So, a long time ago Carrie had a dog named Scotty, and she used to fill in at the police department as a dispatcher. For those of you who don’t know, she dispatched part-time because even though she made enough money writing (right then) she got worried that:
Carrie’s Worries
1. I will suddenly make no money at all
2. I need to build up social security benefits
3. I will forget how to interact with other humans if I’m always at home.
ONE DAY HER GOOD DOGS WENT BAD
So, she worked from 3:30 to 11:30 pm and when she came home Tala and Scotty, her dogs, greeted her at the door, all doggy happy.
Scotty was her new dog and he was a rescue dog from Alabama who was in a kill shelter, and for a long time we have thought that he was perhaps a grandpa who liked crawfish and Bud Lite a lot and was somehow caught in a dog’s body – like he was a shapeshifter who got stuck. He had a puncture wound in his neck when he got to Maine, two small holes. So, a vampire with a shapeshifting virus was possibly to blame.
Carrie had decided this was a true possibility. Already, she’d witnessed him:
1. Get ice out of the refrigerator. 2. Use his paw on a door handle to open a door.
And then when Carrie came home late, she saw a drawer that had been COMPLETELY shut when she left the house, and it was now open. Food was strewn everywhere. This meant Scotty grabbed the drawer with his mouth and got it open at least a little bit and then he either wedged his nose in or something and opened it more.
Why would he do that? Oh, he was probably sick of dog food and bored because she was gone. Which is doggy behaviour, we know,
Side note: Dog saliva combined with powdered sugar on a wood floor creates a glue-like paste that is impossible to vacuum or mop up. It must be attacked with Clorox bleach wipes. Carrie swears. She did not know this until that night.
And finally, though they ate peanut butter chips and brown sugar and confectioner’s sugar and Crisco shortening and Shepard’s pie mix and Italian seasoning mix, they did NOT eat chocolate!
Chocolate KILLS dogs.
And the dogs left it, only tearing open the end.
Carrie sort of imagined Scotty holding Tala back and saying, “Baby. It smells good, but it’s poison. It will kill us. Lets go lick up the sugar.”
He’s totally human
You know it, baby. Now go get me a beer while I lick the sugar off this here rug.
Writing Tip OF THE POD
What does all this have to do with writing? It’s like what we were talking about in our Random Thought in the Car (you have to listen to hear that and about Carrie’s accident). All stories aren’t good ones. All people aren’t perfect. The best writing is when those little imperfections about character or people peek through.
And use everything for your stories. Mine your lives and your dogs’ lives, too.
Dog Tip For Life
Dude. Do not eat the chocolate. Have some self control.
SHOUT OUT
The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song? It’s “Night Owl” by Broke For Free.
It’s with Steve Wedel. It’s scary and one of Publisher’s Weekly’s Buzz Books for Summer 2019. There’s an excerpt of it there and everything! But even cooler (for me) they’ve deemed it buzz worthy! Buzz worthy seems like an awesome thing to be deemed!
You can order this bad boy, which might make it have a sequel. The sequel would be amazing. Believe me, I know. It features caves and monsters and love. Because doesn’t every story?
You can get exclusive content, early podcasts, videos, art and listen (or read) never-to-be-officially published writings of Carrie on her Patreon. Levels go from $1 to $100 (That one includes writing coaching and editing for you wealthy peeps).
A lot of you might be new to Patreon and not get how it works. That’s totally cool. New things can be scary, but there’s a cool primer HERE that explains how it works. The short of it is this: You give Patreon your paypal or credit card # and they charge you whatever you level you choose at the end of each month. That money supports me sharing my writing and art and podcasts and weirdness with you.
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
Sometimes it feels almost impossible to feel like you are enough, that all your work and all your love matters to the people you want it to matter to. Sometimes it feels like no matter how hard you love or try or work, you can’t get it right, make a difference.
Here’s the thing: You can’t save the world.
Sometimes you can’t save even one person. But if you try and you love and you listen, you are doing your absolute best and your absolute best is a gift to those people; and it’s a gift to yourself.
That doesn’t mean you will always be awesome and perfect, understanding and full of empathy because nobody can always be that perfect.
But trying? Loving others. Listening. Being.
It is important.
Yet, it’s so hard to believe.
I was recently talking to someone brilliant, 24 years old, beautiful, good, and that person thought that they had already wasted their life.
There are a million metrics and achievements this person has already notched off – things that I can’t even imagine achieving. That didn’t matter. It wasn’t enough.
They called themself a loser. Their life, they claimed, was a waste.
But from my viewpoint as someone who is not that person? All I can think about when I think about them is wow.
Just wow.
What an incredible human.
If I can believe that about them why is it so hard for them to realize how cool, amazing and wonderful they are? Why is it so hard for so many of us to believe it about ourselves?
Half the women I know have created themselves and their dreams and expectations in the likeness of a rom-com, which is explained so well in this column by Heather Havrilesky in Vulture. She wrote:
But your concept of yourself makes no sense. You got it from a rom-com. Age 35 is not an expiration date on your beauty or your worth. It doesn’t matter if every single human alive believes this. It’s your job to cast this notion out forever. I’m 48 years old and I’m determined not to tell a story about myself that started in some beauty-product boardroom, among unimaginative corporate marketing professionals. I fail at this quest often, but I’m still determined.
But then there are a bunch of us who don’t or didn’t care about rom-com images. Some of us have massive savior complexes. Some of us want glory. Some of us want to be remembered forever. Some of us have modeled our lives off Marvel movies and Captain America or Ancient Macedonian kings. We’re not much better off.
From fourth through eighth grade my true life ambition was to take a bullet meant for Bono of U2. I would dive on stage, heroically be killed, die in his arms painlessly somehow. And all of Ireland would be so overcome by my sacrifice that they would instantly broker peace. The entire world would do the same.
Saviour complex, much?
I was a weird kid, obviously, raised on too much Doctor Who and Star Trek. But I wasn’t about romance or babies. I wasn’t into getting married. I didn’t want to be defined by my husband or my marriage or my kids. I wanted to define me. I know! I know! The horror.
But we don’t have to be saviors either. There is so much pressure to be something that our culture, our society, our books and movies and television show, Instagram photos and YouTube videos want us to be.
But what makes us feel truly like we have a purpose, that we aren’t a waste of space and resources, that we matter? For a lot of us, connections, doing good, friendships. For some of us that still isn’t enough? We are on an endless quest for more, to be better, to do better, to make the most of our time on this earth. Or we are on an endless quest to meet the expectations that society has placed upon us.
We have to find a way to discover who we are and what we want.
Havrilensky wrote:
I’m going to choose to embrace narratives that make me feel more alive and able to contribute whatever twisted crafts I can to this world, while I can.
I’ve been posting a piece of art or a video on my Facebook every Friday because it is what scares me. There’s this weird vulnerability in those forms of communication that make me feel especially vulnerable, but I want to be a better artist. I want to be unafraid about who I am. Those scary Friday posts are part of me going for that instead of just hiding my paintings in the basement.
I grew up poor but in a pretty intellectual household. There were assigned roles. I was the quirky weird one wearing Snoopy shoes. My brother was the ambitious gorgeous one. My sister was the good one. I was the one who read books, who was nerdy and self-righteous. I heard narratives about who I should be all my childhood. I bet you did, too.
Mine were:
You’re shy.
They thought you were blind when you were born. You still don’t notice things.
You are weird.
You are smart. You’re the smart one.
You aren’t an athlete. You have weak ankles.
You aren’t an artist. Nobody in this family is an artist.
But who I thought I was meant to be was also defined by what was said about my much older siblings but never said about me:
Your brother is so successful.
Look at his dimples. He’s so beautiful. People just stare and stare at him. What an athlete.
Your sister is so kind. Her heart is so big.
Your sister loves children. Your sister is so good.
Me in a U2 shirt, hiding my face because I’m the quirky one, not the good looking one.
Those narratives shape us. Combine them with comparing ourselves to television tropes and superheroes, rom-coms and Instagram perfection and it’s hard to be okay with who we are. Shakespeare said that comparisons are odious. There’s a reason for that. They make us feel shame. They make us feel jealous. They make us feel less. Or they make us think of others as less.
Here’s the thing: Nobody is less. I’m going to leave you with two solid paragraphs of Havrilensky because her article is brilliant and true.
What if you just decided that you’re an artist, today, right now? You’re sensitive and erratic, maybe. You’re maudlin and also expansive. What would it look like to own that identity, as a means of making art, sure, but also as a means of owning your FULL SELF? You wouldn’t feel as angry at other artists. You would recognize them as kindred spirits. You might notice how your shame matches theirs, and fuels all of you. You might feel proud of your small creations and you might start to see how every single thing you’ve done, every place you’ve been, every town you’ve lived in and left, every friend you’ve gotten to know and then forgotten, they all add up to a giant pile of treasure.
You are 95 years old, looking back at your 35-year-old self, and this is what you see: a young woman, so young, so disappointed, even though everything is about to get really good. She doesn’t see how much she’s accomplished, how much she’s learned, how many new joys await her. She doesn’t know how strong she is. She is blindfolded, sitting on a mountain of glittering gems. She is beautiful, but she feels ugly. She has a rich imagination and a colorful past, but she feels poor. She thinks she deserves to be berated because she has nothing. She has everything she needs.
What is it that you want to be? Who do you want to see? Be that person. Love that person.
Writing and Other News
OUR PODCAST – DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE.
Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness as we talk about random thoughts, writing advice and life tips. 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!
You can order my middle grade fantasy novel Time Stoppers Escape From the Badlands here or anywhere.
People call it a cross between Harry Potter and Percy Jackson but it’s set in Maine. It’s full of adventure, quirkiness and heart.
Moe Berg
The Spy Who Played Baseball is a picture book biography about Moe Berg. And… there’s a movie out now about Moe Berg, a major league baseball player who became a spy. How cool is that?
It’s awesome and quirky and fun.
FLYING AND ENHANCED
Men in Black meet Buffy the Vampire Slayer? You know it. You can buy them here or anywhere.
Flying
OUR PODCAST – DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE.
Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness as we talk about random thoughts, writing advice and life tips. 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!
Writing Coach
I offer solo writing coach services. For more about my individual coaching, click here.
Writing Barn
I am super psyched to be teaching the six-month long Write. Submit. Support. class at the Writing Barn!
Are you looking for a group to support you in your writing process and help set achievable goals? Are you looking for the feedback and connections that could potentially lead you to that book deal you’ve been working towards?
Our Write. Submit. Support. (WSS) six-month ONLINE course offers structure and support not only to your writing lives and the manuscripts at hand, but also to the roller coaster ride of submissions: whether that be submitting to agents or, if agented, weathering the submissions to editors.
Past Write. Submit. Support. students have gone on to receive representation from literary agents across the country. View one of our most recent success stories here.
We talk so much about the lack of civility in current culture, but there is also this great thirst to help, to care, to make a difference. And that matters. It matters.
This week I failed at something in a business way and …. Well, it shook me.
To be fair, I am pretty raw and frayed right this second and my resilience isn’t at its peak. But for whatever reason, it shook me a lot.
I cried.
I didn’t wallow, but wow. I really wanted to wallow.
Instead, I posted on Facebook and asked people what they do when they feel like they’ve failed, when they are shook, when they are sad. How do they work their way out of it?
Note: My post wasn’t asking about depression, but a lot of people answered as if it was and those answers? They helped other people reading the post. That’s a big deal. And I am thankful for it.
People are giving. People want to help
I love that people were so incredibly willing to share their strategies for when they feel pointless, when failure seems too large. And I’m going to have a series of posts where I share these strategies because that’s the cool thing.
We talk so much about the lack of civility in current culture, but there is also this great thirst to help, to care, to make a difference. And that matters. It matters.
People want to help other people feel better, get through it. Remembering that matters, especially when you feel like you’re being annoying by not being perfectly happy. Nobody is always perfectly happy.
My friends’ and readers’ advice was beautifully varied, which only made it better because you could see the similarities and trends and differences in people’s coping mechanisms.
Some of those coping mechanisms involved apps.
“I’ve been there too this week if it makes you feel any better. My tips are to be gentle with yourself. Maybe take a long walk. I’ve downloaded a meditation app to my phone called Mind Space, and that helps me. A hot shower, some comfy pajamas and a cozy book. I like Rosemund Pilcher because she’s sort of soothing.” – Shannon Hitchcock, author
And another app was really popular. It’s called Calm.
“I use the app called Calm. It’s amazing and helps me with my insomnia and my anxiety. It’s got music and stories that help me relax and not stress out as much. It’s so awesome.” – Lindsey Schultz, photographer
And there with other people who deliberately moved their brains’ focus via distractions that were sound-based (like an app, but not), which was super interesting to me.
“I’m prone to having that feel like a failure reaction you describe. I turn on the tv or something that shuts my brain down for a couple of hours. That helps and It sounds ridiculous but I’ve noticed listening to people laughing on tv helps even if I’m not paying attention.” – Trish Madell, author
This sort of distraction and laughter is actually a thing that is often used to help with anxiety and depression. Yes! Yes! I know the trite saying that “laughter is the medicine” but there is truth behind that.
Laughter releases endorphins. Endorphins battle stress and make our immune systems tougher. Laughter connects us with others and makes us feel less alone. Laughter uses your brain’s whole cortex.
And for us creative people, humor actually makes us more innovative, we’re more apt to improv and make leaps in our thinking. How cool is that?
Do something that makes you laugh. For whatever reason, I always laugh at America’s funniest home videos. This seems stupid, and it’s a little embarrassing to even admit, but no matter how shitty I’m feeling, if I watch enough of them, I’ll laugh and pull myself out of the heaviness of the feeling of failure. On the other hand, I’ve learned to grieve some of my failures. Losing a book contract, for me, felt like such a failure. I tried so hard not to grieve it–to push through–but sometimes we need to grieve the loss and acknowledge the sadness. I’ve even had a friend send me a sympathy card for a book loss because it’s a valid loss, something worth crying about. Not every failure is, but sometimes I think we are too quick to assume we don’t deserve to feel bad.- Jody Sparks, author
So, for my first post in this series, here are the tips that came from my brilliant friends and readers
Find a good app that makes you calm. Use it.
Find the funny. Watch tv. Listen to laugher.
But what both of these things do is that they create a feeling of control.
When you turn on that app and use it to feel better? You are making the choice to feel better.
When you decide to watch something funny to feel better? You are making the choice again. You feel like you are in control, which is so incredibly different than feeling like a failure, isn’t it?
Writing News
I am super excited about the upcoming TIME STOPPERS book coming out this August. And honestly, if you want to help me feel less stressed about failure and the writing world, leaving a review for the books and buying them? That is the best thing you can do for me.
Anyway…
This middle grade fantasy series happens in Acadia National Park in Bar Harbor, Maine and it’s all about friendship and magic and kids saving their magical town.
An imaginative blend of fantasy, whimsy, and suspense, with a charming cast of underdog characters . . . This new fantasy series will entice younger fans of Harry Potter and Percy Jackson.” – School Library Journal
“Sticks the landing . . . The world building is engaging . . . between the decidedly wonderful residents and the terrifying monsters who plague them.” – BCCB
“Amid the magic, spells, adventure, and weirdness of this fantasy are embedded not-so-subtle life lessons about kindness, friendship, and cooperation.” – Booklist
“A wild and fresh take on fantasy with an intriguing cast of characters. Dangerous and scary and fun all rolled into one. In the words of Eva the dwarf, I freaking loved it!” – Lisa McMann, New York Times bestselling author of The Unwanteds series
“Effervescent, funny, and genuine.” – Kirkus Reviews
It’s quirky. It’s awesome. It’s full of heart. You should go by the first two books now. 🙂
Time Stoppers
Time Stopper Series
Time Stoppers Front and Back Covers – US versions
CARRIE’S BOOKS
For a complete round-up of my 16-or-so books, check out my website. And if you like us, or our podcast, or just want to support a writer, please buy one of those books, or leave a review on a site like Amazon. Those reviews help. It’s all some weird marketing algorhthym from hell, basically.
OUR PODCAST DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE.
The podcast of awesome
Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness as we talk about random thoughts, writing advice and life tips.
Writers take ten years to get their first novel published, on average
The average children’s book writer makes 5k a year, if she’s lucky.
If you are a writer for a living, you will starve.
Some writers will sell you their books about how you can be a thriving artist versus a starving artist as if there is this dichotomy between the two, an either or situation.
Life isn’t that simple.
Here are the Three First Steps To Being A Writer, MADE AS SIMPLE AS POSSIBLE
You write the story you want to write.
You hone it and craft it until it’s the best story you can make it.
You send it to agents and editors or self publish it.
That’s it.
That’s how you become published.
You might make a ton of money. You might not. One book might make $500. One book might make $100,000.
It’s not the easiest thing to control, but what you can control is whether or not you’re lonely.
That you can battle.
You can create an in-person writing group or an online group, but if you are lonely in your writing life, YOU CAN ABSOLUTELY make friends, form a pack.
Writing Tip of the Pod
How do you form a writing group?
Here’s four easy steps:
Decide the goal of your writing group – Support? Accountability? Critique
Figure out when, where, and how often you want to meet.
Invite a few people. Three to five is a good starting number.
Find a way to communicate in between meetings that works for everyone. Facebook? Email? You get to decide.
Dog Tip for life
It’s okay to want a pack to roam with, to howl with.
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So, Carrie’s been thinking a lot about success lately and if you check out her blog you’ll see she’s had a heck of a last two weeks trying to define success and come to terms with it and all that.
But here’s the thing. Nobody wants to fail. You can talk about loving the process and that’s important, but striving for success is also important. For authors, getting a mindset for success can be… well, almost impossible.
Three Hot Tips For Success After Screwing Up
Look for Inspiration – Spend 10 minutes with things that inspire you. For some people that’s music, poetry, dogs, being outside, listening to an awesome podcast.
Don’t be Rigid – Understand that no matter how well you plan, life is chaos. If your plan has a glitch, a swerve? Don’t let that freak you out so much that you stop. Be flexible like you do yoga all the time or something.
When you Mess Up Learn From It – Dwelling in mistakes and failures keeps you in those places mentally. Stepping back and wondering, “What can I learn from this so next time I rock it?” That’s what makes a success mindset.
Dog kissing helps
Dog Tip for Life: When you meet people who suck, thank them in your head for teaching you whatever they taught you. Write down how you are a better dog because you learned something from them. Yes, that ‘something’ might be to stay away from men who smell like asparagus and like to kick, but it’s still a life lesson. You’ve learned it.
Look, Mom! It’s a podcast.
Writing Tip of the Pod: Mistakes happens. That’s okay. It’s how you recover from mistakes, from bad plots, crappy sales, rejections – that is what makes the difference. Question your story constantly. Ask other people who are honest to check it out.
We all make mistakes, but what makes some people a still a success is that after they realize that they’ve made a mistake that’s hurt other people or themselves or their organization, they acknowledge it, apologize for it, and try to do better.
That’s it. Three steps.
Acknowledge it.
Apologize for it.
Educate yourself and do better.
That’s important in relationships, too. Saying you’re sorry is a promise to try to not repeat the hurt you’ve caused and/or the mistake you made.
To find out more about my books, there are links in the header. And if you buy one? Thank you so much. Let me know if you want me to send you a bookplate.
PODCAST
The podcast DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE is still chugging along. Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness. We’re sorry we laugh so much… sort of. Please share it and subscribe if you can.
COOKING WITH A WRITER
Carrie has started a tongue-in-spoon subgroup in her blog all about cooking vegetarian recipes as a writer. It is silly. The recipes still work though. Check it out here.
There are white beans in this image. Try to pretend they aren’t there, okay?
THE CLASS AT THE WRITING BARN
The awesome six-month-long Writing Barn class that they’ve let Carrie be in charge of!? It’s happening again in July. Write! Submit! Support! is a pretty awesome class. It’s a bit like a mini MFA but way more supportive and way less money.
Look. A typewriter.
FLYING AND ENHANCED – THE YOUNG ADULT SCIENCE FICTION SERIES
These books are out there in the world thanks to Tor.
What books? Well, cross Buffy with Men in Black and you get… you get a friends-powered action adventure based in the real world, but with a science fiction twist. More about it is here. But these are fun, fast books that are about identity, being a hero, and saying to heck with being defined by other people’s expectations.
This quick, lighthearted romp is a perfect choice for readers who like their romance served with a side of alien butt-kicking action –School Library Journal
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Even the word sounds a little creepy. Like there is a storm inside your brain. It sounds… It sounds sort of violent and hazardous and windy. In this podcast, we talk about the storms inside our brain and how those storms can become story ideas.
Five Ways to Brainstorm Story Ideas
Five Ways To Get Story Ideas
Some authors have a really hard time just getting an idea for a new story. They burn out. They can’t find anything that they think is ‘good enough.’ They just don’t know where to start and that lack of a start makes them blocked.
This is so sad! There are ways to fight it.
ONE WAY TO STORM IS BY ADMIRING OTHER’S WORK
Think about ways that other people’s stories influence you. If you’re an Outlander fan, think about why. If you were to write your own kind of time travel story would it be like that? With a lot of spanking and stuff? Or something totally different. How would it be different?
ANOTHER WAY TO INCITE A HAILSTORM OF QUESTIONS
Ask your self questions. It’s all about ‘What if?’ What if Trump wasn’t president in 2018? What if everyone had blue hair? What if the earth had two moons? What if dogs were really space aliens?
Sparty the Dog: Wait. You mean they aren’t?
Carrie the Human: No, buddy… I mean… I don’t think so?
THIRD WAY WHERE THE WIND IS SO STRONG IT PUSHES IMAGES INTO YOU
Some of my best ideas have come on a treadmill watching the country music network or MTV or some random YouTube channel with the sound off and just seeing images. Eventually, an image will hit me so hard that I have to write a story about it. The happened with my story, Love (and Other Uses for Duct Tape).
FOURTH WAY OF ICY UNDERSTANDING
Figuring things out. This is sort of like Another Way, but instead of deliberately asking yourself off-the-wall questions, ask questions about things that matter to you. A lot of my stories are because I don’t understand something. Tips on Having a Gay (Ex) Boyfriend was because i couldn’t understand a hate crime that had happened. I mean, you can never understand that kind of hate, but this one incident was so bizarre that they only way I could deal with it was to write my way through it.
FIFTH WAY – AN EMOTIONAL BLIZZARD
Get emotional. What is it that always makes you laugh, cry with joy, weep with anger? What are the situations that pull at your heartstrings. Think about that as story. Write.
DOG TIP FOR LIFE
Inspiration is just attention. Notice what’s around you. Then ideas will come.
Dog Tip for Life
WRITING TIP OF THE POD
Once you have your seed of information and your brain has successfully stormed, don’t second guess your idea. Write it down. If you are a plot-first writer, think up the questions to flesh out your idea – who is the protagonist. What is she up against? What’s her goal? How is she going to get it? Write it down. Do it. Don’t block yourself.
Writing Tip of the Podcast
All the podcasts are linked to this page right here. You can find out more about us and the podcast there.
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This is Gabby, the dog, with an important message.
Fellow dogs, let’s face it, our humans are moving less and less. They stare at the square things that makes noise and takes photos. They snore louder than us. Our walk time is getting significantly low.
Gabby: This is me, acting like a human, flopped on a bed like a human, unable to move like a human.
This is terrifying. Not just for their bodies, but for ours. Yes, I’m looking at you, Sparty Dog. You’re starting to resemble a dark bratwurst.
Sparty: Bratwurst is delicious!
HUMANS AND SPARTY DOGS GET STUCK IN THEIR BAD HABITS
Look, I know how hard it is to motivate a human and teach her or him a new way of being. But the training is worth the hard work.
Here are five easy ways to break the human’s habits and get her/him moving around again.
MODEL GOOD BEHAVIOR
Yeah, that’s right. Run around the couch a few times yourself. Bark at the door. Bring your ball to the door and hit the door incessantly with your paw. Eventually, the human will move off the couch and even the writer-job human will step away from their laptop. This is especially true if you can act like you have to go to the bathroom.
MAKE MOVING FUN
Humans respond well to positive reinforcement and affection. When they move, wag your tail. When they stand up, bark encouragingly and smile. This support goes a long way. Play the “take away the remote” game. This is basically ‘fetch’ for humans. You take their shoe, remote, sock, car keys and run away with them. They must fetch them back. For your writing-job humans this is especially effective if you can get their entire laptop and/or power cord in your jowls and then run.
SCREEN TIME IS A SERIOUS PROBLEM SO STOP IT
I have known Chihuahuas to sit on phones and remotes for days in a heroic attempt to keep their human from watching endless loops of people gluing matches together or brides falling into swimming pools. This is brave and hard on your bottom. I hope it doesn’t come to that for you and your human. If all else fails, enlist the cat to take turns. Writers tend to forgive the cats more for sitting on things.
Marsie the Cat: They forgive us for our indiscretions because we are godlike rather than doglike.
But seriously, the more time the human watches other humans doing things, the less time your own human moves. Also, if a writer says she is writing, but her fingers aren’t moving on the keyboard? She’s lying.
WALK YOUR HUMAN
I know you hate them, all dogs do, but leashing up your human to you almost always means that you can get them off the couch for at least five minutes. Humans are much easier to control when they are tethered to you, so bring them a leash. My favorite is rainbow. Sparty is partial to the sailboat leash even though he hates water. Weirdest Lab mix ever – but that’s another story.
Sparty: You’re hurting my feelings, Gabby. Water is scary, okay?
According to the American Heart Association if you can get your human walking 30 minutes a day it helps your human’s heart. A lot. Human hearts are suffering lately, so we need to do everything we can to help.
MAKE THEM STAND
I know it’s hard to hide their cellphones, remotes, and laptops under your butt forever (unless you are Marsie), so when they do talk on it (instead of texting), try to get them to stand. Even that little motion and movement helps. So spill your dog food on the floor, drink your water pretty quickly. Do anything to motivate them to stand and move while they talk.
FINAL THOUGHTS
You can do this, dogs! Our humans need physical activity to keep their hearts healthy. Hearts keep them alive. We need them alive because they make bacon.
Gabby: Bacon is important to happiness.
Random Marketing and Book Things
My nonfiction picture book about Moe Berg, the pro ball player who became a spy, is still coming out March 1 and I’m super psyched about it. You can preorder it.
Kirkus Review says:Jones gives readers the sketchy details of Berg’s life and exploits in carefully selected anecdotes, employing accessible, straightforward syntax.
And also says: A captivating true story of a spy, secret hero, and baseball player too.
Booklist says it’s:An appealing picture-book biography. . . Written in concise sentences, the narrative moves along at a steady pace.
