above I deliberately use the word ‘numb’ and ‘my left’ over and over again. I’m cool with the repetition of ‘my left,’ but not so much with the numb. There are better, cooler words to mix in there and grab the reader’s attention. Let’s try.
My entire left side of my body starts going numb during our long run. My left foot disappears first. Then my left hand and arm. When the left side of my mouth starts to tingle, I gasp. I might be having a stroke.
There you go!
We’ve learned three fast tips to making your writing more intense.
Writing Tip of the Pod:
Be in the present (tense). Don’t be distant. Mix up your words, man.
For exclusive paid content, check out my substack, LIVING HAPPY and WRITE BETTER NOW. It’s basically like a blog, but better. There’s a free option too without the bonus content but all the other tips and submission opportunties and exercises are there.
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
Hi! This year (2023), I’m continuing my quest to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It’s all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I’m scared about still include:
My spoken voice
My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
Recipe by CarrieCourse: AppetizersCuisine: AmericanDifficulty: Easy
Servings
8
servings
Prep time
15
minutes
Cooking time
20
minutes
Calories, but who is counting, really?
113
kcal
Total time
35
minutes
Stuff That Goes In It
THE OLIVES OF AWESOME ROASTED HAPPINESS
2 cups of different kinds of olives, pit those bad boys
⅓ cup of the olive oil that not just a virgin, but an extra virgin, wonder what the hell that means.
6 cloves garlic, smashed up (not on booze, this isn’t drunk garlic; it’s smooshed)
1 shallot, quartered
1 lemon, quartered
2 sprigs fresh thyme and 2 sprigs fresh oregano, hanging out together the way thyme and oregano do
Chili flakes to make it spicy
Feta that is all Honey Whipped
8 ounces of feta cheese
3 ounces of room-temperature cream cheese
3 tablespoons of honey
black pepper
How to Make It
This is the sexy part. Find your oven. Turn it on. Do whatever it takes to heat that baby up to 450° F. I
Feel accomplished. Now search through the tupperware for an OVEN SAFE baking dish.
Put your all those olive ingredients (including the olives and chili flakes to taste) together so they can party like it’s 1999 and Prince is coming over.
Bake for somewhere between 20 and 20 minutes in the oven. Do not use cannabis! YOU are not getting baked. The OLIVES are getting baked.
But on your best BDSM gear and whip the feta. How do you do this? Not with whips, actually! I know! I know! Bummer. Just put all the whipped feta ingredients into a food processor . Pretend you’re at a nightclub and pulse it. Pulse it again and again and again. Throw your hands in the air. And do it until that mix is all smooth and creamy.
Find a spoon. Use it to put the feta in a bowl. Now top it with the baked olive mixture. Feel sexy while you eat it because you are, damn it. No matter what that boy said at your sixth-grade dance at the Catholic Church in Bedford, New Hampshire, you are.
Notes
This amazingly sexy recipe is adapted (and made goofy) from the WONDERFUL recipe site that I adore with all my heart, Half Baked Harvest. You can see the real recipe there, but I mean, you can still cook with this one. But you should go give them some love. You won’t regret it.
Tomorrow there’s a big storm coming to the coast of Maine (allegedly), but if we have power and internet, we’ll be here talking about the random, strange, stupid things people call emergency services about.
Have you done this?
Dispatcher friends, if you want to share anonymous stories, feel free to message. We know you have some.
