Last week during our podcast about the strange things parents do, a lot of the people listening mentioned growing up very religious as Jehovah Witnesses or Pentecostals or Baptists. My husband grew up this way off and on, too.
But me?
Not so much.
My family wasn’t very religious
My mom caught her Methodist minister cheating at bowling. He refused to admit it. She never went back. She expected her spiritual guides to not be cheaters.
My little hobbit dad came from a family of very staunch agnostics and atheists.
My bonus dad came from a family of Catholics but he firmly believed that we were already in hell, right now, here on Earth. He also firmly believed that you might as well make the best of it.
But me?
I wanted a church so badly that I went out trying to find one myself. Imagine a six-year-old going to Calvary Baptist Pioneer Girls every Friday night. Imagine that same kid begging people to take her to temple in Manchester, to CCD classes at the little Catholic church sort of by the highway, to Sunday school at the white Presbyterian church on the hill that dominated the town with its austere beauty.
In college I stopped two priests walking across the quad between the giant trees and asked if they could help me be Catholic and they said, “Oh, no, child. Our religion is not for you.”
And I thought, “I have been rejected by priests. Priests! I thought they let anyone in!”
My longing for religion meant that I even applied to seminary and was accepted. I didn’t have the money to go and we ended up here on coastal Maine.
Before that, when I was pregnant, I was a church secretary for a very liberal Unitarian Universalist church that I think took me in just because I was pregnant and needed a job. I rarely had anything to do. My baby girl ended up being baby Jesus at their Christmas pageant that year.
Even though they were so kind, I never found my place. A place where I would fit in.
When I was little, church communities seemed absolutely magical to me like they were communities of good. Rabbis, ministers, priests would stand up and speak of fellowship and of good, of grace and faith and doing what is just and merciful, of pilgrimage, of service. People hugged and shook hands and the kids did crafts. How could I not want to be a part of that?
Plus, a lot of time there were cookies and sugary drinks in Dixie cups.
Mostly I just wanted someone to help me find my way and to belong somewhere because I never really belonged in my sweet family.
I didn’t get that sense of fitting with the group. I was always the outsider, looking in, being welcomed, but not belonging, not part of the group.
That’s okay.
Religious Undertones or Overtones?
One of my books about to be released is a contemporary paranormal slight romance called SAINT and it has a lot of religious undertones going on.
When I started publishing, all I ever heard was that your book can be violent but it can’t be religious. So, I’m breaking that rule a bit because the lead character, Nick Cole, is very much someone who was raised in the Catholic church.
And though it has religious bits, there is some swearing and there is definitely a boy lusting for his bestie.
So, that book won’t fit in either, won’t belong, but that’s okay because it might make a connection with a random person. And that’s all I can ask for really. Well, that and dependable health care.
Touching People You’ve Never Seen
The amazing French artist, Christian Liberte Boltanksi died last week. In 2017 he told the New York Times, “I hope that when I shall be dead, somebody that I don’t know in Australia is going to be sad for two minutes. It would be something marvelous because it means you’ve touched people you’ve never seen, and that is something incredible.”
What a goal to have—to touch people you’ve never seen. And that’s a bit what both writing and religion is about. Touching people’s hearts and souls. Can there be anything better than that?
Yes, it would be nice to win awards again.
Yes, it would be awesome to have a solid income.
But somehow making people remember you or your art or your heart or even your tweet? What a magical, beautiful thing.
Looking for Formulas and Perfection
A lot of writers that I teach look for magical outlines or formulas to get their books to fit into the expectations of readers and publishers and stress out about hitting those bench marks (the inciting incident at 10 % in, the midpoint at the actual midpoint) rather than enjoying the process of growing and exploring organically.
Their story, they think, has to be perfect and that perfection? It’s determined by an outside source—a reader, an agent, an editor, a mentor.
And I want to hug them all just like I want to hug past Carrie who was aching so badly to fit in, to find a spiritual community, a home, a family.
Here’s the thing: your story is yours.
And that can be the story of how you find good or spirituality or religion or how you find your story. There is no one path to completion. There is no one way to perfection. There is no one way to be perfect.
But how wonderful would it be if you could sit back and know that somehow, somewhere along the way, your story, your journey, your words, your spirit touched someone.
I bet it has. I bet it will.
BE A PART OF OUR MISSION!
Hey! We’re all about inspiring each other to be weird, to be ourselves and to be brave and we’re starting to collect stories about each other’s bravery. Those brave moments can be HUGE or small, but we want you to share them with us so we can share them with the world. You can be anonymous if you aren’t brave enough to use your name. It’s totally chill.
Want to be part of the team? Send us a quick (or long) email and we’ll read it here and on our YouTube channel.
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?
I posted this back in June and I’m vaguely burnt out this week, plus I think it’s good advice, so I’m reposting it. Spoiler: I’m not vaguely burnt out. I’m pretty dragging.
It needs emotion.
Emotional tug and resonance. That’s a big key about what makes a story awesome, but there are a couple more important ingredients that you need to make your story shine bright like a diamond. Thanks Rihanna.
Your character has to have emotions and emotional reactions so that your reader has emotional reactions to what’s going on.
It needs conflict.
There needs to be a want and obstacles to the want.
It needs to be fresh.
When I wrote Tips on Having a Gay (Ex) Boyfriend, I was trying to understand a hate crime that I’d heard about, but I also was trying to write not from the point-of-view of the evil bully or the gay man. I decided to write from the point of view of the ex-girlfriend. It was a different angle. And it was picked up off the slush pile out of thousands of novels and published because it was fresh. And it won a IPPY award because of the same reason.
It needs to be believable.
It may end up being a story about a boy wizard, but it needs to start somewhere real, like ‘What if there were magical people and one of them was evil and killed the parents of a boy. But what if he didn’t die because his mother’s love was the greatest, strongest magic of all? And what if he survived to fight that wizard, eventually?” The what-ifs are a writer’s best weapon. But the premise needs to be based in something we all understand (or want to), which in that case was love.
Do Good Wednesday
So, since I have a tendency to come on people in stress and duress and since it’s my stepdad’s death-i-versary and he died of a heart attack, here is my do good Wednesday idea.
Take a CPR class.
It’s important. It helps. It can buy people time until an ambulance arrives or a defibrillator is there.
This link takes you to CPR classes run by the Red Cross, but there are so many places you can take them.
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?
HEAR MY BOOK BABY (AND MORE) ON PATREON
On February first, I launched my Patreon site where I’m 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. Come hang out with me! Get cool things!
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.
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!
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
What does it mean to find story? And what are the key elements to success as a writer and Rotarian?
This is the speech I give to Rotarians when they ask me for an inspiring speech versus straight-up public image training.
I’m sharing it here because:
I think more than Rotarians should hear it.
I don’t know how often I’ll get to give it.
It’s important to me.
Since 2007, I’ve traditionally published about 15 books, including an anti-bullying anthology, an internationally and NYT bestselling series, and medal-winners. I’ve learned a few things about story since then and I’ve learned a lot of things about people. One of the things I’ve learned is that:
Rotary and Writing Kids Books Have a Lot in Common.
Why?
Because we are both telling stories and we are both using those stories to make a better world, to build connection and community.
So how did I get published? How does anyone get published? That’s a big question people always ask. I quit my job as the editor of the Ellsworth Weekly, went to VCFA to get a master’s degree, a year later submitted my first book to an editor I knew nothing about other than he seemed super cool, and got lucky.
But it’s about more than that.
It’s about content, craft and contacts
Content is what you want to say
Craft is how well you say it
Contacts are the final step of getting it out there in the world. And everyone is hyper focused on that step, but it’s the least important one. What matters is Character, Plot, Theme, Process, Beginnings, Middles and Ends.
And that’s pretty much it. Have something to say. Work on saying it well. Send it out into the world. Cross your fingers.
But writing is truly bigger than that, and deeper than that and it reminds me a lot of Rotary.
The purpose of writing is to tell a story for motivation and engagement. It’s your purpose as a Rotarian
You look into this world, the one we are living in now,
Beyond our walls, beyond our borders
Within our walls, within our borders
And you know that the incredible exists
Incredible hate
Incredible love.
Incredible need.
And we sit here, the creations of this world of love, this world of pain and hate, of guns and bombs, of poets and artists and Rotarians
And our hearts scream for goodness
And our brains long for logic
And ours and others bodies break and mend and break again.
We are the creation of the world of stories around us, a world of the incredible.
And our children are too.
And This leads to more questions and wonderings about both the people we work with and About ourselves
What does it mean to find story when you are the one who is oppressed?
What does it mean to find story when you are the one who is barely surviving in your own life?
When your mother cries to sleep every night because she can’t find a job, pay bills, fix the furnace.
What does it mean to find a story full of magic when you are dying for magic in your own life?
When your body doesn’t work the way other kids’ bodies work? When your body gets used in ways it is not supposed to be used?
When people make fun of your clothes, your sex, your gender, the way you say your s’s, the shade of your skin, the curl in your hair, your last name, your first name, the way you see letters backwards, the way you see or don’t see at all, the way you learn, the way you love?
What does it mean when there are these stories out there – these magical truths – these enchanted people and places when you are just barely managing to survive?
It means there are tiny life lines.
It means there are little pieces of help.
That’s what Rotary’s story is and that is what children’s books are about.
Story is powerful. We’ve know that for forever.
Books are burned and banned because people fear them.
Books are powerful because they are (as Ben Howard sings) information wrapped up in empathy, they are reflections of our world as it is, how it was and how it should be.
And people fear that.
The world of fantasy is a world within books and without and the evil creatures that kids meet in these books?
The only difference for some of them?
The only difference is one is on the page and one is in their house.
The only difference is one is in a book and one is in their street, their church, their classroom, their playground.
Monsters and heroes are everywhere. Fantasy novels just make those monsters and heroes bigger, the stakes seem higher when you are fighting a dark wizard or the god of war.
Books and Rotary offers hope. They show us that there are other ways of living. There are lives and worlds greater than our own and if these lives can imagined, what does it mean about our own lives? It means we can reimagine our lives, too.
My father was the truck driving son of a communist stock broker.
As a toddler, my father stood on the streets of Staten Island passing out political pamphlets that he couldn’t read. People spat on him for views he could not even read. They threw his pamphlets in puddles, in horse excrement in his face.
He never made it past fourth grade.
He was the smartest man I ever knew.
He could read people’s souls, understand their stories, their sorrows and explain to you about quantum mechanics.
But he thought he was dumb.
All his life.
Because he couldn’t read.
Sometimes, I get so sad because I think of all the things he could have become if he could read a bit better.
Knowledge Empowers Us to Want to Help
That knowledge only makes me want to work harder for all the kids I write for. I want them to have the ability and story that my dad didn’t get to enjoy
And that knowledge, I know, does the same to you.
The thing about Rotarians and writers is that we can’t be “contained.”
We have to sing out our stories, sing out our advocacy, give voice to the powerless, because our hearts… our hearts won’t let us be quiet.
We are the people who protect the enchanted, until they can protect themselves.
We are the ones who say – You are the girl in the story who will one day save this world. We say – you are the boy who will rid us of the monster beneath the bed.
It’s our responsibility. We must lift as we climb. We must lift as we teach. We must lift as we write and as we live and as we flip pancakes.
It doesn’t always happen that way
I was in the 7th grade, when a teacher told me,
“Carrie, you will never become anything with those s’s. Nobody will ever take you seriously because of those s’s. Nobody will ever hire. Nor love a girl who sounds like you.”
He made me afraid of my own voice.
He took away my heart. He took away my story.
A writer’s job is to build worlds for children that reflect possibility and magic. We are to make the best worlds we possibly can, piece by piece, word by word, symbol by symbol.
We are to put our souls in them. So that the kids can grab on and soar. If the boy wizard can survive. So can I. If the girl can stop time. So can I.
So can I.
Kids need to know that there is darkness around them, that this world is incredible, but that they are enchanted. That they can overcome what they need to overcome. That they can not only survive, but that they can light up the world with their magic.
So can I.
So can they.
So can you.
Stories create potential outcomes.
We have to expand worlds, not shrink them. We have to include and empower. We have to open our mind and our hearts as writers and teachers so that there are possibilities and hope.
Let me tell you why I am a writer. I write because I want to make connections. I write to try to understand the world and help kids or adults understand it too.
The Marathon
I went to the Boston Marathon to cheer on my friend Lori who was running to raise money to fight cancer the year of the bomb. I walked and set up for taking pictures. I didn’t expect to see Lori for an hour, so I hung out with some people from New Jersey, talked to some cops. I took some pictures and kept wondering if I should walk the rest of the route to get ready for when Lori crossed the finish line. Logically, I knew I should, but my gut kept me back. One of my friends called, and as we talked the first explosion went off.
“What was that?” he said.
“That was bad,” I answered. “It was an explosion. It was absolutely an explosion.”
Then the second explosion happened. And I hung up. And I looked at the cops. And the cops both lifted up their portable radios to their ears. That was not a good sign. Then they began to run towards the finish line along a parallel road. That was a worse sign, especially since one of the cops looked like he never ran. Ever.
I followed them. It smelled of smoke. It smelled of fear and confusion. Cops and medics and volunteers swarmed the area. Blood pooled on clothing and the ground. Debris was everywhere. People were crying and hysterical. The police turned me around.
So, I turned around. I regret that now. I don’t know how I could have helped. I am not a trained emergency medical technician. I regret that, too.
So, I went back to where I had been taking pictures. Runners were wandering around still, confused, cold. They had a combination of runner’s fatigue and shock. Shivering and stunned, they were desperately trying to contact family members. Some walked in circles because they didn’t know how not to keep moving, but they also didn’t know where to go. They had spent 25 miles moving forward, towards this one destination called the finish line and now they were stuck, aimless. Their ultimate goal was suddenly gone, devastated by two bombs. Those of us who were there to watch, gave them our cell phones so they could call family members who were waiting for them. They were waiting for them right by the bombs. We gave the runners money so they could get on the T when it worked again. We gave them our coats.
“How will I give it back to you?” one runner asked as she shrugged on a dark green fleece.
“You don’t need to. You never need to,” a man next to me told her.
“I have to,” she murmured. “I have to.”
I gave away my coat. I passed around my phone.
One woman said, “Please tell me it wasn’t the subway. My kids are on the subway.”
“It wasn’t the subway,” I tell her. “It was the finish line.”
She cocked her head. “What? No? How?”
That was the question: How? We knew by then that it was probably a bomb, and the hows of making a bomb are easy, but the ‘how could you” is a harder question.
“How?” she kept saying. “How?”
And then the police moved the runners out, they told us, the watchers, to go. So, we left, a massive exodus towards the bridge and Massachusetts Avenue. People were still sobbing. A man on a corner was reading from Boston.com on his iPhone trying to find out exactly what happened. People stood around him, strangers listening to him say the words, “explosions… injuries…”
Three girls were crying, young and scared and broken inside.
“They are so hurt. They hurt them. They are so hurt,” one girl kept repeating. We kept walking.
As I walked across the bridge, a woman on the phone sobbed to her friend, “It was so big. The explosion was so big. I dropped everything in my hands. I dropped my lens cap. I dropped my purse. I dropped it all. I called my sister. I called my friend. I called everyone. I just need to talk to someone. I feel so alone. It was awful. People were missing their legs. It was awful.”
And then she saw me, this talking woman, and I nodded at her and I grabbed her hand and squeezed it. She squeezed back. We kept walking.
A leather-jacket guy next to me was telling another guy in plaid that he had no way home. I gave him my cell. We kept walking.
As I was feeling thankful, a man in front of me went down on his knees on the sidewalk. It looked like he was praying, but he was really sobbing. We all stopped walking. People pat his back. People murmured things. He stood up and we kept walking again. We walked and walked and gradually the crowd thinned, and gradually the sobs lessened.
Life is about connections.
As writers, we know that we have to connect with our readers. We have to make them care about the characters’ stories.
And Rotary was built on that need for connection and the need to do good together.
But the question is, how do we make those connections, those positive connections? Talking about Polio isn’t going to work for everyone.
We make connections by embracing and protecting the enchanted. We do it by taking chances, by caring, by looking into the eyes of our readers or the people we’re giving wheelchairs to and seeing that spark, that magic, that hope that is there despite this world of the incredible.
We do it by giving ourselves to other Rotarians, readers, people we’re helping, over and over again and expecting nothing in return.
But we always get something in return – We get connections.
It’s because of those connections and hope that I’m a Rotarian and why I am a writer. It is the only reason that I don’t quit either of those things.
Content is what you want to say. What does Rotary want to say? What do the clubs want to say?
Craft is how well you say it. How do we help them to say these things? In Toronto, it’s about billboards. In small town Maine? Not so much. It’s about local people and friends inspiring others locally and doing good.
Contacts are the final step of getting it out there in the world and here we can improve too. But not via email streams and unmotivating newsletters. Not if we want millennials. Not if we want young professionals.
Our job is to tell the stories, make the stories, protect the Enchanted and realize that the Enchanted our sometimes ourselves.
We can’t give up. Why? Because the world needs good stories when all it hears is bad.
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!
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?
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 hereor anywhere.
WRITING COACH
I offer solo writing coach services. For more about my individual coaching, click here.
I am super psyched to be teaching the six-month long Write. Submit. Support. class at the Writing Barn
THERE ARE ONLY TWO SPOTS LEFT AND SIGN-UP ENDS JANUARY 18TH.
So 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.
Yesterday on our podcast, Dogs are Smarter Than People, we talked about emotional pulls of stories and premises.
That’s a big key about what makes a story awesome, but there are a couple more important ingredients that you need to make your story shine bright like a diamond. Thanks Rhiannon.
It needs conflict.
There needs to be a want and obstacles to the want.
It needs to be fresh.
When I wrote Tips on Having a Gay (Ex) Boyfriend, I was trying to understand a hate crime that I’d heard about, but I also was trying to write not from the point-of-view of the evil bully or the gay man. I decided to write from the point of view of the ex-girlfriend. It was a different angle. And it was picked up off the slush pile out of thousands of novels and published because it was fresh. And it won a IPPY award because of the same reason.
It needs emotion– See that podcast
It needs to be believable.
It may end up being a story about a boy wizard, but it needs to start somewhere real, like ‘What if there were magical people and one of them was evil and killed the parents of a boy. But what if he didn’t die because his mother’s love was the greatest, strongest magic of all? And what if he survived to fight that wizard, eventually?” The what-ifs are a writer’s best weapon. But the premise needs to be based in something we all understand (or want to), which in that case was love.
Do Good Wednesday
So, since I have a tendency to come on people in stress and duress and since it’s my stepdad’s death-i-versary and he died of a heart attack, here is my do good Wednesday idea.
Take a CPR class.
It’s important. It helps. It can buy people time until an ambulance arrives or a defibrillator is there.
This link takes you to CPR classes run by the Red Cross, but there are so many places you can take them.
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. How cool is that?
You should totally buy Carrie’s book about Moe. It’s awesome and quirky and fun.
Gabby’s happy space is bed.
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.
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
No. Really. He called me that because I’m always thinking up the worst case scenario for every situation and planning 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 a ‘what if’ coupled with a ‘worst case scenario’ into your story idea and you have really high stakes.
In the podcast, we talk about William Shatner in a hot tub, pauses, and all the stuff you’re reading right now – but better.
But let’s talk about inserting WORST CASE SCENARIOS INTO STORY.
Like when Carrie wrote the Needseries, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
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 Needseries, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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I know people lie all the time. I know these people get powerful, get fame, get money, get whatever… I know that their lies are there to shelter them, protect them, because they are afraid that their past mistakes or inadequacies will make people love them. Or just because they are ashamed of what they’ve done and who they are.
I know that we all do it.
That we all lie.
Sometimes.
I’m not talking about the white lies where you tell someone their butt looks good when it doesn’t.
I’m talking about the lies we create to try to dig ourselves out of humiliating experiences. You know what I mean right? When you mess up on your job. When you mess up in your book. When you mess up in your relationship.
Those kinds of lies.
Lying makes you sick. It makes your heart sick. It makes your body sick. I don’t want you to be sick.
I knew a man who was in an insufferable marriage. Before you judge, just know it was bad. He had an affair and then he had eczema, terrible eczema. He finally divorced his wife and the eczema was gone. Yes, correlation doesn’t always equal causation. I get that. But I also get that lying messes us up.
According to an article in the Atlantic, people lie about 11 times every week. It’s no wonder we as a society have forgotten what truth is, right? We lie an average of 572 times a year. And sometimes, telling the truth is seen as the act of the unsophisticated.
Yeah. I am not cool with that. I’m not cool with lying to get ahead or lying to get out of trouble or lying so that your public persona seems better than it is. Because I know that lying hurts your insides. I want your insides to feel good, darn it.
In Gunderman’s story for the Atlantic, he writes:
Researchers at the University of Notre Dame followed 110 people over a period of ten weeks. Half of the participants were asked to stop lying over this period of time, and the other half were not. Both groups took weekly polygraph tests to determine how many times they had lied in the previous week. Those who were able to reduce by three the number of lies they told had four fewer mental health complaints (such as feeling tense) and three fewer physical health complaints (such as headaches) than those who did not.
So how do you not lie?
Sign an ethics agreement with yourself.
Avoid conflicts of interest
Realize that if you lose your job, or mess up big-time, people can and still love you. They’ll relate to you because it’s happened to them, too. And if they can’t? If your act of imperfection is unforgivable to them, then move on honestly. It will be better for you in the long run.
For some people writing down the Ten Commandments or similar articles of behavior is a reminder to be honest and helps prevent dishonesty.
The perception is that all writers are liars. We construct these fictional worlds that aren’t truth. Therefore we must be lying, right? We must be suffering from the same health effects that liars-in-real-life do.
Yeah. No.
Writers create entire worlds. Yes. We fabricate details. Yes. We make people up. Yes.
But we aren’t experts in lying. We’re experts in truth.
“Wait… What…?” you’re probably saying.
But here’s the thing. Writers create worlds. But we create worlds out of truths. We put in key details. We focus on being believable. But what we’re doing is using art to tell the truths of our own stories, of the world’s stories, which is the truth of people’s stories and existence.
The best writers are the best truth tellers because their story matters to them. The depth of what they’re writing about (grief, racism, oppression, love, justice) is the truth that needs to come out of their soul. That’s the opposite of lying.
So, go write. If you’re writing your inner truth? That’s only going to lift you up.
Do Good Wednesday
Make a pact with yourself to tell the truth as much as you can. It’s that simple.
WRITING NEWS
Yep, it’s the part of the blog where I talk about my books and projects because I am a writer for a living, which means I need people to review and buy my books or at least spread the word about them.
I’m super good at public image and marketing for nonprofits but I have a much harder time with marketing myself.
So, please buy one of my books. 🙂 The links about them are all up there in the header on top of the page on my website carriejonesbooks.blog. There are young adult series, middle grade fantasy series, stand-alones for young adults and even picture book biographies.
Time Stoppers
Flying
Moe Berg
Write! Submit! Support! Begins Again in July!
It’s not easy to create a thriving writing career in the children’s industry, but what if you didn’t have to do it alone? Write. Submit. Support is a six-month program designed by author and Writing Barn Founder Bethany Hegedus. Classes are led by top creatives in the children’s industry field; they’ll give you the tips and tools you need to take both your manuscripts and your developing career to the next level. Think of it as an MFA in craft with a certificate in discovering (or recovering) your writer joy! – Writing Barn
Carrie is all strengths. Seriously. She’s compassionate, funny, zesty, zany, insightful, honest, nurturing, sharp, and…Wow, that’s a lot of adjectives. But really, I couldn’t praise Carrie enough as a mentor. I’ve long respected her writing, but being talented at something doesn’t automatically mean you will be a great mentor. Carrie just happens to be one of those rare cases of extreme talent and excellent coaching. Aside from the specific feedback she offers, she also writes letters in response to the process letter and analyses. These letters have been so impactful for me as I writer that I plan to print them and hang them up. Creepy? Maybe. But they are so inspiring. And that, in the most long-winded way possible, is how I would summarize Carrie as a mentor—inspiring.
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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 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
Dog Tip for Life
Inspiration is just attention. Notice what’s around you. Then ideas will come.
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
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