Do not sign up with a local internet provider who will allegedly embezzle funds from his employees’ 401k accounts and then disconnect the service, the server and the phone lines and then everyone (including your editors and agent and mother) will try to send you an email and they will get a message that you don’t exist.
No. Sorry. That’s not it.
Although that is good important advice I wish someone had told me before it happened.
Below is my real advice and it’s not about computer fraud or even strictly about the craft of writing. Instead, it’s about the mind state of being a writer.
Yes, the mind state.
Yes, that sounds hokey.
MY ADVICE:
The thing is that sometimes writing is easy.
The thing is that sometimes writing is not… easy.
These are the days of writers. People blog. They text. They NaNoWriMo. You are one of those people. You know that it’s hard.
I know that it is not easy for me to be one of those people, a writer in the days of writers, and especially in these times of economic turmoil where people are getting laid off or fired and entire publishing houses are restructuring, trying to stay alive.
Let me tell you something about writers in these days of writers.
Sometimes when we look at a page we see the world.
Sometimes when we look at a page we see hope. Sometimes when we look at a page we see nothing at all.
But here’s the big secret….
Writers matter. Stories matter. You matter.
It all matters despite the economy, or maybe even more so because of it.
It all matters despite the fact that the whole world can write and blog and text, or maybe even more so because of it.
So we lurch.
So we bother.
So we search our mirrors and our lives.
So we search in hearts and in actions and we make stories.
No matter what: We make stories.
So go on. Read and study, think and play, feel the truths that form solid hard in the gut and in the throat. Write your stories, blogs, texts, and poems and don’t worry if it’s Proust or gobbley gook or even if it will get published.
Worry will keep you from creating. And we all worry too much about too many things. Writing and the joy of creation should not be one of those things.
That’s my secret advice: Just write.
You owe it to the world and the world owes it to you.
LET’S HANG OUT!
HEY! DO YOU WANT TO SPEND MORE TIME TOGETHER?
MAYBE TAKE A COURSE, CHILL ON SOCIAL MEDIA, BUY ART OR A BOOK, OR LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST?
Email us at carriejonesbooks@gmail.com
HELP US AND DO AN AWESOME GOOD DEED
Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness on the DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE podcast and our new LOVING THE STRANGE podcast.
We’re sorry we laugh so much… sort of.
Please share it and subscribe if you can. Please rate and like us if you are feeling kind, because it matters somehow. There’s a new episode every Tuesday!
Thanks so much for being one of the 263,000 downloads if you’ve given us a listen!
One of our newest LOVING THE STRANGE podcasts is about the strange and adorably weird things people say?
And one of our newest DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE episode is about fear setting and how being swallowed by a whale is bad ass.
And Carrie has new books out! Yay!
You can order now! It’s an adult mystery/thriller that takes place in Bar Harbor, Maine. Read an excerpt here!

It’s my book! It came out June 1! Boo-yah! Another one comes out July 1.
And that one is called THOSE WHO SURVIVED, which is the first book in the the DUDE GOODFEATHER series. I hope you’ll read it, like it, and buy it!
