“God, how we get our fingers in each other’s clay. That’s friendship, each playing the potter to see what shapes we can make of each other.”
― Ray Bradbury
This episode is about the stakeholders in your head and how they shape your success and also about drinking 40 shots with wrestling guru the Undertaker.
DOG TIP FOR LIFE!
Only listen to the good voices and don’t drink 40 shots.
Our Puppy Ate A Lot of Tampons, She Survived. She shouldn’t have listened to those voices.
AND we have a writing tips podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! It’s taking a bit of a hiatus, but there are a ton of tips over there.
We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.
Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That’s a lot!
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
We’re going to start the year off right by talking about porn.
What the what?
And this is your year to give up porn. And no. We aren’t talking about erotica. We’re talking about what self-help guru Tim Denning calls “addictive habits.” He uses the word porn to grab attention (it works if you’re here) and explain how these addictions are everywhere.
He then categorizes all the different types of porn we have.
There’s lifestyle porn – sitting on the toilet and whipping out your phone.
There’s money porn – always being on your phone or laptop so that you can earn that “100,000 in five months,” always reading the article or watching the podcast to figure out how to make that money super quickly.
There’s startup porn, which is basically being addicted to starting new businesses so you can get that money.
There’s revenge porn where you are a mean punk on social media, hurting people’s feelings in comments, subtweets, or messages.
There’s real porn. We don’t need to explain that, right?
There’s influencer porn where you are all about your brand and selfish instead of giving.
I think there are a lot more addictions than that. There’s the:
Diet Addiction
You think you’ll be happy if you just lose that 40 pounds but you keep hopping from one diet to another.
The Outside Photos Addiction
You think everyone wants to see your vista photos.
Television, Video, and Gaming Addictions
You spend all your time consuming other people’s content and escaping. Escaping is fantastic, but you don’t want to do it all the time.
Denning writes:
“The secret to kill all forms of porn is discipline.
“Discipline yourself to focus on what you know is good for you.
“You have a list of habits already that you probably follow — like exercise, reading, leisure time, meditation — and you can focus your time there and get far better returns than the endless porn-fuelled addictions of meaningless nonsense.
“Porn is an addictive distraction to doing the work you know you want to do. Getting started with your life’s work each day is hard, but so is continually distracting yourself with life porn.”
Instead, maybe think about what you want, who you want to be, what you want to do and think about how you can give up the porn that’s holding you back.
Stop trolling people.
Stop being mean to yourself.
Stop watching so much content (except us of course). Just kidding.
Stop making ideas and not actually pursuing those ideas.
Stop reading your phone when you go poop.
DOG TIP FOR LIFE!
You only have so much time in this world. Use it well. Use it the way you want to. Not the way your addictions want you to.
AND we have a writing tips podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! It’s taking a bit of a hiatus, but there are a ton of tips over there.
We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.
Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That’s a lot!
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
A lot of great clients and students that I’ve worked with have what I like to call Doomsday Thinking. I’m pretty sure I didn’t coin that phrase.
What is doomsday thinking?
It’s basically catastrophic thinking.
In Psychology Today, Toni Bernhard J.D. writes, “The term refers to our irrational and exaggerated thoughts: thoughts that have no basis in fact, but which we believe anyway.”
Those thoughts become so big and so distorted that we get anxious.
I am a pro at doomsday thinking
I basically had these kinds of thoughts until last year.
Those negative, spiraling thoughts can become so big, so huge, that it’s almost impossible to be happy about who we are, what we’ve done, what we will do, or our life.
We forget there can be good outcomes too.
Instead, we think about all the bad potentials and build them up like super stores, giving them so much space in our thoughts that they take over.
The why is it always me syndrome.
One of my most brilliant and adorable relatives does this all the time. She gets stuck on a highway coming home from work because of a traffic jam and thinks, “Why does this always happen to me? The universe hates me.”
When in reality, she’s not alone in that traffic jam, right? It’s almost self-absorbed to think that the frustrating things are out to get you and only you.
Or, we get rejected when we send our book to an agent and think, “This is impossible. I will never get published. I am doomed to suck forever. I give up.”
When in reality, you don’t suck at all. Writing is subjective and that particular agent just wasn’t for you.
Change happens.
In doomsday thinking whenever something bad happens, we assume that this is the way it will always be. It isn’t.
The world is chaos and full of change.
I just was texting with one of my friends the other night and I wrote, “I bet Five-years-ago Steve would never have imagined this.”
The this was good stuff happening in his life. And he hadn’t. He hadn’t predicted any of it.
We’re all like that. I didn’t imagine I’d be where I am five years ago. That’s because change happens. Even the bad doesn’t stay always bad. We can’t predict the outcomes and all the variables even when we think we can.
Here’s the good thing about change
Since things change, it means that you don’t need to stay stuck forever. And you don’t need to stay in those negative thought patterns forever either.
Why not? It’s pretty easy to lean into your internal critic, right? But you don’t have to. You can stay calm. You can take chances and make choices and shut them up.
We all have inner critics, but we also need inner cheerleaders
I used to imagine my inner critic as John Wayne (the dead movie star/cowboy). He was so harsh on me. Always telling me to work. So, I created an inner cheerleader who turned out to be the Muppet, Grover. Yes, from Sesame Street. My brain is a weird place.
John Wayne and Grover would duel it out for supremacy in my head.
Weird! Weird! I know. But by giving an identity to that negative voice/inner critic, it helped me to recognize that doomsday thinking and shut it down so that I could take chances and risks and do things.
Allow yourself to treat challenges and projects like you’re playing
Another thing that helps is giving myself a chance to play and fail. You can do this, too.
Find something you’ve wanted to do. Start a blog? Make a video? Learn to paint? Ride your bike every morning? Make it something that excites you.
Here’s how it works:
Give yourself a time frame. I have 30 days to do this! That sort of short timeframe.
Schedule time into your day/week to do it.
It helps if you have an end project. So, tell yourself what your end product will be.
Do it.
By giving ourselves a product and a timeframe, we give ourselves a chance to try things. It doesn’t seem like a forever-worry that way and it usually shuts up our doomsday thinking and John Waynes a tiny bit.
You’ve got this. I believe in you. You need to believe in you, too.
xo
Carrie
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The other night Shaun and I imbibed some alcohol and I declared that to not have a who-gives-a-swear-word attitude is to be compliant.
This made Shaun really happy.
I said it because I was talking about authors and politics and being afraid to say what you think because you are afraid of backlash. I’ve been listening to a lot of entrepreneurs and marketers who all preach putting your authentic self out there so that your group of supporters are supporting the real you, not some fake, shadow version that’s trying to appeal to everyone.
Shaun said “Google authors who struggled and said, ‘F-it, did a 360, and found success.”
This was hard to do, actually. There was no nice search results for that. But one thing it brought up was the infamous book called, “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*&k.”
“Chances are you know somebody in your life who, at one time or another, did not give a f- and went on to accomplish amazing feats. Perhaps there was a time in your life where you simply did not give a f- and excelled to some extraordinary heights. I know for myself, quitting my day job in finance after only six weeks and telling my boss that I was going to start selling dating advice online ranks pretty high up there in my own “didn’t give a f-” hall of fame. Same with deciding to sell most of my possessions and move to South America. F-s given? None. Just went and did it.”
There’s a lot of stupid minutiae that we go around giving too many f’s about daily, isn’t there? And that? It drains are energy for the things that are important to care about.
Manson goes on and says, “Indeed, the ability to reserve our f-s for only the most f-worthy of situations would surely make life a hell of a lot easier. Failure would be less terrifying. Rejection less painful. Unpleasant necessities more pleasant and the unsavory s-word sandwiches a little bit more savory. I mean, if we could only give a few less f-s, or a few more consciously-directed f-s, then life would feel pretty f-ing easy.”
There are a lot of super famous authors who struggled for a bit before hitting success. Toni Morrison. Stephen King. Raymond Chandler. Margaret Atwood. Frank McCourt. Madeleine L’Engle, a much lauded children’s book author, almost stopped writing after getting a rejection on her fortieth birthday.
She is quoted as saying, “I had to write … If I never had another book published, and it was very clear to me that this was a real possibility, I still had to go on writing,” she claimed.
Her book, A Wrinkle in Time was rejected twenty-six times and then was a smash hit, winning the John Newbury Medal.
She stopped giving a f about it being a waste of time, feeling guilty that she wasn’t financially contributing, and did it.
Or think of someone who isn’t a writer-writer. Jay-Z tried to get a record deal from everyone in 1995. No company would sign him. He didn’t let their lack of vision or support define him. No. Instead, he didn’t give a f- about what they said and made his own record company. Then the same thing happened as he tried to make a distribution deal. He also allegedly stabbed someone at a record release party, so that might be taking the not giving a f a little too far, but seriously? The guy has done so much and become such an influence.
Still though, no stabbing.
So, how about you? What’s holding you back? What are you wasting your energy on?
Writing Tip of the Pod
What would you write if you did not give a f- about whatever is holding you back?
Dog Tip for Life
Embrace who you are and don’t give a f- about what other dogs think of you. They don’t know your story. You get to be you.
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.
On one of my Patreon sites I read and print chapters of unpublished YA novels. THE LAST GODS and SAINT and now ALMOST DEAD. This is a monthly membership site (Hear the book chapters – $1/month, read them $3-month, plus goodies!). Sometimes I send people art! Art is fun.
On this, my second site, WRITE BETTER NOW, you can do a one-time purchase of a writing class or get two of my books in eBook form or just support our podcast or the dogs. It’s all part of the WRITING CLASS OF AWESOME.
It’s a super fun place to hang out, learn, read, and see my weirdness in its true form.
Karen Nimmo in “On the Couch” wrote that the The Most Unsexy, Under-rated Secret of Success is consistency.
Yep. And she’s calling that unsexy.
“I know, you’re rolling your eyes: I’ve seen my clients do it. “Consistency” as a concept lacks verve; even the word is boring. (And no-one rates consistency in a partner until they’ve been messed up by an inconsistent one!)”
“But the truth is consistency rules — in your job, your art, your relationships, your friendships, your health habits, your knowledge, your interests.”
“And the danger in a volatile world is that we’re destabilised, that we lose our good habits, that we lose faith in what we know is good and true.”
Karen Nimmo
So, she’s right. The whole reason I’m successful at writing is that I’m consistent as hell. I work every single day usually. I work on other people’s stories and my own. Our podcast has had over 250,000 downloads and that’s not because it’s any good. It’s because we do it every single week. We’re still married because Shaun unloads the dishwasher every morning.
I know tons of brilliant minds, brilliant writers who haven’t published yet (and want to) because they haven’t been consistent and finished their stories and done the work to get there. There’s no one way to be a writer, but one thing that really helps is actually consistently writing.
So, Nimms who is a communication genius and a lovely writer has some helpful hints about how to be consistent. That we’re going to share with you.
First she says:
“Just Aim to ‘Get Good.’”
That’s pretty easy right? Don’t try to be Lance Armstrong, but if you want to be a bicyclist, ride your bike all the time. Don’t try to be Homer, but if you want to write an epic poem about the gods, write as much as you can.
Her second bit of advice is a bit harder.
“Show Up Even When You Don’t Want To.”
That’s the whole ‘butt in chair’ adage that all writing teachers tell all writers. In order to write the story, you have to sit down and actually write the story. This helpful hint is a lot like the first helpful hint, isn’t it? Practice makes you better. You don’t get results if you don’t do the work.
Her other hints are also lovely, but my favorite is this one:
“Tuck your feelings on a high shelf.”
“‘Just being there is ninety-nine percent of what matters when your world falls apart.’― Holly Goldberg Sloan
Holly Goldberg Sloan as quoted by Karen
“Our moods and feelings are valid, especially now, but we can’t afford to let them govern everything. Especially when we’re struggling with motivation. So don’t ask yourself how you’re feeling before taking action. Just schedule it and follow through.”
Karen Nimmo
She tells us not to quit even when everything sucks and there’s a pandemic and not to compare yourself to all those brilliant other people who have been consistent and are already successful. She says that you’re allowed to think, “Damn, I don’t want to be a writer anymore.” You can do something different, go after something else.
Be consistent even if it isn’t sexy and even if it is.
Dog Tip for Life:
Sparty the Dog says that you might feel unsexy when you are reliable, but it gets you treats. Be reliable. Do the work. Sit on command.
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.
WHERE TO FIND OUR PODCAST, DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE.
I have a new book out!!!!!! It’s an adult mystery set in the town where we live, which is Bar Harbor, Maine. You can order it here. And you totally should.
These six-month courses offer structure and support not only to our writing lives but also to the roller coaster ride of submissions. We offer support whether you’re submitting to agents or, if agented, you’re weathering submissions to editors. We discuss passes that come in, submissions requests, the feedback we aren’t sure about, where we are feeling directed to go in our writing lives, and more.
Find out if WSS is right for you at this FREE WEBINAR on Thursday July 23rd, from 7-8:30pm CDT.Founder Bethany Hegedus will share an inspiring talk on the literary life and will be joined by WSS instructors/TA’s, plus past and present WSS writers who will answer all your burning questions!
This is a great opportunity to meet this session’s faculty, talk with previous students about their growth throughout the program and participate in some inspirational activities led by Bethany Hegedus. *If you cannot attend live, no need to worry! All registrants will receive a video playback of the event!
People ask me questions a lot because I’m a writer and I’ve had some success at it. And also because I have no filter.
Last week this student I was mentoring asked me:
Are you a successful writer?
And I said, “I’ve made NYT bestseller lists and some of my books were internationally bestsellers, so I guess so. It looks good in my obituary.”
He then cracked up and inhaled and coughed a tiny bit and I felt bad.
But truthfully, I don’t feel like a successful writer. I don’t feel like an unsuccessful writer, either. Success is what you make of it, you know. It’s about how you define it, not how your c/v or resume or obituary defines it. It’s especially not how other people define it.
You define you. That’s my mantra.
HOW ARE YOU SO PRODUCTIVE?
There’s a lot of clap back right now about not being productive and taking the pause and embracing the gaps and I’m all for that if that works for you. It does not work for me. I live in my moments, I promise, but I actually love creating things and writing things and helping other people create and write things? So, I don’t think of it as being productive. I think of it as doing. And as long as I have energy I want to be doing.
But, um, also I constantly stress a bit about running out of money, so I try to figure out new ways to survive. I should probably get therapy for that, but again – I’m cheap and therapy costs money in the U.S. So, I’ll keep making a podcast, expanding it, being a writing coach, editing, having a Patreon and writing books and making paintings. It’s all fun. It’s all good. I wouldn’t want to not create. I’d feel lost.
What Do You Do When You Get Writer’s Block?
I write something else even if it’s just, “Blah.Blah. Blah. I hate writer’s block. It is the biggest stupid evil thing ever.”
If that doesn’t work, I set a timer and clean for 15 minutes. I tell myself I will have to clean the toilet if I don’t write 500 words. That evil threat usually gets things done.
Are you writing something right now?
Always.
See above where I talk about needing therapy because I have a compulsion to be production. I am so lucky to be a writer. I don’t want to lose that. This means I am always working on something. To be fair, I don’t know how to not work on something.
Are You Short?
No. My husband is just ridiculously tall.
Are you drunk?
Nope.
On illegal drugs?
Nope. I’m just really weird. I am the person at the party that other people point at and say, “You are so wasted,” but I haven’t imbibed at all.
Is Maine Creepy?
Occasionally, but only because I live here.
What’s the Hardest Part About Writing?
Stopping. And worrying that no human will ever actually read it.
What’s the Easiest Part of Writing?
I love everything else about writing.
Weirdest thing that ever happened to you at a public event.
A bookseller bit another bookseller while they were waiting in line to get my book. Actually, one of them might have been a librarian.
Weirdest Thing that ever happened to you in Maine.
There are so many. Ghost stories? Weird noises in the woods. Seeing the Obama family in my town eating ice cream? The naked man at the door. There are a lot of stories.
Do You Get to Work in Your Pajamas?
Yes! Yes! A hundred times yes.
Are Parentheticals demons (from hell)?
Yes, and so are their first cousins, the ellipses….
And over on Patreon, I’m starting a new story this week! It’s a chapter a month if you want to check it out. It basically costs $1 a month to listen to my story and $3 a month to read it. There’s a new chapter every week. It’s super fun; I promise. AND SO CHEAP. Help this neurotic writer eventually afford therapy and join the community!
WRITING NEWS!
THE WRITING COURSE OF AWESOME
It’s our very own writing course!
Basically, it’s set up a bit like a distance MFA program, only it costs a lot less and also has a big element of writer support built in. This program costs $125 a month and runs for four-month sessions and starts in April 2020
I have a new book out!!!!!! It’s an adult mystery set in the town where we live, which is Bar Harbor, Maine. You can order it here. And you totally should.
THIS IS WHAT IT’S ABOUT
Rosie Jones, small town reporter and single mom, is looking forward to her first quiet Maine winter with her young daughter, Lily. After a disastrous first marriage, she’s made a whole new life and new identities for her and her little girl. Rosie is more than ready for a winter of cookies, sledding, stories about planning board meetings, and trying not to fall in like with the local police sergeant, Seamus Kelley.
But after her car is tampered with and crashes into Sgt. Kelley’s cruiser during a blizzard, her quiet new world spirals out of control and back into the danger she thought she’d left behind. One of her new friends is murdered. She herself has been poisoned and she finds a list of anagrams on her dead friend’s floor.
As the killer strikes again, it’s obvious that the women of Bar Harbor aren’t safe. Despite the blizzard and her struggle to keep her new identity a secret, Rosie sets out to make sure no more women die. With the help of the handsome but injured Sgt. Kelley and the town’s firefighters, it’s up to Rosie to stop the murderer before he strikes again.
Basically, his article is saying that people limit themselves by defining who they are, what they can do, and what resources they have. This article is wildly popular with 31,000 likes, which means he’s made a ton of money off this point of view. And with over 19,000 Twitter followers, Mr. Hardy is pretty popular, too. He has posts that link to his articles like “10 Steps to Being a Millionaire in 5 Years (or Less).”
If you look at his twitter posts, you’ll find a lot of encouraging things about success and motivation and morning routines that guarantee success.
But we’re talking about just the first point in his article., which is that a goal must be wild and huge. It must be urgent with a time component. It must motivate you and he quotes Napolean Hill who wrote in the book, Think and Grow Rich, “Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.”
This is lovely.
He also quotes Marcus Aurelias, a Roman emperor. And also Canadian author Justine Musk, who he introduces as only, “Elon Musk’s wife.”
There are a lot of white men talking and quoting and thinking going on in the first few paragraphs of Dr. Hardy’s piece. It’s all about going after what you want and making no excuses about your situation or self because those things will make you fail.
There are twenty more points in Dr. Hardy’s article, but we’re only going to talk to the first one because it relates to writing and why so much writing falls flat.
He writes:
As with all things in life, you get what you want. If you prefer to make excuses and justifications for a lack of progress, then just admit you prefer your current station in life. Self-acceptance can be a beautiful thing.
However, once you desire progress more than convenience, obstacles no longer stop but propel you. As the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius is famous for saying,“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
Hardy, per Medium article cited above
You have to have your main character have a desire and they need to pulsate with it. Your main character needs to be passionate about something. They need to go after those passions. There needs to be a bit of urgency about them. The obstacles that happen are the ones that your character needs to smash through in order to get to what she wants.
What is it your character wants more than any damn thing in the world?
Who does your character have to be to get that?
Now, how about you?
What do you want more than any damn thing in the world?
Who do you have to be to get that?
Writing Tip of the Pod:
In life, Hardy says that our ambitious goals must be:
Full of a motivating desire
Hard as hell
Tied to a timeframe to make them urgent.
Do this for your characters, too.
Dog Tip for Life
Don’t be afraid to remember you aren’t a solo show. Think about who can help you become who you want to be and achieve what you want to do.
Random Thoughts
If you listen to the podcast, you’ll hear:
Us cooking hand pies and Shaun’s delightful name for a hand-pie take-out window
Carrie ranting about articles
Carrie worrying about meeting Shaun’s aunt
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.
The Write. Submit. Support. format is designed to embrace all aspects of the literary life. This six-month course will offer structure and support not only to our writing lives but also to the roller coaster ride of submissions: whether that be submitting to agents or, if agented, weathering the submissions to editors. We will discuss passes that come in, submissions requests, feedback we aren’t sure about, where we are feeling directed to go in our writing lives, and more. Learn more here!
“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.”
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!
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?
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.
Yesterday on her blog, Carrie talked about how feeling successful in your career or life is really tied to having your personal values resonate in your occupation, and being guided by those same core values instead of society’s outside metrics about what makes someone a success.
But on the podcast, we’re going to touch on something we’ve talked about before – stakeholders.
Stakeholders are all around you. They’re in your past and your present. They have expectations. They project their own crud onto you. They are the people who come to mind when you say, “What will X think if I do this?” They are real people. But they are also voices in your head.
For Carrie, an example would be when she drew as a little kid and her mom said, “Nobody in our family has an artistic bone in her body.”
That comment from someone she loved stayed inside of her, right? And it made her think she could never do art, but it also could make her go out and say, “To heck with that. I’m going to prove my mom wrong.”
Or maybe your mom’s dream was to save the world, but she never had the chance to. She projects that dream on you and now your dream is to save the world.
Coming to terms with what YOU want versus what your STAKEHOLDERS want is a really valuable experience in helping you feel successful and fulfilled.
How to Come To Terms With Your Stakeholders:
Make a list.
List all the people who have ever told you what you could do in your career.
List all the people who have ever told you what you couldn’t do.
List all the people who give you advice.
Now, look at your list. Is that person important to you? Then that person is a stakeholder.
But stakeholders aren’t just people. Stakeholders can be colleges, institutions, social media.
Think about when you post something on Twitter, SnapChat, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram. People like (or don’t), share (or don’t), comment (or don’t) and that gives you value and and ideas and judgements of others all meshed in one place. It becomes a stakeholder.
Our life and our choices are part of intertwined systems and so, too, is our feeling of success. A big first step towards self-fulfillment is realizing when it’s you being happy and satisfied versus other people being happy and satisfied for you.
Dog Tip for Life
If your stakeholder’s influence created a fear or limitation, it’s time to let that go.
And if our idea of success and our career is about playing it safe? About being like the rest of the pack? You might want to rethink that, too.
There is safety in being like everyone else, in thinking like everyone else, in sticking to the pack and following the same route, but is that really helpful? Is that success for you?
Writing Tip of the Pod
If you aren’t taking risks with your writing, or taking the risk to be a writer, then maybe it’s time. Ignore the stakeholders that are limiting you. Be who you want to be. Take chances.
“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”
Maya Angelou
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.
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.
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.
Yesterday on her blog, Carrie talked about how feeling successful in your career or life is really tied to having your personal values resonate in your occupation, and being guided by those same core values instead of society’s outside metrics about what makes someone a success.
But on the podcast, we’re going to touch on something we’ve talked about before – stakeholders.
Stakeholders are all around you. They’re in your past and your present. They have expectations. They project their own crud onto you. They are the people who come to mind when you say, “What will X think if I do this?” They are real people. But they are also voices in your head.
For Carrie, an example would be when she drew as a little kid and her mom said, “Nobody in our family has an artistic bone in her body.”
That comment from someone she loved stayed inside of her, right? And it made her think she could never do art, but it also could make her go out and say, “To heck with that. I’m going to prove my mom wrong.”
Or maybe your mom’s dream was to save the world, but she never had the chance to. She projects that dream on you and now your dream is to save the world.
Coming to terms with what YOU want versus what your STAKEHOLDERS want is a really valuable experience in helping you feel successful and fulfilled.
How to Come To Terms With Your Stakeholders:
Make a list.
List all the people who have ever told you what you could do in your career.
List all the people who have ever told you what you couldn’t do.
List all the people who give you advice.
Now, look at your list. Is that person important to you? Then that person is a stakeholder.
But stakeholders aren’t just people. Stakeholders can be colleges, institutions, social media.
Think about when you post something on Twitter, SnapChat, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram. People like (or don’t), share (or don’t), comment (or don’t) and that gives you value and and ideas and judgements of others all meshed in one place. It becomes a stakeholder.
Our life and our choices are part of intertwined systems and so, too, is our feeling of success. A big first step towards self-fulfillment is realizing when it’s you being happy and satisfied versus other people being happy and satisfied for you.
Dog Tip for Life
If your stakeholder’s influence created a fear or limitation, it’s time to let that go.
And if our idea of success and our career is about playing it safe? About being like the rest of the pack? You might want to rethink that, too.
There is safety in being like everyone else, in thinking like everyone else, in sticking to the pack and following the same route, but is that really helpful? Is that success for you?
Writing Tip of the Pod
If you aren’t taking risks with your writer, or taking the risk to be a writer, then maybe it’s time. Ignore the stakeholders that are limiting you. Be who you want to be. Take chances.
“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”
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.
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.
The author Gwen Hawes has a book that’s all about writing a romance, but I think a lot of her elements really apply to more genres than that.
One of those elements is what she calls, “whole-hearted.” It’s when the lovers are at the end of the book and you think, “Wow. Have they grown or what? Look at how big their hearts are now. Look at how different their lives are. Those are some whole-hearted people right there.”
And that’s what story (with a positive ending) is all about. It’s about making those characters whole-hearted, and allowing us readers to see their journey.
There’s a line in this song from Hamilton that always resonates with Carrie and it goes:
Look at where we are
Look at where we started
The fact that you’re alive is a miracle.
Just stay alive. That would be enough.
These lyrics get her because they are so true. Life is a process. We start at one point. We move on to another. And when we look back and take stock? That’s where those wow moments happen.
That needs to happen in books too.
And a really good way to bang that difference home is to set up a mirror image at this whole-hearted point of the book that reflects something that started happened at the beginning of the book.
What exactly are we talking about? It’s like this:
Beginning of a series: Wizard gets on a train and goes to magical school.
End of series: Wizard sends his son off on that same train to that same magical school.
Beginning of a book: A girl rides in her grandmother’s car on her way into the remote Maine woods and sees a man pointing at her.
End of a book: A girl drives her own car through those same woods and a man waves goodbye.
See what we mean?
But the thing is that this isn’t just true for our characters. It’s also true for us. A lot of times we believe lies about ourselves. We think that the opinion from a random critique or of a single publisher or reader means more than our process, our art, our our own understanding of self worth.
This is about letting a rejection or a criticism change our whole entire identity.
We stop believing in our creative purpose or our skill and in ourselves. Right? Instead of trying to improve our craft, we give up and internalize the criticism from “Hey, Arthur Levine didn’t like my story,” to “I am a failure. I suck. I should never write again.”
That’s not whole hearted. That’s not where your journey should be. Look at how much better you are now than when you were five, ten, 15, 20-years-old. Be proud of how much you’ve grown and accomplished and learned. Even if that’s just knowing that a lot is two words and not one. That’s growth, baby. Hold onto it.
Shaun is proud that he no longer spells quite – quiet.
Dog Hint For Life: Rejoice in where you are now. Luxuriate in it. Gabby and Sparty were both rescue dogs. Gabby was malnourished, constantly chained to a tree for the first year of her life. Sparty was roaming the streets of the South scavenging for food. Now they live on the coast of Maine and they get to frolic and feed. And be loved. They enjoy that every single day.
Writing Tip of the Pod: Write change. Write mirrors. Look at where your story started and have it journey somewhere else.
And when you do those things? That’s usually when your writing career starts to grow. By understanding the journey of your characters, you get to make your own journey even better! How cool is that?
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
Our 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 like, share and subscribe!
ENHANCED PAPERBACK RELEASE!
Carrie Jones, the New York Times bestselling author of Flying, presents another science fiction adventure of cheerleader-turned-alien-hunter Mana in Enhanced.
Seventeen-year-old Mana has found and rescued her mother, but her work isn’t done yet. Her mother may be out of alien hands, but she’s in a coma, unable to tell anyone what she knows.
Mana is ready to take action. The only problem? Nobody will let her. Lyle, her best friend and almost-boyfriend (for a minute there, anyway), seems to want nothing to do with hunting aliens, despite his love of Doctor Who. Bestie Seppie is so desperate to stay out of it, she’s actually leaving town. And her mom’s hot but arrogant alien-hunting partner, China, is ignoring Mana’s texts, cutting her out of the mission entirely.
They all know the alien threat won’t stay quiet for long. It’s up to Mana to fight her way back in.
“Witty dialogue and flawless action.”—VOYA
“YA readers, you’re in for a treat this week. Hilarious and action-packed, this novel is sure to be the perfect summer read.”—Bookish
“Funny and playful, with a diverse cast of characters and a bit of romance and adventure, Flying is the perfect light summer read.”—BookPage
Order Your Copy:
Cough. That was pretty self-promotional, wasn’t it?
The Final Time Stoppers Book
What is it? It’s the third TIME STOPPERS book! It’s also one of the reasons that I forgot about ENHANCED’s release.
Time Stopper Annie’s newfound home, the enchanted town Aurora, is in danger. The vicious Raiff will stop at nothing to steal the town’s magic, and Annie is the only one who can defeat him–even though it’s prophesied that she’ll “fall with evil.”
Alongside her loyal band of friends Eva, Bloom, SalGoud, and Jamie, who still isn’t quite sure whether he’s a troll or not, Annie journeys deep into the Raiff’s realm, the Badlands. The group will face everything from ruthless monsters to their own deepest fears. Can Annie find the courage to confront the Raiff and save everyone, even if it means making the ultimate sacrifice?
What People are Saying About The Books:
“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
“The characters show welcome kindness and poignant insecurity, and the text sprinkles in humor . . . and an abundance of magical creatures.” – Kirkus Reviews on QUEST FOR THE GOLDEN ARROW
“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 on TIME STOPPERS
How to Get Signed Copies of Any of Carrie’s Books:
If you would like to purchase signed copies of my books, you can do so through the awesome Sherman’s Book Store in Bar Harbor, Maine or the amazing Briar Patch. The books are also available online at places like Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
For signed copies – email barharbor@shermans.com for Sherman’s or email info@briarpatchbooks.comand let them know the titles in which you are interested. There’s sometimes a waiting list, but they are the best option. Plus, you’re supporting an adorable local bookstore run by some really wonderful humans. But here’s the Amazon link, too!
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