Brad Pitt in a Skirt and Mixing Things Up in Your Relationships To Make Them Last

Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation
Brad Pitt in a Skirt and Mixing Things Up in Your Relationships To Make Them Last
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One of the key components of happiness and living a good life is having a good close relationship with someone else and for a lot of us, our closest relationship is with our spouse.

Cough.

Shaun and Carrie are spouses.

Is this the key to our happiness? It’s a good question.

Eli Finkel, a professor of psychology of Northwestern University, wrote a book “The All-Or-Nothing Marriage” and he also wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times where he spoke about how much we expect of our spouses. Those expectations can make things better or um . . . worse.

“At the heart of the American ideal of marriage lurks a potential conflict. We expect our spouse to make us feel loved and valued, while also expecting him or her to help us discover and actualize our best self — to spur us to become, as Tom Cruise’s titular character in “Jerry Maguire” puts it, “the me I’d always wanted to be.”

“The problem is that what helps us achieve one of these goals is often incompatible with what helps us achieve the other. To make us feel loved and valued, our spouse must convey appreciation for the person we currently are. To help us grow, he or she must emphasize the discrepancy between that person and the person we can ideally become, typically by casting a sober, critical eye on our faults.”

Cough.

This seems like a pretty good out in any argument. “It wasn’t that I was criticizing you for not installing the bidet I bought you for our anniversary for six months honey when I said you were a procrastinator, it was that I was trying to help you be the person you can ideally become.”

Cough.

But relationships and marriages and happiness take effort.

ROBERT WALDINGER is a psychiatrist and scholar who has done a lot of research into happiness and marriage. In a HarvardX class, Arthur Brooks interviewed him, touching on this theory that closest relationships are vital to our happiness and that you have to take care of them and mix things up, and Robert said,

“First of all, do everything you can not to take the relationship for granted. Even good relationships become kind of ho hum. We go through the same routines with each other. And if we’re raising kids, if we’re holding down jobs, if we’re doing all the things we have to do in life, your partner becomes your tag teammate. And we can forget to pay attention to each other. And by livening up the relationship, by doing new stuff, going out on a date night, just taking a walk when you don’t usually take walks together, any of the things to loosen things up, loosen the routines up, liven them up, allow yourself to be curious and interested in your partner again can go a long way.”

So a good way to help your relationship survive is to mix things up a bit, right? And another thing that he said is something that makes me feel better about us because Shaun and I are really different, right? And we tend to argue a bit.

Cough. About bidets and other things. Cough.

Waldinger said,


“What we found was that arguments are inevitable. So conflict is going to happen in every relationship. And actually, that turns out not to be the predictor of which relationships are going to last. The predictor in our study seems to be whether there’s a bedrock of affection between two people, even if they argue. And that if there’s that bedrock of affection and respect, that that predicts stability in the relationship. So the advice I might give would be to pay attention to cultivating that affection and respect. And that may mean like reminding yourselves of what it was like when you two first got together, going through old photos, doing romantic things again, logging in those kind of good times and engineering those good times.

Because they’re not things that will happen all by themselves.

They do need to be engineered.”

Problems happen. You should expect them to happen. And part of a good marriage or a good friendship, Waldinger says is to be there for each other, to support each other in all kinds of ways—emotionally, materially, etc. And to not be fake, but be who you really are.

Finkel writes,

“As the psychologists Nickola Overall and James McNulty have shown, spouses who use oppositional, even aggressive methods to inspire each other’s pursuit of goals can increase their partners’ effort and success in the long run, but such methods cause distress in the short run.”

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Take walks different ways. Turn right instead of left. Sniff a tree instead of a bush. And tell your owner you love them.

LINKS

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 “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.

WE HAVE EXTRA CONTENT ALL ABOUT LIVING HAPPY OVER HERE! It’s pretty awesome.

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!

Don’t Be Too Busy To Help

On Thursday, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog.

He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990s or Captain Pontification. And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂

best podcast ever
The Shaun

Every morning, with very few exceptions, for the last month or so, I have been going to the residence of another couple. These two nice people are friends of Carrie and myself and unfortunately, the husband has ALS. I go to their house after I take young kid to school so that I can lift him out of bed and put him in his wheelchair.

It is a sobering experience.

They have been married for fifty years and obviously care for each other greatly. The wife tries to do everything she can to help her husband, but even though he is a man of smaller stature, she still can not really move him, other than one limb at a time. Luckily, the husband still has some use of his upper body so once he is sitting upright in his motorized wheelchair, he is fairly self-sufficient.

What I often think about while I am there helping him get out of bed and into his wheelchair is how screwed I am if I have to live with a debilitating disease for any length of time before I die.

Honestly, it is not even me that will be screwed, but my poor, lovely wife. You see, I am 6’6” tall and weigh about 260 pounds on a good day. Carrie? Well, she is a little sprite of a woman who can’t even budge me when we play fight.

Should anything like this ever occur to me, I can’t begin to imagine how much it will break her heart not to be able to care for me as she wants. Carrie has a heart of pure gold and lives to help those she loves. Frequently, she gets a bit mad at me when I decline her help with something that I think I have under control. She is, of course, kind in her anger, but it still registers with me and I often remind myself to just let her help me so that she can feel happy and feel fulfilled.

She is the most amazing woman ever! This wasn’t meant to be a tribute to the awesomeness of my amazing wife (although probably everything that I do should be) but more of a plea for help. Please, please, if I am ever incapable of taking care of myself, help this incredible woman out.

Truth be told, you should help anyone you know that needs help. Spread some love and kindness around for free. Expect nothing in return, don’t seek attention or gratitude for your efforts and hope that the gods of karma send it back your way when you need it. That is the very best we can do.

Peace and remember to always Love Your Way Through It,

Shaun


My little, creepy book baby is out in the world because who doesn’t want sad, quirky, horror with some romantic bits for the holiday season?

It’s a young adult novel (upper) called WHEN YOU BRING THEM BACK, please buy it!

It’s super fun.

Make Love Spicy

On Thursday, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog.

He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990s.

So, happy Thursday!

Carrie and I do a live podcast on Friday nights at 7:00 p.m. eastern time and we have been having loads of fun doing it! We love hot, as in spicy, foods and sauces so we have done a hot wings challenge for one episode and we are going to do another one with a different line-up of hot sauces this Friday. The podcast is called Loving The Strange and we would love to entertain you this Friday night if you have nothing better to do in this time of COVID boredom.

We actually purchased a brand new sauce for this Friday night’s festivities and we both just gave it a try.

First, let me tell you that it is called “Da’Bomb, The Final Answer.” Second, let me tell that, IT ROCKS!

Rated at a supposed 1,500,000 Scoville units, it will light you up and keep doing so for a good ten minutes. Neither of us are hot sauce wimps and we thoroughly enjoyed trying a little bit of our new product a few minutes ago.

When I say a “little bit,” I mean just that. The bottle literally comes with a dabber attached to the cap and you need just one drop to get the amazing effects of this potent sauce. However, this blog is not an advertisement for the previously stated product, although I would recommend it to anyone who likes heat, it is more of an advertisement for our podcast and having fun in life.

The true point of this entire diatribe is that sometimes people need a bit of a pick-me-up in the form of excitement. Now, not everyone likes heat in the extreme and that is exactly why there are thousands of different hot sauces manufactured for you to purchase. Even if you hate heat you should try the advice that I am about to give, just buy something more mild.

If you are in a funk and need to be distracted by a pleasant pain that you can share with someone whom you care about, try a little hot sauce. I know that you are thinking right now, “What is wrong with this idiot?”

Seriously though, what does it mean to be in a relationship with someone special? Does it not mean sharing experiences and the emotions that go with those experiences? My point!

Eat some hot sauce that is outside of your comfort zone and share that experience with your partner in life.

This little “trip” will allow you to embody so many emotions! You may do any and/or all of the following; cry, laugh, swear, roll around on the floor, drink milk straight from the jug or curse my very existence.

The point is that whatever you were doing before you embarked on this journey will be forgotten and you will have just shared something unique with your special someone. It may hurt, but in the end, you will have a smile on your face.

As a matter of fact, I am now making the following recommendation to all budding couples – try the hot sauce challenge approach to gauging how compatible you are. If, in the end, you don’t both end up laughing and enjoying your mutual pain then they are probably not the right one for you.

But, regardless, remember to Love Your Way Through It!

Spicy vibes and keep your hands away from your eyes,

Shaun

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!

best thrillers The People Who Kill
The people who kill

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!

The Dude Goodfeather Series - YA mystery by NYT bestseller Carrie Jones
The Dude Goodfeather Series – YA mystery by NYT bestseller Carrie Jones

TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.

Marriage is Gross and Just Say Yes!

Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation
Marriage is Gross and Just Say Yes!
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Carrie has talked about this in her blog before, but we decided that it’s time to talk about it in the podcast thanks to an inspiring presentation writer Sami Main made for the Writing Barn last week.

It’s about one of the basic tenents of improv comedy and how you can use that for your writing and/or your life.

Do both! Overachieve.

Anyway, it’s amazing how Patricia Ryan Madson’s Improv Maxims, apply to writing and life and love and all that sexy stuff.

Her first maxim in Improv Wisdom (New York: Belltower, 2005) is basically, “Say Yes.”

In improv, when two characters are doing a scene, both characters have to be positive, to say yes to each other’s suggestions.

If one guy stands up there and says, “Let’s go party.” And then the other guy says, “No way.” Well… the scene falls on its face and everyone goes home saying they hate improv and the improvers think they suck and everything is just BAD, BAD, BAD.

So, writing is like that too.

When our characters want to take us to new unexpected places in the plot, we just have to go with it. If we don’t, our story stagnates.

We have to be willing to say “yes,” to take risks with our characters and our plots and our language.

According to Madson, “Saying ‘yes’ is an act of courage and optimism; it allows you to share control. It is a way to make your partner happy. Yes expands your world.”

I could go on about this forever. Like, how we get in ruts. Such as, my characters always have a love interest. And it’s always a boy. How cool would it be if the love interest were a cat? Or a hamster? Or a fig tree?

Okay. I know. Banned book.

Or, how we get into habits with our writing just like we get into habits with our lives. How cool would it be to break a writing habit and make a better writing habit? To get out of the safety of routine, change our process and expand? To just say yes?

Writing Tip of the Pod

Say yes to new ideas. Don’t be in a writing rut or hold to your preconceived notions of what your story or writing life should beDog

DOG Tip for Life

Try new things. Eat food off the floor. Go for it, humans!

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.


COME WRITE WITH ME! 

I coach, have a class, and edit things. Find out more here. 


WHERE TO FIND OUR PODCAST, DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE.

The podcast link if you don’t see it above. Plus, it’s everywhere like Apple Music, iTunesStitcherSpotify, and more. Just google, “DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE” then like and subscribe.

Join the 251,000 people who have downloaded episodes and marveled at our raw weirdness. You can subscribe pretty much anywhere.


Last week’s episode about poop, dentists, surgery, flavored alcohol and Jung. 

This week’s episode about generalizations and what men want. 

Last week’s bonus podcast with Jessica Burkhart! 

A link to our podcast about fatal errors, scenes, and ghost reaper sauce

WE’VE BEEN MARRIED TOO LONG AND POOP TEXTS

We’ve Been Married Too Long and Poop Texts

Sometimes you get married and you’ve been married for a long time and you remember that the beginning of your marriage is like a poem and there’s white space and new discovery in every line. 

Sometimes you’ve been married a long time and it’s a routine, a science experiment that can be replicated. There can be beautiful comfort in a rut or a routine. 

Some people want life to be poems. 

Or not.

Some people want life to be expirments. 

Or not.

Some people like patterns to their lives and their books, but some people don’t.  

As writers and people, we have to decide if we want to be science experiments, or do we want poem moments again. Listen to the podcast to hear Shaun talk about poop texts, poop talks, Hallmark-quality texts and makes up brilliant poems and admits to excessive emoji use. Also, we haven’t really been married too long. 🙂

WRITING TIP OF THE POD

Random things in your childhood come up in your poems and stories. It’s okay to not realize this until your siblings tell you.Also, poop is funny.  

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Dogs smell their poop. They are proud of it until they kick grass on top of it. Dogs are not afraid of the poopy side of life. Embrace your dark side, but then know that the things you poop away should stay away.  

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.


WRITING NEWS

IN THE WOODS – READ AN EXCERPT, PREORDER NOW!

My next book, IN THE WOODS, appears in July 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 preorder 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?

In the Woods
In the Woods


ART NEWS

You can buy limited-edition prints and learn more about my art here on my site.

Carrie Jones Art for Sale

PATREON OF AWESOME

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).

Check it out here.

WHAT IS PATREON? 

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. 


Weird Things About Us

One of us is a cat person.

It was a moment of truth, people. A moment of truth.

Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation
Weird Things About Us
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This week we’re pretty low-key chill with an off-format podcast about the weird things about us

Basically, we answer some of our listener’s questions.

We forgot the hardest one, which is:

How does Carrie get everything done?

That one took too much time, so we’ll share it next week.

We love you all and thank you so much for your awesome questions.

Dogs are Smarter Than People podcast
Why do you choose to live this way, humans?

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.


WRITING AND OTHER NEWS

IN THE WOODS – READ AN EXCERPT, PREORDER NOW!

My next book, IN THE WOODS, appears in July 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 preorder 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?

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is b5314ed645a47991655395d180f52f5c.jpg

HEAR MY BOOK BABY (AND MORE) ON PATREON

On February first, I’m going to launch my Patreon site where I’ll be reading chapters (in order) of a never-published teen fantasy novel, releasing deleted scenes and art from some of my more popular books. And so much more.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is The-Last-Gods-3.jpg

WHAT IS PATREON? 

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. 

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Superheroes-7-1.jpg


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 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!


BE A PART OF THE PODCAST!

Hey! If you download the Anchor application, you can call into the podcast, record a question, or just say ‘hi,’ and we’ll answer. You can be heard on our podcast! Sa-sweet!

No question is too wild. But just like Shaun does, try not to swear, okay?

Here is the link to the mobile app.

ART.

I do art stuff. You can find it and buy a print here. 

Bar Harbor Art Carrie Jones Welcome to Magic
Bar Harbor Art Carrie Jones Welcome to Magic

TIME STOPPERS!

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.

Time Stoppers Carrie Jones Middle grade fantasy

FLYING AND ENHANCED

Men in Black meet Buffy the Vampire Slayer? You know it. You can buy them here or anywhere. It’s fun, accessible science fiction.

31702754 copy

Is That Even A Joke? It’s All About the Subtext

Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation
Is That Even A Joke? It's All About the Subtext







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So, um, a lot of the time during the podcast Shaun will say something that makes Carrie have these huge pauses because she’s reading the subtext underneath what he’s saying.

Honesty moment: Shaun’s subtext is usually naughty, which is totally okay because they are married, but Carrie has these brain hiccups when that happens because:

  1. She is from New England and grew up where people pretended intercourse didn’t happen and people made babies by sitting on unclean toilet seats.
  2. She is a children’s book writer, but not the cool cutting-edge kind that writes about intercourse and she’s worried about her branding. Just kidding! Sort of…

Anyway, Alicia Rasley said that in writing: “Subtext is like a gift to the astute reader—an additional layer of meaning implied by the text but not accessible without a bit of thinking. … Experienced readers aren’t confined to the text—what’s printed on the page—they interact with the text, fully participating with the writer in the making of meaning in the story.”

Sort of how Carrie interacts with Shaun during the podcast.

Writing Tip of the Cast: Not everything has to be super obvious. Trust your readers. Remember your book, like a podcast, is a conversation, not just a monologue.

Dog Tip for Life: Don’t be afraid of the subtext. Notice people’s nuance, the meaning under what they’re saying.

SHOUT-OUT

The music in this podcast is “Check Them In” by Ema Grace and her site is here. We’re able to use this amazing music, thanks to Ema’s kindness and the Creative Commons.

Writing News

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.

You should totally buy Carrie’s book about Moe. It’s awesome and quirky and fun. She’s heading to Houston, North Carolina, and Virgnia soon, just to talk about it. How cool is that?

My Post copy 6

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.

Writing Coach

Carrie offers solo writing coach services, but she’s also teaching a Write! Submit! Support! (WSS) six-month class online via the Writing Barn in Austin. For details about that class, check out this link. For more about Carrie’s individual coaching, click here.

WSS-Testimonial-Mountains-1-300x300

And finally, for the month of July, Carrie’s book FLYING is on sale in ebook version on multiple platforms, which means not just Amazon. It’s a cheap way to have an awesome read in a book that’s basically Men in Black meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer but with chocolate-covered pretzels.

Screen Shot 2018-07-05 at 3.37.18 PM

Proof of the sale-nature of July.

 

Thanks so much for reading my blog! Please comment or say ‘hi!’ if you feel like it!

 

xo

Carrie and Shaun

Worst Case Scenario. Getting Story Ideas.

Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation
Worst Case Scenario. Getting Story Ideas.







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Shaun used to call Carrie, “WC,” because he is evil.

No. Really. He called her that because she was always thinking up the worst case scenario for every situation and planned for that, which is not a particularly healthy way to live.

But. . . it’s a pretty good way to write. The ‘what if’ element of any situation in real life can be expanded into a story. Throw in a ‘what if’ coupled with a ‘worst case scenario’ into your story idea and you have really high stakes.

Like when Carrie wrote the Need series, she thought, “What is the worst thing that can happen to this girl forced to move to Maine from Charleston? Oh. How about her biological father is a pixie king who is kidnapping people to feed off them because he can’t control his hunger and need. Ah. That’s not bad enough. How about we throw in an impending apocalypse and she has to turn pixie to stop it?”

Story ideas can come from anywhere. Your own life. The news. Random stories of friends. Country music videos. But the story ideas that are heart-stopping are the ones where there’s a worst case scenario involved. Take a situation in your life and think, “Whoah, what if those people were cannibals?” or “Whoah, what if that cat was a secret Russian agent?”

Those ‘what if’ stories are the stories that make high stakes and high action.

Don’t be afraid of the worst case scenarios.

Writing News Carrie's  super excited about the upcoming TIME STOPPERS book coming out this August. 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. CARRIE’S BOOKS For a complete round-up of Carrie’s 16-or-so books, check out her 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. Moe Berg 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. Writing Coach Carrie offers solo writing coach services, but she's also teaching a Write! Submit! Support! six-month class online via the Writing Barn in Austin. For details about that class, check out this link. For more about Carrie's individual coaching, click here.

Dog Tip for Life

Expecting horrible things to happen isn’t healthy. Enough said. Eat bacon instead.

No, seriously, Ask Yourself This:

What do I need to change in order to get what I want? What do I have to change to make myself a better person? A more successful person? A person I want to be?

Writing Tip of the Pod

Making horrible things happen in your story is TOTALLY happy. Enough said. Extra tip: Bacon is not good for you nor is it good for pigs.

The music in this podcast is “Check Them In” by Ema Grace and her site is here. We’re able to use this amazing music, thanks to Ema’s kindness and the Creative Commons.

Writing News

Carrie’s  super excited about the upcoming TIME STOPPERS book coming out this August.

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.

Timestoppers3_005

CARRIE’S BOOKS

For a complete round-up of Carrie’s 16-or-so books, check out her 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.

Moe Berg The Spy Who Played Baseball
Moe Berg

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.

Writing Coach

Carrie offers solo writing coach services, but she’s also teaching a Write! Submit! Support!six-month class online via the Writing Barn in Austin. For details about that class, check out this link. For more about Carrie’s individual coaching, click here.

Make Your Life and Your Writing Resonate

Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation
Make Your Life and Your Writing Resonate







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The best kind of work is the kind that makes you messy (even if you’re a Virgo) inside and out.

And for a lot of writers, especially writers for kids, our job isn’t just about making story; it’s about making a difference somehow in at least one kid’s life. That is a messy business because in order to make a difference, you have to dig deep, to go through a lot of dirt and mud and rock to get to what it is that matters to you and to your story and to your reader and/or life partners.

When Carrie goes to schools, she always tells the kids that one of the important steps to becoming the best writers you can be is to live the biggest life you can live. To not risk life or jail time, but to have adventures, to do things that you would never expect yourself doing.

Digging deep allows us to find out what it is we truly want out of our lives and stories.
Dirt is good sometimes

Your life is your story. Make it a big one.

Big stories have conflict, and none of us are really into conflict in our lives, but it’s the conflict that allows our stories to have meaning and resonance.

Big stories have awkward moments and worries. Our characters and our selves feel overwhelmed. We feel like we can’t make it sometimes. That’s part of what makes surviving such a sweet triumph.

Being a writer is about more than craft. It’s about the story of how to be a writer, your story. It’s part of the bigger story of your life.

Being a writer is about more than craft. It's about life and resonance and cohesion.
Writing is life.

Every lesson about writing craft is actually a lesson about life.

Talking about paying attention to detail in your scene? It’s the same as paying attention to the details in your real life.

Talking about traits of your character and how to make them heroes (or not)? It’s the same as talking about the traits that make you the you that you so beautifully are.

Talking about resolution to your story is the same as talking about resolution to your relationships, to your current conflict, to your own life and death.

I know, right? Mind blown.

In every story we write there needs to be some logic and there needs to be some spirit or resonance.

What makes the logic of the story?

That comes from plot, pacing, character, and theme. You start your story with a vision and then the other elements are honed and refined to express that vision.

The logic is the structure of the story, how it all works together. It’s how your plot isn’t just action, but a movement forward towards an end point – and how that movement forward makes sense and works together with the character, the theme, the pacing.

Events that happen must make the character react and act.

Creating resonance and cohesion in your life and your story. Tips on how to make life better.
Resonate

And resonance?  What’s Resonance?

It’s the story’s value. It’s the universal nature of the story. It’s what makes the reader’s heart and mind go, “A-ha!”

It’s what makes you remember the story. We’ve all met people, read books, watched movies or shows or heard songs and forgotten them, but the ones that resonate? Those are the ones we remember.

Think Hamilton.  Hamilton resonates across so many demographics partially because it’s the story about immigration and triumph and death, about idealism and it’s then set to something that feels more new in musical theater – the style of music, which is juxtaposed to the historical setting. It resonates.

Think about the Nas song War (Birth of a Nation). This song connects Nat Turner to the protests of today and about fighting to make a better U.S. It resonates.

It’s about theme and heart. It’s about authenticity and humanity. That’s what resonates.

So how do you make your story resonate?

Think about what your story is really about on the deepest level.

How do you make your life resonate?

Same thing. Think about what your life is really about on the deepest level.

Dog Tip for Life
Dog Tip for Life

Dog Tip for Life – Get dirty as much as you can. Dirt means you’re living. Dirt is real. Dirt is life.

Getting Messy makes you a better writer. carriejonesbooks.blog
dog tip for life

Writing Tip of the Pod – When you’re writing, don’t be afraid to have messy, uncomfortable things happen to your characters. A story with no conflict is not a story.

Writing Tip of the Podcast
Writing Tip of the Podcast

Random Bonus Picture from Random Thought Time

This is Bob. Or maybe Yuri? He is in our house. Shaun mentions him in the podcast. Bob/Yuri frightens me even though he has no arms.

Advice about adding resonance and cohesion to your story
Bob? Yuri? Scary?

Writing News – Carrie’s

The Class at the Writing Barn

The awesome 6-month-long Writing Barn classthat they’ve let me 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.

WSSTypeWriter-300x300

Praise for Carrie Jones andWrite. Submit. Support:

“Carrie has the fantastic gift as a mentor to give you honest feedback on what needs work in your manuscript without making you question your ability as a writer. She goes through the strengths and weaknesses of your submissions withttps://carriejonesbooks.blog/wp-admin/post.php?post=679&action=edit#edit_timestamph thought, care and encouragement.”

“Carrie’s feedback is specific, insightful and extremely helpful. She is truly invested in helping each of us move forward to make our manuscripts the best they can be.”

“Carrie just happens to be one of those rare cases of extreme talent and excellent coaching.”

People are saying super nice things about me, which is so kind of them because helping people on their writing journeys and their craft and supporting them? That’s pretty boss, honestly.

Writing tips and help from NYT bestselling author Carrie Jones
Muses painting

Flying and Enhanced – the Young Adult Science Fiction Series

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 actionSchool Library Journal

Sparty knows all about that. More info about that series and all of Carrie’s books is here.

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“I’m Getting a Bag. Right Now!” How we talk matters.

Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation
Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation
"I'm Getting a Bag. Right Now!" How we talk matters.







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In Episode Six of our podcast, we get a closer look at the differences in speech patterns and get to hear Shaun impersonate his grandmother and totally not understand the use of adjectives in dialogue tags. This sounds vaguely boring, but I promise. It’s probably our funniest cast yet.

Dog Tip For Life: 

We communicate with our bodies, not just our words. Communicating effectively gets you more treats.

https://carriejonesbooks.blog/dogs-are-smarter-than-people-the-podcast/
Rosie and Goldie are communicating that they want more treats!

Writer Tip of the Cast:

To improve your dialogue try to do the following four things. . .

https://carriejonesbooks.blog/dogs-are-smarter-than-people-the-podcast/

  1. Don’t make all your characters sound the same. Don’t expect all the people in your life to sound the same, either.
  2. Avoid -ly words in your dialogue tags. Let the dialogue be clear. Show how you feel with words and actions.
    1. Don’t say:
      1. “This sucks,” he said, sadly.
      2. “I’m so happy,” she said, gleefully.
  3. Don’t forget body language when writing dialogue or when you’re talking to others. Body language can tell us as much about intent as words and it can change intent like this:
    1. “I love you.” Shaun made an obscene gesture.
    2. “I love you.” Shaun’s fingers formed a giant heart.
    3. “I love you.” Shaun cupped the back of her head and brought her head towards him.
  4. Read your dialogue aloud. It helps to know if it rings true or all sounds the same or sounds stilted.

www.carriejonesbooks.com

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