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

Monotony Must Die: How to Keep Your Sentences Surprising

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 16:11:44 +0000

No Flat Writing

A lot of writers will worry that their stories seem flat. There’s a reason that they are worrying about that and it’s one of the core elements of good writing.

Ready?

A lot of the times your story seems flat because all your sentences are the same layout.

You want to vary your sentence structure.

Take a bit of writing that you’ve done that feels flat—or maybe even one that doesn’t. Count the words in your sentences for two or three paragraphs.

Are they all five word sentences? Twelve? Twenty-seven?

That robotic sameness in sentence length is one of the main reasons that writing can feel flat.

It’s like those ancient Dick and Jane books.

See Dick run.
See Jane skip.
See Dick wave.

The other big bugger is when all of your sentences are simple and declarative.

I walk to the forest. The trees are gracious, tall. I inhale the pine scent.

There is actually a whole, entire world of different sentence styles that writers can use and when you use them? That’s when you make your writing shiny and sexy and all the good things.

The names for these structures are pretty boring, honestly, but we’ll try to look beyond that, right?

Simple – You have one main clause.

Carrie is the best wife.

Compound – You have more than one independent clause. You probably use a conjunction.

Carrie wants to get another dog, but Shaun keeps saying no.

Complex – Oh, the sentence that probably has to pay for a therapist or is reading Foucault obviously in the park. This sentence has an independent clause and a subordinate clause.

When hell freezes over, we will allegedly get another dog.

Compound-Complex – It sounds like a place with a cult, right? But it’s just a sentence with at least two independent clauses and one subordinate clause.

Carrie really needs a new dog to love, so Shaun said that they would get one when hell freezes over, so Carrie immediately purchased some dry ice at WalMart and sent some down to Lucifer.

So, to keep your writing from feeling flat, you want to vary those sentences. Why?

It keeps the reader engaged.
It helps highlight important details. It helps vary tone. It puts emphasis on things (especially when you use a short sentence for that).
It sounds more real. People don’t speak in identical sentence patterns. When they do, just like in your writing, it feels unnatural and stilted.
It can be easier to follow when you change your sentence structure up.

How do you vary the structure?

Use different lengths, like we mentioned above
Use different types of sentences like we also mentioned above. Throw in that complex sentence in the middle of all your simple sentences.
Don’t start all your sentences the same (the way I did up there).

Refresher moments:

What’s a clause? A bunch of words chilling out together and one of those words in the group is a verb and another is a noun. Fancy people call the verb, the predicate, but we aren’t fancy here.

What’s an independent clause? It is a bunch of words that has a subject and a predicate. Got fancy! It is grammatically complete all by itself and doesn’t need anyone. Not any other words to stand alone! Darn it.

What’s a subordinate or dependent clause? A bunch of words that needs other words to be a sentence. This poor beautiful baby cannot stand alone and be complete, kind of like a protagonist in a Hallmark romance.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE!

Vary how you bark to your humans. Sometimes go ‘bark bark.’ Sometimes go ‘barkwoofbarhbark.’ Keep them on their toes.

RANDOM THOUGHT

Our random thought came from here.

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.

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!

Keep Writing

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 16:17:12 +0000

This week? This week has been a bit rough for me.

But I am still writing. And we are still podcasting! Gasp!

I am still doing this because I think that writers write. That’s it. That’s all there is to it.

Say it with me, okay?

Writers write. That’s all it takes to be a writer—the actual writing things down.

We write rebellion. We write acceptance. We write through grief. We write through joy.

Sometimes our work is absolute poop, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that we write, that we give ourselves voice no matter what.

Do not stop writing.

100 words a day? 30 minutes a day? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that your voice is there. Yours.

You matter.

Your voice matters.

Your writing matters.

Here are the things you need to do:

You need to:

Follow your writing wherever it takes you. Let the words carry you.
When you ache, write it down because that ache? Someone will connect with it. Someone will feel less alone.
The best writing is full of yearning. That yearning helps inspire us all to make a better world.
Whenever you feel joy, lean into it. Don’t worry that you don’t deserve it. Take it when it happens. Let your characters have it, too. Dance around the house. Sing in the shower. Catch raindrops. Even if you feel like the world is shattering around you. Allow your work and your self to be human.
When you write, you take power. You take the power to look at pain, at problems, at issues, at grief right in the damn face and you make it into art, into action, and into power. That’s a big deal.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Keep fighting for what you want.

COOL EXERCISE

Take 30 minutes at most. You can use no more than 500 words. Gasp! I know! I’m terrible.

And in that time and word count, I want you to write about one image that happened in the last week and has stayed with you.

Write down details.

Now, I want you to connect that concrete image to what you yearn for.

COOL PLAYLIST TO DO THIS TO

I picked songs without words for this one. Songs that feel like yearning to me.https://open.spotify.com/embed/playlist/6geuR3LwqThjiMydkhsHwA

PLACE TO SUBMIT

Parentheses Journal is a Canadian biannual.

You can send in up to two poems, flash fiction pieces, or short stories (max word count 2000).

Its reading periods are from November 20— March 10 (so now) and May 20—September 10.

Deadline: 10 March 2025

RANDOM THOUGHT LINK

Our random thought came from here.

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.

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!

Why Are People Mean? And The Lowdown on Three Super Common Grammar Mistakes.

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 17:17:17 +0000

In our Random Thought, we talk about why people are mean. The link to our source is at the end of these notes.

All you all,

I (Carrie) am the WORST copyeditor for my own work. I’ll admit it and that’s because as a writer, I’m too close to it to pick out my errors, right?

That’s why it’s good to have other people read your stories before you put them out there.

So, we (Carrie and Shaun) are going to talk about some grammar mistakes: three super common ones. Ready?

1. Every day or everyday

What the what, right? There’s a difference?

Yes, yes, there is.

Everyday when it’s all one word is an adjective. That means it’s describing something that happens all the time.

Dreaming about manatees is an everyday occurrence for Carrie.

Every day when it’s two separate words is an adverbial phrase. Doesn’t that sound fancy and terrifying? Adverbial phrase.

It just means “each day.”

Every day Carrie dreams about manatees.

2. The magic apostrophe

I (Carrie) talk about apostrophes a lot and that’s because a lot of us just haven’t gotten the memo yet. That’s okay! Don’t be hard on yourself. Here’s the memo again.

Apostrophes have two main jobs.

Job #1 is to show that something is possessing something else. No! Not in an exorcism kind of way, but an ownership kind of way.

The manatee’s flipper was so cute.

The manatee owns that flipper. It possesses it.

Job #2 is to show there’s some letters missing because we have smooshed or contracted two words together.

So, ‘It is’ becomes it’s. The apostrophe is replacing the I in ‘is.’

Or ‘they are’ becomes they’re. The apostrophe is replacing the A in ‘are.’

A lot of us write a word and maybe that word ends in an s. We go, “AH! It ends in a s. There should be an apostrophe in there, right? I shall put one in.” Only DO THAT IF IT IS A POSSESSIVE.

Right: Apostrophes are cute little buggers and it’s hard to resist them.

Wrong: Apostrophe’s are cute little buggers and its’ hard to resist them.

3. Lose it or Loose it?

These words are evil little buttfaces. It’s that double ‘o’ versus single ‘o’ that gets our brains all hooked up. Choose or chose has this issue too.

Why are those o’s so confusing? I don’t know, but I do know that when I was little, I (Carrie) loved to put pupils inside them and make a smiley face.

Here are the hints:

LOOSE means not tight. It rhymes with moose!

LOSE means you have lost something. You poor honey. That rhymes with booze.

CHOOSE means you have to make a choice. It’s the present. It’s happening now. It rhymes with moose.

CHOSE means you already made that choice. Are you regretting it? It rhymes with pose.

Spoiler Alert: Don’t be a butthead about other people’s grammar mistakes.

Here’s the thing: We are all human. We all make mistakes. It is not the end of the world and other humans (the good ones) shouldn’t be trolls about it. No offense to trolls. But we all have to be a little less harsh, a little less judgmental and a lot more understanding and forgiving.

If someone writes its for it’s or lay for lie, it doesn’t mean they deserve to die or get your hairy eyeball of judgment. It just means they made a mistake. It’s part of being human. And it’s okay.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Enjoy life when you’re here and don’t waste your time being a meanie.

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? Just send us a message!

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!

RANDOM THOUGHT LINK!

The Psychology Today article on meanness.

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.

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!

Let's Talk The Sexy One-Sentence Summary

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Thu, 23 Jan 2025 14:30:17 +0000

THE ONE SENTENCE SUMMARY

Let’s be honest, here. Sometimes I throw the word “sexy” into a podcast title just to get Shaun to pay attention.

But the one-sentence summary is kind of sexy.

Over on the Advanced Fiction Writing Blog, Randy Ingermanson writes:

In that summary, you want:

To show us the setting via information about where or when the story is happening.
What Ingersoll calls “a paradoxical description of a major character.”
Something weird/shocking/surprising that makes you think of that story question
Something sexy. He calls this an emotive/kicker word.

Why is this sexy?

It’s sexy because if you can do this, you can understand your novel. Understanding is sexy. It becomes a map for your novel. You can see where you’ve gone off on a tangent, where things don’t adhere to that sexy summary.

Us writers often go off on tangents.

Or as Nico Waters on Rene Pen says,

“It’s the quickest way to explain or write what your book is about. It’s the hook to entice readers to want to buy your book. It also serves as our compass, our true north, as we continue writing the book.”

Waters has a great post about this and shows three formulas to do this, too.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Don’t be afraid to amuse yourself. Confidence and goofiness is a sexy combination.

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.

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!

It's Okay To Dwell in the Negative Space

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 19:58:03 +0000

Wendy MacNaughton on her Substack Draw Together talked about negative space this week and she wrote,

“Negative Space performs many functions: it focuses our eyes on the subject, it moves our eyes around a drawing or it keeps them still, it allows for visual space/room to breathe, and sometimes it gives the subject an extra layer of meaning.

“For example, ever seen this logo before?

“Sure, you’ve probably seen it a million times.

“But have you noticed the hidden symbol in the logo?! Focus your attention on the negative space of the logo - the space between the letters. Do you see it? Look between the E and the X. Now do you see the arrow?? YES. It’s subtle. It took me YEARS to see it. But once you see the arrow formed by the negative space you can’t unsee it. In this case, designer Lindon Leader used the negative space to create an image that informs the meaning of the subject. An arrow takes your package from here to there. Very clever, Lindon.”

This obviously has societal implications, which she writes about as well. She talks about sociologist W.E.B Du Bois’ work Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America, which shows in data and visualization what was and wasn’t going on.

In writing, we call this negative space white space, right?

How writers use it impacts readers’ experiences.

It focuses attention on shorter words and paragraphs.
It gives a visual break—especially when it’s at the end of the scene or chapter, right? A new chapter almost always begins on a new page. There’s a reason for that. It’s to let that last bit resonate. It’s to signal, “Hey! Rock star! You just read a chapter!”

So… how do you create white space?

Make your sentences shorter. Vary these babies.
Make your paragraphs shorter. Vary these babies, too.
In articles, make lists.
Make sure in dialogue that each person speaking gets their own paragraph. Don’t embed the dialogue.

WHY NEGATIVE SPACE IS GOOD IN OUR LIVES, TOO

Last week, on our blog, I talked about how boredom is actually a pretty awesome thing.

But basically, being bored allows us to have creativity, to replenish, to incubate ideas a and thoughts.

RANDOM THOUGHT LINK

Our random thought came from here.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

POGIE AND MR MURPHY DOG: This is 100% positive truth. We live about 65% of our lives in this white space where you think we’re sleeping but we’re really just chilling and trying to figure out how to get snacks in new ways.

PLACES TO SUBMIT

The Masters Review Short Story Award for New WritersEligibility: Emerging writers only Prize: $3,000 + publication + agency review Entry Fee: $20 Deadline: February 2, 2025

Matthew Power Literary Reporting Award

Eligibility: Early-career nonfiction writers Prize: $12,500 Deadline: February 19, 2025

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.

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!

Do Our Brains Hurt Too Much to Think & Read?

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 17:37:20 +0000

And how we've blown off writing maxims to be successful

There’s a feeling among many writers/bloggers/content creators that our brains are too overwhelmed by a high cognitive overload to want to read anything that isn’t super quick and fast.

I get this.

There is a lot of information out there in the world.

Short-form content is, they say, the key.

Tim Denning describes short-form content as “where you share big ideas, be a little contrarian, drop cliffhangers for your stories, and share who you are. It gives people a taste.”

“Many old-school writers want to take a stranger on the street and send them to their newly published book on Amazon. All the reader has to do is give up $15–20 and 15–20 hours of their life,” Denning writes. “None of this works anymore because the internet and all its information have burdened us with a high cognitive load.

“Our brains hurt.”

So, yeah, we say to hell with that. One size fits all doesn’t fit everyone and that comes to readers of everything—books, blogs, news sites, magazines. To say that it does? It’s a little depressing and fatalistic.

High cognitive load when it refers to writing usually refers to the principles of plain English.

What’s that?

It’s just concise sentences. It’s active voice. It’s anti-jargon.

KEEPING IT SHORT AND SIMPLE

Keeping it short and simple has often been a dictum of novel writing when it comes to length (make it only 50,000 words, God forbid it hits over 100,000). It’s also part of content creation (other kinds) keep the reels and videos to 1 minute or less, the picture books to less than 500 words, and so on.

But I’ve (Carrie, not Shaun) also been lucky enough to go on book tours and listen to readers complain that books are too stripped down, not long enough to get lost in any more. Those specific readers? They don’t want short and simple.

BLOWING THAT MAXIM OFF

We’ve built a hyper-local daily paper on the opposite of this thought. We aren’t simple. Our articles tend to not be short. Our word choice and sentence structure is though.

And we have no short-form content to lure people in. We rarely remember to share our posts on Facebook and Instagram. And when we do? It’s never pithy.

But despite this (and our complete lack of marketing and despite that there are some amazing and award winning papers in our area already), in two years we’ve grown to a digital subscription base larger than both the major legacy weekly newspapers in our county with their very large (compared to us) staffs.

Our staff of two (the same goofballs you’re listening to right now) has written over a million words this year, just on that paper, and our open rate hovers over 60%.

We write long.

And people? They like it because they get to parse through the information and determine what matters to them when we cover something like a town meeting. We don’t decide what matters for them.

We trust our readers to be smart, to make their own decisions. So, no, we don’t write short. It’s something that Heather Cox Richardson (one of the most popular writers on Substack) and Andrew Revkin do, too.

Dumbing yourself and your content down? It’s not sexy.

DON’T BE AFRAID TO BE YOU

The other aspect of this is something Denning agrees with and that it’s okay to be you—your weird self, your personal self—in your writing. AI can do a lot of super amazing things, but it can’t do that—it can’t be personal. It can’t be you.

So, when you are writing—anything and everything—just be yourself. Think about who you are writing for, yes, but also be true to who you are, too. That’s where the magic happens. That’s where the communication and the connection happens, too.

RANDOM THOUGHT LINK

https://www.forbes.com/sites/scotthutcheson/2024/12/27/why-leaders-should-add-writing-to-their-leadership-toolkit-in-2025

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Don’t be concise when it’s something you really want to get across for people.

COOL PLACE TO SUBMIT

The Paris Review Call for Poetry Submissions

The Paris Review is a literary magazine featuring original writing, art, and in-depth interviews with famous writers. The Paris Review accepts unsolicited submissions of poetry in January, April, July, and October. (Unsolicited submissions of prose are accepted in February, June, and October.)

All submissions must be in English and must be previously unpublished. Translations are welcome and should be accompanied by a copy of the original. Simultaneous submissions are allowed, as long as we are notified immediately if the manuscript is accepted for publication elsewhere.

Please submit no more than six poems or one piece of prose at a time and please do not submit more than once per submission period. We suggest to all who plan to submit that they read the most recent issues of The Paris Review to acquaint themselves with material the magazine has published.

Deadline January 31

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.

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!

Happy Holidays!

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 25 Dec 2024 17:45:13 +0000

Hey! It’s a quick happy holiday greeting from us. We took a quick pause in our celebrations to make the shortest podcast episode ever.

We hope that you are having a wonderful holiday season. It snowed here yesterday and it’s still super cool out. <3 This photo is from outside our neighbor's house.

Flirt Your Eyelashes Off, Writers

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 15:54:22 +0000

SHAUN IS SICK! Gasp! He is never sick. But he is, so I've made the executive decision to replay/republish one of our most popular episodes from three years ago.

Ready? Let's go!

A quick web search for the words 'flirting' and 'dangerous' gets a lot of hits.

To be fair, so does a quick web search for the words 'flirting' and 'fun.'

But we're not here to tell you about the perils and delights of flirting. We're here to talk about writing, life, and dogs. Actually, flirting is part of most people's lives. But we're FOCUSING on the writing aspect.

Flirting is showing someone that you are attracted to them.

Hall, Carter, Cody, and Albright, (2010).

If you've listened to the random thought portion of the podcast, it's obvious that Carrie fails at flirting and in knowing when other people are flirting with her.

Side note from Carrie: This is because it's really extremely rare for me to be attracted to people in that way.

So, when it comes to writing about flirting, she has to do a lot of research about how people flirt, how people react to flirting, what the common aspects of flirting are.

All of us, as writers and humans, have blind spots or flaws. These places can be viewed as writing weaknesses or human weaknesses, but they honestly just make us real.

Second side note from Carrie: Not being attracted to people that way isn't a flaw, it's just something that's different than what our society considers the 'norm.'

When we're writing, we have to look for those places where we're not as strong. It could be setting. It could be showing our character's emotions. It could be plot. It could be making a character realistically flirt. It could be making dialogue real. The secret to becoming a better writer is to dive into those places where you're not as strong, and focus on them.

WRITING TIP OF THE POD

Be courageous. Go right to where your weaknesses are and excavate them. If you can't write a fight scene. Go write fight scenes. Read them. Watch them. Go into the places where your weaknesses are.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Flirting is not the same as being friendly. It's about intent.

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, appeared in July with Steve Wedel. It’s scary and one of Publisher’s Weekly’s Buzz Books . 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!

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!

ART

You can buy some of my art. I paint to help inform my stories and some of the prints are available now. There will be more soon. You can check it out here.

We improvised this podcast and you can tell

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Thu, 12 Dec 2024 15:55:13 +0000

We improvised this podcast and you know what? You can kind of tell. It's all about making mistakes (a tiny bit about what holds some of us back about making people pay for our work) and we quickly reference this guy!

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.

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!

Every Day Is a Whole New Life, Writers and Other Humans

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Thu, 05 Dec 2024 18:12:20 +0000

So, recently, Vitaliy Katsenelson, CFA, who is a writer and investor had a Substack post that really resonated with me.

And by recently, I mean yesterday.

Anyway, in it Vitaliy said that “Each Day Is a Separate Life.”

You wake up and you are born. You go to sleep and that’s the end of the day/life. You get it, right?

This concept isn’t new. It comes from Seneca, this ancient philosopher and thinker in the Roman Empire, 2,000 years ago, who was rather hyper focused on thinking about wealth even though he was one of the richest people of his time. And who knows? Seneca probably took it from someone else.

Seneca was a thinker and a clerk and a politician and a writer. So, like a lot of us, he did a lot of things.

What matters to us on the podcast today is what Vitaliy took away from Seneca’s writings and that’s the concept of time.

He writes,

“After reading Seneca, it is impossible not to want to retake control of the most important, irreplaceable gift you are given as a birthright – time. But how do you do this? I borrowed my practical solution from Seneca: ‘Begin at once to live and count each separate day as a separate life.’ “‘Each separate day as a separate life.’ What a brilliant idea. A life bookended by sunrise and sunset. A day is a perfect, meaningful measuring unit. I can look at each day and evaluate how I spent it. If I achieve mostly perfect days, then they’ll spill into a perfect life. ”Every January most of us set New Year’s resolutions. Though we don’t think about it that way, we really treat each year as Seneca’s separate life. Except that a year is so long that we forget about our New Year’s resolutions by March.

We writers (and other humans) waste a lot of time thinking about writing, procrastinating about writing, and doing things like cruising social media, that don’t help us actually write.

We only have a limited amount of time in each day. We waste a lot of it. “What man can you show me who places any value on his time, who reckons the worth of each day, who understands that he is dying daily? For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed. Whatever years lie behind us are in death’s hands,” Seneca wrote. His advice according to Vitaliy, “Hold every hour in your grasp. Lay hold of today’s task, and you will not need to depend so much upon tomorrow’s. While we are postponing, life speeds by.” Think of each day that you write as a new life as a writer. If you spend that day, not writing, what does that mean? If this was your final day would you want to create? Would you want to share stories? Or would spend that last day arguing with other people in town about curb cuts and bad parking jobs?

As Vitaliy writes, “The goal is not to change our activities but to change our state of mind as we carry out those activities. You don’t want to stop thinking about or planning for tomorrow; instead, as you think about tomorrow, remember to appreciate today. Or as Seneca puts it, ‘Hurry up and live.’” Try it for a week maybe. Just one week commit to a couple of things:

Live the day like it’s your last
Wake up in the morning thinking about what matters to you.
Write something or create something on each day. It doesn’t need to be finished. It doesn’t need to be perfect.

A lot of people ask me (Carrie) how I produce so much. How much? I’ve written over a million words for our daily newspaper this year. And that’s just our newspaper, right? Well, secret number one is that I have a Shaun. But secret number two is that I expect to never have enough time to get all I want to get done out there.

Prince was a little like this too, but um, much more genius.

But try it for a hot second—or a week. It’s the opposite of the slow it down and chill movement.

Vitaliy mentions having a daily journal so that you can “examine our ‘separate life’ at the end of each day.”

He writes, '“Reviewing your day presents an opportunity to learn from your mistakes and correct them. For instance, today I debated politics with a friend for an hour. As I look at that hour, the time was completely wasted, and I won’t get it back.”

That journaling can really help you think about what matters and how you spend your time. It’s a mindful moment. So, just think, maybe, about what you want your life (your days) to be about.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Routines can sometimes be the epitome of their lives. Make each day your best day. Get the cat food can. Take your walk. Look forward to all the things!

RANDOM THOUGHT LINK

Link to that AP article

PLACES TO SUBMIT THIS DECEMBER! THE DRABBLE HARVEST CONTEST

[1 October 2024 through 31 December 2024]

A "drabble" is defined as a short story containing exactly precisely no more and no fewer than 100 words. It has a title, which can be from 1 to 15 words-- but no more than 15. That's a drabble.

You have to count each word. Hyphenated words, such as tete-a-tete, count as one word. Don't use your word count tool to count the words, because that tool will count an ellipsis ( . . . ) as three words, which really should not be counted at all. It will also count dashes ( - ) as words, which is wrong. So count each word by sight, not by tool.

Our drabble contests have themes. For each contest, we will simply throw the theme out there. Whatever the theme inspires you to write, that's what you write.

The theme of this contest is:

Hunting with the Wolves

This contest is open from 1 October 2024 through 31 December 2024. You have two months to write 100 words. Easy!

Ah, but once you have written them, where do you send them? You send them to the contest editor, Terrie Leigh Relf, at tlrelf at gmail dot com. You'll have to combine that address--sorry, but we don't want her to be spammed. Send your submission in the body of the e-mail, please. If you want anything italicized, please indicate by * before and after the word[s] to be italicized.

Pay for drabbles is 1 cent a word, which means one dollar per drabble. Pay for First Place is $5.00, and pay for Second Place is $2.00.

SUBSTACK ITSELF

According to Curiosity Never Killed The Writer, “Substack runs a monthly short story competition. Its mission is to “revive the art of the short story, support artists, and produce something wonderful.” Genre: Short story. Length: 6,000-10,000 words. Prize: $100 plus 50% of subscription revenue to be sent by Paypal, Zelle, or check. Deadline: December 31, 2024. Reprints are ok so long as you still have the rights to distribute.”

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.

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!

How to Write Good Dialogue, Wallabies, and the Three-Beat Rule

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 19:12:05 +0000

Dogs are Smarter Than People, Writing Exercise, Cool Submission Opportunity

So, we’re been talking about dialogue in novels lately and tips about it and the purpose of it. To find any back posts, just head to LIVING HAPPY and search “dialogue.”

One of the things that some writing stylists talk about is the three-beat rule, which is credited to Screenwriter Cynthia Whitcomb.

Reedsy explains this as:

“What this recommends, essentially, is to introduce a maximum of three dialogue ‘beats’ (the short phrases in speech you can say without pausing for breath) at a time. Only after these three dialogue beats should you insert a dialogue tag, action beat, or another character’s speech.”

If it sounds a bit formulaic, well, it is. But it can be really helpful, too, the way formulas usually can.

Reedsy made a little graphic to demonstrate all this:

Here’s another example from Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451:

Montag stopped at the door, with his back turned. “Millie?”

A silence. “What?”

“Millie? Does the White Clown love you?”

No answer.

“Millie, does—” He licked his lips. “Does your ‘family’ love you, love you very much, love you with all their heart and soul, Millie?”

There’s no Rule of Three here. It’s more Rule of Three or Less, which makes it a tiny bit less formulaic, right, and it’s natural.

What Bradbury does is integrate the dialogue (spoken word) with the dialogue beats (the stopping at the door, the silence, the licking of lips.”That action beat is different from a dialogue tag, which is the she said, he said, we yelled. It is a beat of action or emotion or setting/senses. And the dialogue beat again (which is what the rule is about) is the "short phrases in speech you can say without pausing for breath.:

But back to the less-than-three-beat rule. When we look up that at that Bradbury piece, emotions glide right in. He communicates the tension of the scene, right? And those short lines and short bits of talking make it very fast paced.

People's brains react to that fast pace and recognize it and look for it in dialogue.

PLACE TO SUBMIT

THE FABER ACTION! PRIZE

Faber launches the Action! Prize in direct response to research from the National Literacy Trust that reveals children’s reading enjoyment is at its lowest level in almost two decades, and that the problem is most acute for boys.

The prize will be launched in conjunction with Literary Manager and Film/TV Producer Eddie Gamarra, who will be judging the prize alongside Kieran Larwood, author of the World of Podkin One-Ear series, and with the support of EmpathyLab.

The Action! Prize, now open to agented and unagented writers in the UK, Ireland and US, calls for fast-paced and filmic, action-packed adventure stories, and offers a publishing contract to the three winners. Entries to the prize need to feature a diverse cast of fully rounded characters in any one of these four age bands: 7–9, 9–11, 12–14, 14+.

Faber Publisher Leah Thaxton says:

‘We are all alarmed at the falling number of children reading for pleasure, especially when it comes to boys; it is clear they are not finding enough of what they need on the shelves. I’m keen we offer a much wider range of instantly appealing, action-packed stories that will compete with the adrenaline rush of gaming and screens. We know books are vital to children’s development, so this prize is a call-out for high octane, filmic, thrilling fiction that will get children hooked (back) into books.’

Founder of EmpathyLab, the UK’s only charity that focuses on building children’s empathy through use of high-quality literature, Miranda McKearney, OBE, says:

‘This generation of boys face so many issues, including toxic masculinity, where an empathy education would help. Scientific research shows that empathy is learnable, and that books are a powerful tool to build it. So this Faber prize is a really welcome, practical initiative. Over time it will be a pipeline for author events from male authors, acting as inspiring empathy role models. Right now, our world has never needed empathy more.’

Submissions are until January 30. More information is here.

DOG TIP OF THE POD

Dogs like short sentences when it comes to dialogue. Sit. Treat. Walk.

People do, too.

It keeps our attention.

COOL EXERCISE

Katherine Cowley has a cool action beats exercise to help.

“Write one paragraph in which a character takes a trip to the grocery store. Use just ONE type of action beat (for example, only long-shot action beats, only extreme close-up action beats, or only future action beats).

“Then write a new paragraph in which a character takes a trip to the grocery store. This time use as many different types of action beats as possible.”

RANDOM THOUGHT LINK

Most of today’s random thought was brought to you by Carrie being anxious and depressed, but the cool stuff about the wallaby is from here.

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.

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 hiss "I Love You." Dialogue tag help and also throwing tacos isn't cool

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 18:11:24 +0000

A few years ago, we posted this episode about dialogue, and honestly? We're . . . um. . . burnt out because of the election and people. So, since we're already focusing on dialogue over on LIVING HAPPY, we're recycling (upcycing) this from a few years ago. Thanks for putting up with us!

These next few podcasts, we thought we should get all nitty-gritty with some quick grammar tips or style tips for people writing fiction.

It can help you nonfiction writers, too, we swear.

When you’re writing dialogue (people talking to each other), you’re going to want to follow these punctuation rules.

Use quotes.
Have the dialogue tag (who the speaker is, the he said/she asked) in the actual same paragraph as the dialogue.
Punctuate it all correctly. (That’s a lot of knowledge right there.)

But here’s the big one:

Don’t go screwing around with those dialogue tags, also known as speaker tags.

You want to keep it simple when it’s a dialogue tag.

“Said” and “asked” are your besties here. If you do anything else? You look like a crappy writer who is trying too hard and the tag becomes more attention-grabbing than the very important words your character said.

“I love you,” she said reads a lot differently than “I love you,” she murmured and bellowed and hissed.

That can be your intention, but you don’t want to keep doing it all the time.

Here look at it.

“I love you,” she murmured.

“I love you,” he cat-called.

“I know,” she bellowed.

He screamed, “Of course you do.”

“And what do you mean by that?” she enthused.

So, the other big thing to remember is this: You can’t sigh out or smile out words, so don’t use them for speaker tags. You can use them for dialogue beats, but that means you have to punctuate them differently.

“I love you,” she said. – Requires a comma after the word ‘you,’ and a lower-case S for ‘she.’

“I love you.” She sighed. – Requires a period after the word ‘you,’ and an upper-case S for ‘she.’

Oh, and romance and horror writers, we all love to make our characters hiss especially when our lovers are shapeshifters, but you can’t hiss out a bunch of words if there are no s-sounds.

WRITING TIPS OF THE POD

Make sure your reader knows who is speaking by putting the dialogue tag next to the dialogue.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Only call attention to the things you want to call attention to.

In the Mood to Randomly Buy Us Coffee or the dogs some treats? Click here AND SEND US A $1. Earn a Shout-out on the podcast, too!

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.

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!

LINKS WE TALK ABOUT

https://shepherdexpress.com/puzzles/news-of-the-weird/news-of-the-weird-nov-11-2021

https://www.merriam-webster.co

Do You Need a Beta Reader? Also, Georgia Police Say Don't Copulate Outside McDonalds.

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 17:34:13 +0000

So, in the world of writing, everyone talks about needing a beta reader and a critique partner.

Everyone that is, except Carrie, who has trust issues and survives as a lonely, isolated writer in Maine.

What is a beta reader?

It's that person who reads your story, gives you some mild suggestions that feel like a big hug. This is a person you want to party with, a person you can cry to, a person with no mean judgement. This person is basically the human equivalent of your dog: loyal, helpful, good and they give you advice.

What is a critique partner?

These awesome people help you feel less alone, they share stories and ideas with you. They see your story piece by piece, usually, and they help you find the flaws in this work-in-process. These people are like your life partner. They see you without make-up. They see you vomiting into the porcelain pig of your creativity and they hold up your hair because nobody wants puke in hair.

Do you need beta readers?

According to everyone else in the world, yes.

But remember they aren’t an editor. They aren’t a critique partner. They aren’t your dad. They are just someone who gives you feedback.

There’s a great article on beta readers in The Write Practice that goes, “You might not want to hear this, but there is something wrong with your book.

“Hear me out. You know how you can read the same page twenty times and then someone comes along and points out a typo? Yep. We've all been there.

“The same thing can happen with major issues in your book. Things like inconsistencies in world-building, character description, plot lines, and even misplaced objects in the story can throw your readers out of your book and confuse the heck out of them.

“One of my beta readers caught the fact that I had my characters shackled and then a couple of paragraphs later, they were swinging fists and fighting. Where did the shackles go? Good question, dear beta reader.”

And that is why beta readers are great. You want them to be honest, to actually give you feedback, and to read in the genre your story is in and point out in a nice and gentle loving way about inconsistencies.

Ignore everything else Shaun says in this podcast.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Dog Tip For Life - Don't be afraid of showing us the messy, disgusting, less-than-perfect aspects of your process. We can love you no matter what.

Life Tip Of the Pod - Pick your critique partners carefully, man. Seriously. Pick someone who wants to stay up with you rather than pull you down.

RANDOM THOUGHT LINK

It’s here.

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.

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!

PLACES TO SUBMIT

The Passionfruit Review, Deadline: November 24, 2024 (Gold Star Program): Issue 14
San Antonio Review, Deadline: Dec 1 2024,(Gold Star Program): Fiction & Nonfiction Prose

Why Fractured Families Drive Bestseller Success and He Sniffs Shoes!

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Thu, 17 Oct 2024 17:21:34 +0000

We’ve started a series of paid and free posts and podcast episodes about writing bestsellers. Our first post about this is here. To see them all just look up “hit novel” or “bestselling” in the search bar.

In his book Hit Lit, which we’ve been talking about, James W. Hall talks about 12 elements that he thinks really make those super-popular-multi-million-copy bestsellers in American fiction in the past 100 years or so.

And one of those features?

It’s a fractured family.

Yep. That’s a big feature of what Hall found in the 12 books he analyzed, (Gone With the Wind, Peyton Place, To Kill a Mockingbird, Valley of the Dolls, The Godfather, The Exorcist, Jaws, The Dead Zone, The Hunt for Red October, The Firm, The Bridges of Madison County and The Da Vinci Code).

“Families under economic stress, families at emotional war, families splitting apart, families with a missing parent, families dealing with disease, death, infidelity, job stress, or out-right life-threatening danger. You name it. Badly destabilized families are featured in each of our twelve bestsellers,” Hall writes.

Why? That’s the question, I think.

Why do we as readers buy and books that have fractured families in them. OR is it that books with a lot of these elements and features (there are 12 that Hall lists) make books that feel like a lived and recognizable experience.

Most of us know what a fractured family feels like. Most of us know what it is to feel like an outsider, to live in a time of crisis, are intrigued by secret societies.

These novels hit at commonalities in human experience. And families (even a lack of one) are things that resonates throughout our culture.

RANDOM THOUGHT

A man was arrested for sneaking into his neighbors’ homes and sniffing their shoes. the AP article about this is here.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

If you have to, go ahead and sniff shoes, just don’t eat them. Humans get mad about 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 “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.

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

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!

Some features of the top selling novels

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 18:40:23 +0000

Dogs are Smarter Than People

There’s an old NPR article about writing bestsellers that quotes critic Ruth Franklin’s overview of American best-sellers as saying "No possible generalization can be made regarding the 1,150 books that have appeared in the top 10 of the fiction best-seller list since its inception."

In his book Hit Lit, which we’ve been talking about, James W. Hall disagrees, talking about 12 elements that he thinks really make those super-popular-multi-million-copy bestsellers in American fiction in the past 100 years or so.

We’ve been talking about that a lot. Hall analyzed Gone With the Wind, Peyton Place, To Kill a Mockingbird, Valley of the Dolls, The Godfather, The Exorcist, Jaws, The Dead Zone, The Hunt for Red October, The Firm, The Bridges of Madison County and The Da Vinci Code.

And I just wanted to have a moment to regroup because I found an old interview with Hall and Marc Schultz on Publisher’s Weeklywhere he talks about what element he found in those 12 top selling books that surprised him.

He says, “One I didn’t expect to find is something we came to call the Golden Country, which is a phrase from Orwell’s 1984. Winston, the protagonist, trapped in this dull empty world, has created in his imagination this edenic, natural, beautiful landscape called the Golden Country. It’s his ideal world. And not just in these 12 books, but in all the bestsellers we looked at, there is always an image of a place or a time that’s this idealized, edenic, natural landscape that serves a reference point for much of the story.”

We’ve talked a bit about that in the last week. There’s this idealized want of an idealized world or time that we long for, right? And the characters in our books long for it, too.

In that same interview, Hall says, “But the ingredients themselves remain the same, as Americans we’re really reading, and have wanted to read, permutations of the same book for the last 100 years, and probably into the foreseeable future.”

And it doesn’t have to necessarily be awesome writing for us Americans to want to read these books.

“Grace Metalious, author of Peyton Place, once cracked, "If I'm a lousy writer, then a hell of a lot of people have got lousy taste.’” Sarah Weinman writes, “What Metalious and her kin in best-sellerdom really possess, as Hall explains so well in Hit Lit, is the power to connect with readers through their hearts and guts as much as, if not more than, their minds.”

It’s about your heart, humans. About your heart.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

As we learned from the raccoons, don’t be aggressive if you don’t get your food or else they call the sheriff on you.

RANDOM THOUGHT LINK ALL ABOUT A WOMAN CORNERED BY 100 RACCOONS. YIKES!

The link

PLACE TO SUBMIT

Guidelines:

The winner receives $3,000; online publication; and a consultation with Marin Takikawa, a literary agent with The Friedrich Agency.
The second- and third-place finalists receive cash prizes ($300/$200), online publication, and agent feedback.
Submitted excerpts must be under 6,000 words.
Submitted work must be previously unpublished. This includes personal blogs, social media accounts, and other websites. Previously published excerpts will be automatically disqualified.
The entry fee is $20.
Simultaneous and multiple submissions are allowed, though each submission requires a $20 entry fee.
This contest is for emerging writers only. Writers with single-author book-length work published or under contract with a major press are ineligible. We are interested in providing a platform to new writers; authors with books published by indie presses are welcome to submit unpublished work, as are self-published authors.
The contest’s deadline is 11:59pm PST on Sunday, October 27, 2024.

For full guidelines, check here.

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.

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!

Want to be popular? Try a fish out of water

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 18:37:44 +0000

Dogs are Smarter than People podcast

Whew. Blah. Blah. Blah. Right? Not a bestselling way to start a podcast episode.

What’s a better way?

Well, according to Jack Hall who wrote Hit Lit, “In most bestsellers, there’s a central character who sets off on a journey that takes her from rustic America into turbulent urban landscapes, where her agrarian values either help her succeed or doom her to failure. Almost as often, the heroes of bestsellers make an exodus in the opposite direction, from the pressures of cities to the bucolic countryside.”

Think the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Think the Wizard of Oz.

Think Star Wars.

Think Twilight.

Think Outlander.

Jason Hellerman for NoFilmSchool writes, “The "fish out of water" idiom refers to a character who is removed from their normal day to day and has to catch up with their new outlook on the world. This writing trope is very popular in TV pilot episodes, action movies, and across almost any genre.

“If the character adapts fast to the new environment, it's said they are like ‘a duck takes to water.’"

You might be a city girl in the country or a country boy in the city or just a Hallmark Christmas movie character, but there’s something that resonates in that trope, something that makes a bestseller.

Hall takes it a bit deeper saying that it’s about mythic identities. We see it in elections. The midwestern dad VP choice. The hillbilly boy done good VP choice. The outsider. The insider. We create myths where every single person in the middle of America is a part of “Heartland” full of “hardworking blue-collar” peeps.

“Red state vs blue state. Working-class vs corporate elite. Virtuous vs decadent,” Hall writes.

These polarities become mythic, gigantic, and they popularize stereotypes and polarize views.

“While we all know these labels are bogus, they are so ingrained in our sense of national identity that we reflexively embrace them even as we discount their accuracy,” Hall writes.

Books that argue both sides of these polarities and tensions? They tend to be the bestsellers.

DOG TIP OF THE POD

Don’t be afraid to explore new experiences to make the best story of your life that you can!

RANDOM THOUGHT LINKS

https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/airline-news/2024/09/21/mouse-airplane-meal-emergency-landing/75324632007

https://shepherdexpress.com/puzzles/news-of-the-weird/news-of-the-weird-week-of-october-3-2024

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.

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!

America as Paradise? Part of Making A Bestselling Novel?

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 15:02:51 +0000

We’ve started a series of paid and free posts about writing bestsellers. Our first post about this is here.

In James Hall’s book, HIT LIT, he looks at twelve top-selling novels and tries to find similarities to their success.

One thing that he found in the twelve novels is the theme of “America as paradise.”

He writes, “America-as-paradise, an idea that so powerfully shapes our national identity, is one of the key motifs.”

Despite the decade the story was written in, he and his students, he wrote, kept discovering the motif of America as a lost Eden.

“American readers have a powerful hankering for stories grounded in the earth itself,” he writes. “Surely, part of this hunger is connected to one of our central national myths—America as the new Eden. A land of second chances, fresh beginnings in the virginal wilderness.”

Blame it on the Puritans, maybe, but Americans have traditionally been into making novels into bestsellers if they talk about this.

Often, the story has to do with getting back to this golden land that the hero or heroine has been cast out of or alienated from. Think Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind trying to get back to her vision of the South and Tara, her home. Think Michael Corleone in the Godfather cast out of the family and its golden promise.

That longing to go back to the way things were (a more innocent time, a more accepting family or culture, a place of safety) is a common aspect in American hit novels.

Alfred Kazin says way back in On Native Grounds (1956), a lot of American literature “rests upon a tradition of enmity to the established order, more significantly a profound alienation from it.”

You can see this happen in the books that have sold over 100 million novels as well

The English books: A Tale of Two Cities, the first Harry Potter, And Then There Were None, The Hobbit, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland all have the loss of innocence or place and then the desire to get back to it or at least some mourning of it.

These are English novels, though. The top-selling American novels are the Da Vinci Code and The Bridges of Madison County, both selling over 80 million copies. Both involve protagonists who lose their safe worlds and lean into something secret, something complicated, across large vistas and settings.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Go to your greener pastures and escape the rodeo, but also be okay with coming back home to where it’s safe, too.

RANDOM THOUGHT LINK

It’s from the AP

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.

LET’S HANG OUT!

Do you want to take a little online course, learn with me as your writing coach, buy some art or listen to our podcasts? Or give me a buck and read unpublished books on Patreon?

Just CLICK ON THIS LINK and find out how we can interact more

WRITE SUBMIT SUPPORT

It’s my last time teaching Write, Submit, Support at the Writing Barn. It’s online. It’s six-months. It’s a kick-butt program. Come hang out with me and a few other writers for six months. Tons of feedback. Tons of support. It’s a great program. It is not starting this Sunday because of sickness and is being pushed back a month so you just barely have time to join.

Here’s a link to learn more.

And you can always just hang out with me here! And I coach and edit on the side, too.

Carrie

Tick…Tick…Tick…Using Time to Make a Hit Novel

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 18 Sep 2024 18:38:54 +0000

So, last week was Shaun’s birthday. Yay, Shaun!

We’ve started a series of paid and free posts about writing bestsellers. Our first post about this is here.

And today, we’re talking about a main element in writing a hit novel. Some people call it The Big Clock. Some people call it a Ticking Clock. Some people call it The Timer. Dramatic theory is fancy and calls it a Timelock, but basically, it’s the ticking bomb, a known and harsh deadline that your character has before it all explodes in her face.

Glen C. Strathy explains, “The technique is to give the protagonist a set amount of time by which to achieve the Story Goal or else suffer the consequence. Generally, you create tension by not allowing your protagonist to achieve the goal until the very last second (which is also the crisis of the story). We call this type of limit a ticking clock.”

So, examples might be:

You only have until 4 p.m. to get the antidote to your zombie hamster Ham-Hammy-Ham-Ham before he is a zombie forever.
An evil group of cheese-loving bunnies will eat ALL THE CHEESE IN THE WORLD if they don’t receive 3,000 pounds of gouda by nightfall.
A puppy-nado is coming in three hours and you have to evacuate the town of Bar Harbor before then. WILL YOU MAKE IT IN TIME? Actually, do you want to?

Strathy also calls this “an excellent way to keep your plot under control. For instance, if you give your characters a 24-hour ticking clock, you know all the events of your story must take place within that timeframe.”

It’s a way to keep your plot from going all wild and willy-nilly.

Cool, right?

James W. Hall calls it an “ever moving second hand” that “raises the anxiety level.”

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Dogs use the time element constantly. Whining and returning to your goal, always upping the want and stakes help.

PLACE TO SUBMIT

INSTANT NOODLES!

Holiday Issue (V4 I3): Holiday Noods

HOLIDAY NOODS is our 2024 winter holiday theme. Give us your best holiday fails (any December holiday, from Hannukah, to Solstice, to NYE, etc.) or your best funny work about noodles that happens to ALSO be holiday-themed in some way. The point of the end-of-year issue is always to be light-hearted to downright silly.

Submissions close OCTOBER 15, 2024 and the issue publishes DECEMBER 1, 2024.

INSTANT NOODLES IS CURATED BY THE MEMBERS OF THE OLD SCRATCH PRESS COLLECTIVE

Submission link is here.

COOL WRITING EXERCISE: THE STATUS QUO

What is the status quo as your novel starts?

Got it?

What changes it?

RANDOM THOUGHT LINK

Got it from here.

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.

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!

The Absolutely Simplest Plot Structure Ever

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 04 Sep 2024 16:52:37 +0000

A lot of the writers I teach get really freaked out about structure. They go on multiple craft book journeys trying to find the structure that resonates with them, the one that gives them that beautiful a-ha moment. Who can blame them?

Don't we all want that beautiful a-ha moment?

They learn about pinch points, rising action, falling action, subplots, inciting incidents, midpoints, themes, narrative arc, emotional arc, hamster zombies (just kidding) and they hyperventilate along the way.

There is no reason to hyperventilate if this way of looking at writing structure doesn’t work for your brain. You can simplify it a lot with no zombie hamsters involved.

Ready?

Here is the simplest structure choice.

You have a character.
Your character has a problem. Let everyone reading know she has a problem.
How will she solve it?
Make her try to solve it.
Make her fail.
Make her try to solve it again.
Make her fail again.
Do this until near the end (¾'s in) and make everything seem absolutely hopeless.
Let her solve the damn problem.
Let her rejoice.

How many times should she try?

In our Western culture, we like the number three for some reason. I'm personally more of a fan of the number four. But we authors tend to give the main character three big attempts to solve her issue before we let her succeed. We're mean like that.

Make it tougher

We call this the rising action, but basically it means that each time she tries to fix things, it should be harder, there should be more at risk, she should be more desperate and emotionally invested. We, the readers, should also be more invested as it goes along.

When the attempt fails, the tension gets a bit mellower until it rises again even higher for the second and third attempts. It becomes a pattern.

That's It - The Simplest Plot Structure Ever

Really. It's a pretty simple plot structure but it works. No, I didn't mention inciting incidents and midpoints and other things, because this is the simple plot structure. Key word: simple.

But, don't forget that even with the simplest of plot structures, the point of the story is to have it make sense. When your character does something, let there be consequences that logically move us to the next part of the story. Remember cause and effect? That's important to us writers.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Pogie says to just keep trying.

PLACE TO SUBMIT

Shenandoah. Genre: Fiction. Payment: $80 per 1000 words of prose up to $400. Deadline: Opens September 10, 2024, and closes when they reach capacity.

The Last Line. Genre: Fiction that ends with the last line provided. Payment: $20-$40. Deadline: October 1, 2024.

COOL WRITING EXERCISE

This is via Reedsy:

“The Outsider

“If you're working on a novel or short story, write a pivotal scene from an outside observer's perspective who has no role in the story.

HELP US AND DO AN AWESOME GOOD DEED

Or, um, just subscribe to this blog and maybe even pay $5 a month to get the paid-subscriber only posts. Why? Because I do not want have to start an Only Fans. Just kidding! Sort of. It would have to be about my feet.

OR BUY ART?

You can buy some of my art. I paint to help inform my stories and some of the prints are available now. There will be more soon. You can check it out here.

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.

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!

Show, Don't Tell, Baby Face Cutie Pie Cutie

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 28 Aug 2024 20:06:49 +0000

We talked about this a long while ago, and I've revisited it, too, but it's time, my writing friends, to revisit it.

So in writing one of the biggest tips that you start hearing starts in around third grade and it’s “SHOW DON’T TELL.”

And it’s sound writing advice, but it’s pretty sound life advice, too.

How many of us have heard the words, “I love you,” but never seen the actions that give proof to the words? You can tell someone you love them incessantly for hours, but if you don’t show them it, too, it’s pretty likely that the words aren’t going to rock that person’s world.

Telling is like this:

Shaun was a hotty.

Showing is like this:

Carrying four grocery bags and a kitten, biceps bulging, Shaun walked through the parking lot, approaching a couple of older men. The smaller man gawped at Shaun, staring at his chest, the kitten, the bags, the biceps.

“Wow,” the man said, pivoting as Shaun strode by. “Just wow.”

The man licked his lips. His partner hit him in the back of the head lightly and said, “I am right here.”

What Does This Mean?

Both examples illustrate that Shaun is a hotty, but one states it as fact (telling) and one elucidates with examples (description, reaction, action).

Here’s One More Quick Example

Telling

The lawyer liked to use big words to impress people.

Showing

Carpenter stuck his thumbs into the waist of his pants, lowered his voice and said, “Pontification is one of the more mirthful and blithe aspects of the judical system.”

IN REAL LIFE IT MATTERS TOO.

In life, you want to show too, not just tell all the time.

You can say, “I love you.”

You can also grab someone’s hand and say, “I love you.”

You can also scoff and turn away and step on an ant and say, “I love you.”

WRITING TIP OF THE POD

The actions matter. Showing matters.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Showing and telling simultaneously in life (not writing) works to get treats.

Random THought Link

It's right here.

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.

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!

Type your email…

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!

What Do Readers Want and the Kentucky Meat Shower Incident

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 19:17:02 +0000

Readers want questions that they’ll get answers to.

They want to be hooked along.

They want to unwrap the answer the way people unwrap a birthday present.

That’s what Robert Prince says, anyway, writing in his class at the University of Alaska, ”The key to understanding what audiences really want in a story is to understand that the audience doesn’t want to know everything they need to know when they need to know it! They want questions that get answered later. Questions are what intrigue audiences and keep them sticking around because they care about the answers. Every time you answer a question in your story, you better quickly come up with a new question or already have others that need answering.

“Consider Christmas or birthday parties, for example. Why do we wrap the presents? That’s ridiculous. It’s a lot of extra work, you have to buy this paper that you only throw away, and it gets ripped off almost immediately after the person sees it! Spock would have a heck of a time figuring out why we do that. We do it because we love questions. We love questions. We love questions. Few things fascinate us more than an unanswered question. Heck, they basically named a long-running, rebooted TV series after this: Unsolved Mysteries. They could have just as well called it “Unanswered Questions” but it doesn’t have the same dramatic appeal. We wrap presents because the wrapping paper turns a Lego set into a question and a question is more fun than a Lego set, believe it or not. The wrapping paper makes us ask, “What could be in there? Is it what I asked for? Is it something else? Is it cool? It could be almost anything!””

We talk about this today in the podcast. Plus, a random thought and the below dog tip.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Find a good question to snuggle with.

RANDOM THOUGHT

Our random thoughts about the Kentucky Meat Shower of 1876 are sourced from here and here.

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.

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!

The Elements of Storytelling: The Atomic Bomb Test

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 17:27:34 +0000

Author, podcaster and professor Robert Prince has this thing he does when he watches a movie: the Atomic Bomb test.

“After I’ve watched about 20 minutes of the film I ask myself, ‘If an atomic bomb were to go off and destroy everyone in this film, would I care all that much?’ If the answer is no, I don’t keep watching the film,” he says in his class at the University of Alaska.

He has this test because to make your reader keep reading, they have to care what happens to the characters in the story.

This is true in real life, too, right? When we interact with people, most of us have levels of caring. We might worry and care more about our parent or child when they drop the ice cream carton on their instep than about the random guy in the frozen dairy section of the grocery store when he does it.

But, if that guy starts tearing up, maybe is standing above the ice cream splattered all across the store’s scuffed tile floor and says, “This was for my mom. She’s dying and she asked for rocky road ice cream. This is the last rocky road ice cream!”

Well, yeah, we might care a bit more.

“A key component to storytelling is getting your audience to care about what happens to the characters in your story,” Prince says. “People stick around to hear the end of stories because they have grown to care about the people in the story and want to know what happens to them. If you’ve ever cried when a character died in a movie, then the filmmakers did an awesome job of making you care about the people in that film.”

The question becomes how to do that.

According to Prince, “you can make people care about the characters in your story by describing them well enough that your audience can picture them and recognize them as a certain type of person--maybe like someone they already know. How old are they? What do they look like? What kind of personality do they have? Do they have any particularly unique traits or mannerisms? This is why written news stories about people tend to include some seemingly odd and superficial facts about them at first. Those facts are not included because the reporter is particularly superficial. The reporter included those facts because they know you will not be as invested in what happened to that person if you cannot picture them in your mind.”

Empathy, however, isn’t just built on perfection. We wouldn’t care as much about that grocery store guy with his ice cream if he’d just done the right things, expressed no emotion, and there was a clean up on aisle twelve.

Empathy builds off flaws and human worth, those virtues we love. It’s why Blake Snyder has “Save the Cat” as a trope and an inspiration. We care more about characters who save the cat or the puppy or even the zombie hamster.

“Flaws make characters relatable, more human, and feel a little more like underdogs,” Prince writes. “This is why James Bond has to get beat up in every 007 movie. That’s how the filmmakers show us he is human so we can relate better to him. It’s the same reason Superman has kryptonite. We feel for characters when we see that they have some sort of weakness.”

And that other part is the struggle. We empathize with characters that are having a hard time getting what they want.

So to help your readers empathize with your characters you want to pass that Atomic Bomb test and you do that by . . .

Good description and unique mannerisms
Flaws
Human worth/virtues
Struggles

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Be like dogs. Dogs have human worth.

RANDOM BS GENERATOR LINK

The link is here.

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.

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!

Five Quick Ways To Get Story Ideas

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 14:28:09 +0000

Brainstorming . . . 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?

Pogie 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 the only way I could deal with it was to write my way through it.

Fifth Way—An Emotional Blizzard

Get emotional. What is it that always makes you laugh, cry with joy, weep with anger? What are the situations that pull at your heartstrings? Think about that as story. Write.

Dog Tip for Life

Inspiration is just attention. Notice what's around you. Then ideas will come.

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.

RANDOM THOUGHT LINKS

APA article NPR

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.

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!

Setting Is SO FREAKING Important

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 00:16:34 +0000

Setting is where your story happens. It’s the time period. It’s the physical place. You can have more than one setting.

There. That’s the definition. We’re all good, right?

Wrong.

Let’s really talk about setting.

WHAT SETTING DOES

Setting is the foundation of your story. It is the ModPodge that has an addictive smell (Cough. Not addicted to ModPodge. Look away.) and glues all the story together.

WHAT HAPPENS WITHOUT SETTING

Your characters float around in nothingness.

Your plot makes no sense. You can’t have hamsters taking over the world if there is no world.

You have no theme. You can’t care about the kindness of strangers if there is no reason for the strangers to need to be kind.

You have no atmosphere. Atmosphere is sexy. It’s the feeling of the story. The ambience.

LITTLE THINGS SHOW IT

Just by defining a tree you are telling the reader something about the setting.

Like if you write:

She stared up at the palm tree.

You’re giving the reader clues. A palm tree will not be in Iceland. They are somewhere comparatively warm.

If you write:

She got out of bed.

You’re giving the reader a clue that she is wealthy enough to have a bed and in a culture or world where people sleep in beds.

And the thing is that clues are needed. Specific clues. Real clues. Without a setting, without a place where the story happens and a time where the story happens, the reader floats there in the sky, ungrounded, unanchored.

You know what happens when a reader floats in the sky? The reader drifts away. Your character does an action--like a fart. So you want to fart in some specific setting to help the reader sniff out and remember where they are.

Being specific anchors the reader. It ties them to your story and its characters. You will remember a fart that smells like eggs mixed with tuna mixed with a McDonald’s french-fry in church during a funeral. So be specific in details.

More than that though? Setting anchors your characters and your plot. Place makes us (and our characters) who they are. It gives a story atmosphere. It gives the character a world to interact with.

Think of a creepy Stephen King novel. It’s creepy because he takes certain aspects of Maine and creepifies them. Think of Crazy Rich Asians or The Bridgerton novels. They are luxurious because of the places where they take place AND the places where they take place help inform the novels, the characters and the plots.

HOW DO YOU MAKE SETTING?

Go in slow. Don’t overwhelm us with details about the Hamster World of Ham-Ham-Ster and its 87 leaders of the Teddy Bear Nation and all their names that start with H. Establish it. Move on with your plot and sprinkle in important details as you go. Be sparing. Only add to overall story.

Figure out what pieces of the setting matter the most. Is it the claustrophobic trees? The swarms of tourists disembarking cruise ships. The smell of blood coming from the old, wooden floorboards? Use those details. Not the kind of coffee your heroine puts in her Keurig unless that's really important.

Make it active. The setting matters as the characters see it, move through it, react to it. Whatever is weird about that place and how your characters interact with it? Focus on that.

Don’t be afraid to go places, to use Google maps, the internet. Do everything you can to get fully into that place so you use it later in your work. Pay attention to all the settings and use it.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Pay attention to where you are. That helps you know how to react, interact and be. So sniff all the fire hydrants. Don't Google Map your life. Experience it for real.

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.

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!

Type your email…

Why Are Publishing Imprints Closing?

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 19:11:26 +0000

Algonquin Young Readers Will End in September

The traditional book publishing world is a bit like the wild west if the cowboys wore pink-framed eyeglasses and could quote Derrida.

People are heroes. People are let go. Entire divisions of publishing houses close. And so on.

And this continues this week with the changes at Hachette Book Group and its announcement of the closure of Workman: Algonquin Young Readers this September.

According to Editorial Director Cheryl Klein, “Our backlist and all books under contract will be absorbed into the Little, Brown Books for Young Readers list.”

But her team Adah Li, Sarah Alpert, and Shaelyn McDaniel will be gone.

Klein stays as editorial director for the Workman Kids Trade list.

Last week, the New York Times’ Alexandra Alter wrote,

“Last month, Hachette Book Group laid off seven employees at its Little, Brown imprint, as part of a corporate restructuring. It has since hired three new editors to fill positions at Little, Brown. These changes followed a reshuffling at the top. Little, Brown’s former editor in chief, Judy Clain, left to run an imprint at Simon & Schuster in January, and in March, Sally Kim, who previously worked as the publisher of Putnam, a Penguin Random House imprint, was appointed as the president and publisher of Little, Brown, becoming the first woman of color to lead the imprint.”

An imprint like Algonquin Young Readers is the way a publisher groups and markets books within the larger umbrella (in this case Workman, which is within the Hachette publishing group).

When an imprint like AYR ends, the authors feel stranded—editor-less—and that can be pretty scary.

Last summer, Penguin Random House (PRH) said it was merging Razorbill into Putnam Children’s; HarperCollins closed Inkyard formerly known as Harlequin Teen.

It’s usually about sales. Traditional publishers rely on sales to pay employees, pay for the books produced, pay the authors, and if the sales are not big enough? Things change. Sometimes it’s about personnel. Sometimes it’s about vision.

While it absolutely stinks for the people who lose their jobs or the authors who lose their inprint and people, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the sky is falling for an entire industry. It means things are shifting around.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Sometimes where you end up is better than where you started.- Mr. Murphy

RANDOM THOUGHT LINK

That Bored Panda article is here.

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.

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!

How To Write a Book Description That Gets Readers Tingling All Over

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 18:00:35 +0000

Our podcast title is “How To Write a Book Description That Gets Readers Tingling All Over” and that just sounds naughty, doesn’t it?

And it is a little naughty because this, my friends, is about selling a book, your book, and that requires being a little bit sexy.

Sexy is something I, Carrie, am very very bad at.

Let’s start by thinking about it this way:

A book description is an adverstisement for your book.

Writing a bad ad for your book doesn’t make you a sucky novelist. It just makes you unskilled at that. And that’s okay. You’ve been learning character development and plotting and novel structure and pacing. It’s okay to not know this part of the book world too.

Yet.

Here are the things you need to know about how to write a book description

MAKE IT BETWEEN 150 AND 250 WORDS

You want it to not be as long as the book. Or even as long as a novella. Or even as long as this post.

Any longer? People apparently stop paying attention.

FOCUS ON THE BARE PLOT MINIMUM AND THE HERO/PROTAGONIST

Show us how the main character’s decision has set them toward the adventure of the book.

MAKE IT IN THE THIRD PERSON

The third person is when you talk about other people and don’t use the “I.”

So,

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar decided to adopt a hamster, little did they know, it was a zombie.

Not

We adopted a zombie hamster.

DO NOT BE CHEESY

You don’t want to go all fancy-pants on the book description. Stay away from adverbs and adjectives and a zillion clauses. Simple wins.

So, don’t write:

In the adorable town of Bar Harbor, Maine where tourist avidly romp in the summer and locals stoically manage the hard winters beneath the mini mountains and rocky coast, two hard-working podcasters tried to adopt a small rodent.

HOOK THEM IN

Book hooks happen in the first pages of the story, but they also need to happen in story descriptions.

A good way to do this is to show how your hero is unlikely to achieve their goal on their adventure.

Absolutely clueless podcasters Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar decided to adopt a hamster, hopelessly hoping for something easy to love. Little did they know that Hammy the Hamster was a zombie.

MAKE YOUR WORD CHOICE COUNT AND WORK FOR THE BOOK

If you use one or two words that are emotional and full of power, you can impact the reader and make them want your book.

Our book looks like some quirky fantasy, right? We know that from the plot.

If it was a mystery, we might use a word like MURDER>

Two podcasters. One zombie hamster. And a little Maine town about to host a million tourists.

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar weren’t expecting that the hamster they’d adopted to help their podcast ratings would end up a zombie. Or that it would threaten all the tourists heading in to celebrate Acadia National Park’s bicentennial.

Now, these clueless podcasters, looking for a way out of their podunk town have a choice: find a way to get people to listen to them and protect both the tourists and Hammy the Hamster or just give up and hunker down with some Doritos (Hammy’s favorite) before it’s too late.

The future of Bar Harbor, Maine—and a million tourists—depend on them.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Hook ‘em and they’ll buy your book. In dog world, they’ll give you a treat when you hook ‘em. Show them what they need but bring them along, wanting more.

PLACE TO SUBMIT

These are from Duotrope which has an AMAZING list. You should check it out.

21 Jul 2024 06:59 UTC Macrame Literary Journal (Gold Star Program): Fiction
21 Jul 2024 06:59 UTC Macrame Literary Journal (Gold Star Program): Micro-Fiction
31 Jul 2024 14:29 UTC Witcraft (Gold Star Program): Witcraft Annual Humour Competition (Charges fees.)
31 Jul 2024 22:59 UTC The Passionfruit Review (Gold Star Program): Issue 11
31 Jul 2024 23:59 UTC Sunspot Literary Journal (Gold Star Program): Novella-length fiction, CNF, or graphic novel (Charges fees.)

Writing Exercise:

This one is just a simple prompt from Writers Connection

“The Whispering Forest: A forest speaks to those who listen. What secrets does it share, and what price must you pay for its wisdom?”

Random Thought Link

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ap-us-odd-cat-honorary-degree_n_6647b994e4b00e1a0a6c1f51

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.

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!

Pinch, there it is; googly eyes on the train, and yes, we are on our 37th career this year

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 02 Jul 2024 17:06:40 +0000

Dogs are Smarter Than People/Write Better Now

Last week, we talked about pinch points both on the podcast and on the blog, and honestly? Nobody seemed super into it, but we’re finishing up this week. This post is going to be a bit more about the first part of act two of a three-act story, focusing on the time from the first pinch point to the midpoint.

Pause for a plea: Look, I know plot structure isn’t sexy the way character development or drama and obstacles and conflict are, but it’s super important. It makes a difference in your book wooing readers and in it wooing agents.

K.M. Weiland has a really lovely graphic that we’ve included in the podcast notes about where to put those pinch points.

Weiland is a bit of a goddess about structure and what she says about this first pinch point is this:

It comes about 37% of the way into the story.
It tells us that the bad guy has some power.
It can be a whole big scene or just the tiniest of moments
It sets up “the next 1/8th of the story, in which the character will slowly begin to grow into a new awareness of his story’s many truths–and specifically the truth about the nature of the conflict in which he is engaged.”

Right after this big and important pinch point, the hero of your story aka your protagonist moves into the section of the book that comes before the book’s halfway point or midpoint. Weiland calls this space from 37% to 50% a realization place and scenes for your character growth. The protagonist understand what’s going on a bit more. She starts to react with that knowledge informing her reactions and then her actions. Cool, right?

She writes, “In itself, the First Pinch Point does not reveal the true nature of the conflict to the protagonist. Rather, it foreshadows it by providing a peek at facts the protagonist has barely grasped as yet.”

She uses the movie ALIEN a lot to explain this. At the first pinch point, the crew realizes that the alien creature isn’t what they were thinking it was. Their choices start to be informed by that until the midpoint, which Weiland calls the MOMENT OF TRUTH.

At the midpoint in ALIEN that alien smashes its way out of one of the crew’s chest.

The truth of what they are dealing has exploded in the ship and on the screen (and on your novel’s page).

“It’s instructive when watching movies to observe the protagonist’s facial expressions prior to the Moment of Truth and then afterward. Before the Midpoint, he’ll often look baffled as he struggles to keep up with the conflict. Then the light dawns in his eyes at the Midpoint, and from that moment on, there’s a look of knowing determination on his face,” she writes.

Larry Brooks defines pinch points as “An example, or reminder, of the nature and implications of the antagonist force, that is not filtered by the hero’s experience.”

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Sometimes in life, your defining moments don’t come at the midpoint. - Mr. Murphy

So, what he’s saying is don’t think that there are certain points and ages in your life where you have to get things done. Life is not a book and it doesn’t need to be a three-act structure.

PLACE TO SUBMIT

These are via Authors’ Publish.

Bannister Press: Other – the 2024 fantasy short story anthology Bannister Press specializes in supernatural and fantasy stories loved by adults and young adults. For this fiction anthology, they only want submissions from writers who identify as women. “We are seeking international short story submissions by writers who identify as women for an anthology with a focus on what it means to be on the outside looking in, or comfortably or uncomfortably out of step with the world(s) at large, and with a fantasy element (either subtle or writ large). The story can be visually focused, or character/narrative focused, as long as it leaves the reader thinking about the story long after closing the book. We don’t want a lesson, we want an experience that makes us come alive. Humour is fine as long as it’s not about the mic drop.” Deadline: 31 July 2024 (extended) Length: Up to 3,500 words Pay: $0.08/word Details here.

DarkLit Press: In the Gallows Wake – A Pirate Horror Anthology This is a fiction anthology of “piratical horror stories that are certain to plunge readers into the heart of darkness on the high seas, where cursed pirates and spectral ships reign with terror and betrayal, promising no soul safe passage through their nightmarish waters.” And, “Diverse voices in pirate stories transform the high seas into a vibrant canvas of human experience, weaving a rich tapestry that blends historical accuracy with untold narratives, ensuring every wave and whisper carries the weight of authenticity and boundless imagination. This approach not only breathes life into the sails of traditional tales but also charts a course toward a more inclusive and multifaceted exploration of freedom, identity, and adventure.” They also accept reprints. Deadline: 1 August 2024 Length: 4,000-6,000 words Pay: $0.01/word Details here.

WRITING EXERCISE

This one comes from Studio Binder:

“Here are a list of dialogue prompts. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know who the characters are yet, or which character a certain line would be good for. Try not to think about how this could fit into your already existing story, or what scene this should belong in, just write:

“Why didn’t you answer before? I called you three times. Now you’re pretending like nothing happened.”
“I just have a lot of friends so…”
“You hate coffee?”
“It just doesn’t seem normal.”
“I’ve developed a kind of aversion to it. I don’t know, it made sense at the time.”

RANDOM THOUGHT LINK

NYT

LINKS TO LEARN MORE

Larry Brooks, Story Engineering

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-27-2024

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.

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!

Pinch Me, Baby, Talking Sexy to Writers

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 19:38:19 +0000

There are some things in the writing world that don’t make a ton of sense in the world of regular humans.

One of those things is pinch points.

This podcast episode is going to be the start of a quick series of podcasts and regular posts about pinch points. The regular posts will be at our Substack LIVING HAPPY under the WRITE BETTER NOW publication.

So, what are these little twerps called pinch points?

They a way of thinking about novel or story structure that helps us keep the reader engaged.

Pinch points are moments where the tension emerges again or is heightened. It’s a place where you seductively say to the reader, “Hey, baby. Let’s engage again.” Or maybe it’s that they are saying, “Dear Reader, let me remind you what exactly is at stake here for our poor, dear, pathetic hero.”

The pinch points are where the protagonist or hero of your story gets a little bit of pain. Ouch. So mean, us writers are so very mean.

As Writing Mastery describes, “They rekindle the tension that may have waned by reminding us of the primary conflict and what it means for the characters. Without stakes, readers will quickly lose interest—therefore, pinch points are events of the plot that, strategically placed, keep the narrative from losing steam.”

“In the traditional Three-Act Structure, the first act introduces the characters, setting, and conflict, while the third act culminates in the resolution. The second act, which constitutes the middle portion of the story, is often the longest and contains the rising action. Pinch points punctuate this act to create a sense of urgency and drive the story forward.”

Pinch Points Are Not Plot Points

So, here’s the super important thing. Pinch points are not plot points. Yes, there is a lot of P-words in there, but to pinch is not to plot, though a dastardly villain might plot how to pinch.

Plot points

move the story forward
are events
connect the events of your story so it’s not episodic.

Pinch points

Raise stakes or increase the conflict.
Obstruct the hero from getting her goal, so often focus on the bad guy of the story or the antagonist and this is a big part of it, this is what makes it not a turning point
Make the reader curious about what might happen, make them worried about what might happen, so keeps them reading
Show us what our heroes are made of because of the extra pressure that these challenges create.

As Writers Helping Writers writes, “New writers often concentrate on the Hook, Midpoint, and the big twist at the end. But without well-placed Pinch Points, the story will lose its sense of rising action, conflict, and tension. The quest cannot exist without an opponent, and the Pinch Points show the reader what that opposition is all about.

“Pinch Points show how high the stakes are. They also set up the emotional change within the hero as they react to the new situation.”

So, tomorrow on the blog, I’ll be talking about where these babies go in your story.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Do not let the pinch points keep you from moving forward toward your goals.

COOL EXERCISE

Think about the bad guy in your story. Now write down:

Their fetish
What they’d buy at the grocery store
What they’d buy at Wal-Mart
What they could do to make things harder on the hero and easier on themselves

PLACE TO SUBMIT

River Styx

The Castro Prize, named for our founding editor, Michael Castro, is a new prize awarded annually to exemplary works of poetry and fiction. River Styx editors carefully read and discuss contest entries and ultimately submit the strongest ten entries to the judges. For our 2024 contest, Christopher Castellani will judge fiction and Dg Okpik will judge poetry. We will award one winner for fiction and one for poetry, with one runner-up in each genre. The first-place prizes are $1000 each, plus publication in print and online.

The entry fee is $20. If you would like to receive a copy of our latest print issue, River Styx 107, you may do so at a discounted rate of 50% off ($9.95). (Shipping rates apply. The discount is good for one copy of RS107 per entrant and cannot be combined with any other discounts or offers.) Entrants will receive a discount code in their confirmation email.

Works of fiction should not exceed 5000 words. You may send up to three poems. Work must be previously unpublished. You may submit multiple entries but each work must be submitted separately. If the work is a simultaneous submission, we ask that you notify us immediately upon publication elsewhere and withdraw the piece via Submittable. Withdrawing a submission will not result in a refund of the entry fee. The contest runs from May 1, 2024 through September 30, 2024. The winners will be announced on January 1, 2025.

All contest entries are read blind. The winner is chosen based on the strength and inventiveness of the writing, not on academic background, publication history, or any other accolades. Please do not include your name or any other identifying information on the work itself. Submittable provides features that allow us to read the work without seeing the contributor's name, contact information, or cover letter. Once winners are chosen, we can "unhide" this information to identify the winners.

ENTER NOW

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.

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!

Just an Hour a Day Makes You More Bad Ass

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 15:48:46 +0000

There are a lot of people who advocate spending just an hour a day doing something to become awesome. That hour a day is often learning. You study up about what you want to do, you self learn, you teach yourself to be better by learning all about the thing you're into.

So, if you're into writing, you read books about writing and actual books. You study the craft.

So, if you're into knitting, you study knitting. Entrepeneurship? Same thing, but first you probably have to learn how to spell it. My bad there.

There's a cool graph here that talks about how if you read a certain number of books, how you compare to other American adults. It's also a bit depressing because it basically says most Americans read two books a year.

Hallel K has a post on Medium about how you can use the 1-hour rule to catapult yourself into the 1% and I think that's a great post, but it's a little hyperbolizing. We like hyperbole though, right? It makes things easy.

Hallel uses a quote by Earl Nightingale.

“One hour per day of study in your chosen field is all it takes. One hour per day of study will put you at the top of your field within three years. Within five years you’ll be a national authority. In seven years, you can be one of the best people in the world at what you do — Earl Nightingale”

This might make you think, "Yes! Right. So true. Epiphany moment."

Or it might make you think, "Who the hell is Earl Nightingale?"

Well, he has a Wikipedia page? But basically he was a motivational speaker and a radio show host that died in 1989. He wrote Strangest Secret. And to him it's all about risk taking and he also said that the problem with people's lives and lack of success isn't cowardice, but conformity.

According to his definition, a success is when you go after a goal and achieve it. Deliberately. And only 1 out of 20 do that, he said.

The key, he said, is creating, not conforming, deliberate creation. Goals, he said, bring you places. A ship, he says, that has a crew and captain has a destination and it gets out of the harbor and ends up to its destination. But a ship without a destination? Without a captain and crew? If you just turn on the boat's engines, it might not even make it out of the harbor.

Deliberate learning. Goals. Focus. That's what matters, he says. Reading, learning? Those are important aspects. Maybe you won't get in the top 1% of whatever you're going toward, but you will get smarter, closer, and have deliberate action.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Pogie claims to be in the top 1% of Begging. She's an International subject expert in Food begging. Study in the morning and at night. This, however, is a photo of her apprentice, Mr. Murphy.

COOL EXERCISE

This is from MasterClass and it's all about goals.

"Create Realistic Goals

"If your goals are unrealistic, they’ll be unachievable and overwhelming. Don’t let your passion for finishing your novel cause you to push yourself too hard and set goals that simply aren’t possible. For example, it might not be reasonable to set a goal that you will write your novel in one month. Neither should you set a word-count goal to write 10,000 words a day—especially if you also have a full-time job. Setting reasonable goals in the first place will make it much easier for you down the road.

"Consider setting writing goals that you can accomplish step-by-step, one day at a time. The best thing you can do is create daily habits that will help you reach your goals—rather than burn yourself out early with ambitious expectations for yourself. Here are some goals that many writers will set for themselves:

Write 1,500 words every day
Write for three hours every day at a scheduled time
Finish one chapter each week
Practice morning journaling"

PLACE TO SUBMIT

River Styx Castro Prize 2025 (Deadline September 30)

River Styx remains dedicated to publishing the works of writers and artists we believe represent current and future movements in society and culture at local, national, and global levels, whether that work is embedded in historical, contemporary, future, abstract, or impossible contexts. In other words, we seek out work which protests, proclaims, fumes, experiments, innovates, elevates, ruminates, and rushes ahead. And the form that work takes is often surprising, occasionally challenging to our sensibilities and ossified narratives, and always feels urgent and alive in some way.

RANDOM THOUGHT LINK

Sky News Greatest Dane

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.

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!

Fighting, Commerce, and Ten-Cent Beer: Welcome to America and How to Frame Stories

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 12:50:31 +0000

On last week’s podcast and the one a few before that, and in a post, Shaun and I talked a bit about plot structures and narrative structures and how here in the U.S. we think of these usually (not always!) as pretty linear, and pretty much in a three-act framework (think beginning, middle, end) with rising stakes and drama as you go along.

This is not the only way to write.

I am very much a product of the U.S. culture. And I’m going to talk a tiny bit in the next couple weeks about different forms/shapes of storytelling, but again . . . I am a student of this culture’s structures. I am not an expert at other structures. I adore them though. I’m going to be providing links.

And hopefully by quickly talking about some of them, you might go off and explore and adore, too. Maybe even get an epiphany for your own story?

So, another kind of storytelling is Middle Eastern and it's Frame Story in our language.

And it's so cool. Basically, as the Novelsmithy explains "many types of stories, characters, and symbols are woven together into a larger tale.

"One Thousand And One Nights is the most famous example of this. In this story, Shahrazad tells story after story to the Sultan in order to keep him from killing her. Her stories include a variety of complex narratives, different characters, conflicts, genres, and morals. There are even frame stories within the larger frame story!

"Characteristics of Middle Eastern Storytelling:

Outer 'frame story' tying multiple stories together
Multiple characters and narratives
Variety of genres, fantasy, and high action."

It's very influenced by The Qur’an.

Gulf News writes,

"One of the most revered traditions of oral storytelling is the hakawati. As intricate and complex as a weaving pattern, this motif-rich narrative style darts in and out of stories, offering unending drama where the storyteller begins one tale, deftly leaves it mid-way to pick up another and then has a third story emerging from a subplot of the first and so on. All this is done using the tools of allegory, folklore, satire, music and a visual spectacle of grand sweeping gestures and facial expressions to finally create an enthralling experience for his listeners."

There's a great piece about frame stories here.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Pogie's like "hey dude, I live my style and life in the frame story style of way. It always comes back to me. I'll always be doing something. I'll see a cat and I'll change my storyline." And that keeps happening. It's all about multiple stories in a brain.

WRITING EXERCISE

Do the Forrest Gump. Find a setting like a park bench and tell the stories that make a life. OR at least outline it.

PLACE TO SUBMIT

Voyage simply aims to publish good work and provide a space for new and established voices. To get an idea of what we publish, please read our archives. General submissions are open year-round with no fee to submit.

We only accept submissions via our online submission managing system, Submittable. We DO NOT accept submissions via email. Submissions sent via email will be automatically discarded without a response. We accept simultaneous submissions, but please withdraw your work via Submittable if it is accepted elsewhere.

Though we consider reprints, please be advised that Voyage doesn't offer payment for work that has been published before. If you are submitting a piece that has been published, please notify us in your submission.

Voyage pays $200 per accepted, previously unpublished piece of short prose.

Fiction: We are looking for short stories that surprise, inspire, entertain, or enlighten.

Creative Nonfiction: We’re on the hunt for personal essays and other creative nonfiction that specifically relates to the teen experience. Submit your creative nonfiction via our submission manager here.

Manuscript Preparation: Please make sure your manuscript is double-spaced with Times New Roman 12. Submissions should be no more than 6,000 words. Please include the author's name and page number in the top right-hand corner of every page.

RANDOM THOUGHT

Our random thought is about 10 cent beer night.

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.

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!

Pot Plants Invade Wisconsin and Alternate That Plot Structure

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Thu, 30 May 2024 12:16:06 +0000

Last week, maybe a week ago, maybe 82 years ago, who knows, we talked about alternative plot structures.

Much of American film and novels is built on what's considered to be the classic three-act structure, which basically goes beginning-middle-end, and there's this rising line of the plot.

It ends up looking like a bit of a triangle.

As readers, we can sort of anticipate and feel that structure happening. In a rom-com, we almost always know how far into the book or movie it will be when the couple breaks up and then someone has to chase down a car or airplane or something so they can get back together. There's a lovely familiarity in that, but us writers don't always want a lovely familiarity with beats in all the prescribed places and a structure that looks like a triangle.

In an earlier podcast, Shaun, was asking me about the different structures and plots. And this is a pretty big question that people write entire books about, but I'm going to start here.

First, a structure is sort of the diagram of rising and falling and action that links all of the plot points together

The plot is something that connects the moments of the novel in a way that gives a novel its meaning. .

Janet Burroway defines plot as a “series of events deliberately arranged so as to reveal their dramatic, thematic, and emotional significance …. Plot’s concern is ‘what, how, and why,’ with scenes ordered to highlight cause-and-effect.”

Plot, according to Ingrid Sundberg, is about patterns, rhythm, and energy. It’s about the movement and feeling your particular arrangement creates. The triangle (often called the Aristotelian story shape) is a visual metaphor for the escalating energy that is meant to come as a result of a classic design arrangement.”

This podcast, we're talking about all the different types of plots. Next time? We'll go all structure on you.

Here’s a list of different possibilities when it comes to plot:

• Mini-plot

• Daisy chain plot,

• Cautionary tale plot

• Ensemble plot

• Along for the ride plot

• Symbolic juxtaposition plot

• Repeated event plot

• Repeated action plot

Explanations of the Possibilities

Mini Plot – This is the emotional plot. It’s minimalistic. It might even seem like it does not have a plot, but it does. It’s just that the cause-and-effect is about emotional evolution and growth.

Example: Tender Mercies

Daisy Chain Plot - We have no main protagonist, so we have no main goal. A bunch of characters and situations are here and they are linked via cause-and-effect like a physical object.

Examples: Thirteen Reasons Why (has a protagonist, but it kind of works). Lethal Passage.

Cautionary Tale Plot - Hero? There is no hero! Comfort? There is no comfort! Our main character sucks. And instead the reader is the protagonist.

Examples: Jumped by Rita Williams-Garcia. Inexcusable by Chris Lynch.

Ensemble Plot - According to Berg, this happens when you have protagonists grouped in the same place and it is “characterized by the interaction of several voices, consciousnesses, or world views, none of which unifies or is superior to the others.”

Example: Give a Boy a Gun.

Along For The Ride Plot - Ah. Where is our protagonist doing proactive things? Not here. Here we have the secondary character pushing the action and the protagonist is there, zooming along with them. The protagonist has an emotional change anyways, but they aren’t Captain Proactive going after their goals.

Example: Looking for Alaska – John Green

Symbolic Juxtaposition Plot - Why yes, it’s the anti-plot, which some people treat like the anti-christ. This book is an existentialist's dream. It’s not about the emotion. It’s about having an epiphany, an intellectual epiphany. The plot is about ideas and themes and symbols and that connects everything and gives it meaning. The cause and effect? It’s really not here.

Example: Einstein’s Dreams by Lightman.

Repeated Events Plot - So, the same event? You see it multiple times but through differing perspectives so that we can see the truth from different characters’ points of view.

Repeated Action Plot - You know the movie Groundhog Day? This is it. This is where a character keeps doing the same things over and over until they try to get it right. They have a goal. But the sequence of events isn’t linear but repeating.

Example: Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Repeated action plots are the best. Wake up. Snack. Zoomies. Snack. Breakfast. Snack. Pee. Snack.

It's okay to life your life as a repeated event.

PLACE TO SUBMIT

The Peggy Chapman-Andrews First Novel Award

Your novel doesn’t have to be finished. We initially need only 5,000 to 8,000 words and a 300 word synopsis. If you’re long listed we’ll ask for a total of 15,000 words, including your original word count. Shortlisted? Then we need a total 30,000 words, again including your original entry and long listed word count. It all adds up to an incredible opportunity. Click here for all the details!

RANDOM THOUGHT LINK

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.

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!

RESOURCES OF AWESOME.

Bechard, Margaret. “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Plot.” Faculty Lecture. Vermont College of Fine Arts, Montpelier, VT. Jan 2008.

Burroway, Janet. Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narative Craft. 8th Edition. New York: Longman, 2011.

Chea, Stephenson. “What’s the Difference Between Plot and Structure.” Associated Content. 16 Feb. 2010. Web. 7 May 2011.

Fletcher, Susan. “Structure as Genesis.” Faculty Lecture. Vermont College of Fine Arts, Montpelier, VT. July 2012.

• Berg, Charles Ramirez. “A Taxonomy of Alternative Plots in Recent Films: Classifying the ‘Tarantino Effect.’” Film Criticism, Vol. 31, Issue 1-2, 5-57, 22 Sept 2006. Ebsco Host. Web. 6 May 2011.

• Pages 44 -66 in: McKee, Robert. Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting. New York: IT Books, 1997.

• Pages 165 – 194 in: Gardner, John. The Art of Fiction. New York: Vintage Books, 1983.

https://penandthepad.com/types-narrative-structures-8329065.html

No cow cuddles, no brain worms: Do you want to be happy?

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Thu, 16 May 2024 16:42:43 +0000

Do you want to be happy?

It’s a question philosopher Sebastian Purcell asks his students every year.

Do you want to be happy?

For Purcell being happy has a lot in common with living a good life,

“The Stoic answer to this question, that the good life consists in flourishing (eudaimonia), has seen a resurgent interest that is indicative of a cultural shift. Interestingly, it looks to be taking the place left open by the retreat of religious belief,” he writes.

And stoicism? It’s a way to look at life and how the world connects, how they work. It’s physical, Purcell says, and metaphysical.

Most people think of me as a pretty happy person, and I possibly am. To be fair, before I started to feel a bit overwhelmed by my life, I’d always thought positively about things, expected good outcomes.

When I lived in another town and would drive from place to place for my job as a reporter or to pick up my daughter, Em, from school, I’d hear from people later.

“You just drive around smiling. What are you even thinking about?”

I couldn’t ever tell them. They’d scoff. I’d laugh. I’m pretty sure one city councilor called me a weirdo about it. I know a baseball coach did. It didn’t matter. I was who I was.

When Em was little, she and I would talk about her worries, I’d run through logically how outcomes were probably not what she’d expect. I do that with Xane, our other kiddo, too.

“If you fail a test, will you end up in jail? Will anyone die?” I’d ask.

Em would roll her eyes at me and say things like, “You’re being ridiculous, Mommy.”

I’d bounce back with and say brilliantly, “You don’t have to expect the worst case scenarios all the time because a bad grade is not a worst case scenario.”

“I’m just being realistic,” she’d say.

“No. You’re being pessimistic,” I’d tell her, “because you aren’t going to fail anyway.”

The truth is that though I’ve told both of them these things and even though I motor through my day staying pretty chill and positive, often I would flop in bed at night and stare at the darkness for an hour, a weird shiver of anxiety creeping through me—anxiety stemming from things that I couldn’t quite place.

That doesn’t sound all that happy to me, but the truth was that even as I smiled in my car all by myself, even as I sold positive outcomes to my kids, I didn’t know how to even define happiness. I don’t think I’d ever really tried.

And I’m trying now.

Harvard professor, Arthur Brooks, says that “happiness equals enjoyment plus satisfaction plus meaning.”

Brooks tells his students to think of happiness as “a portfolio with four big categories of investments.”

He says, “We need all of them so our happiness can grow in a balanced way. The first investment is faith or life philosophy, it's how you make sense of the world.”

Family and relationships that will most likely stay with you throughout your life though you don’t choose them is the second category.

The third is the relationships we choose. What he calls our “most intimate relationships.”

“The fourth is meaningful work,” he says. "That doesn't mean work that pays a fortune or features a fancy title. Rather, it's work that allows you to earn your success and serve others.”

A HAPPINESS PORTFOLIO

Those four categories aren’t solo acts. They work together and they all have to be there, he believes and that means? Well, it means that we don’t get to be in charge of our happiness all the time. Sometimes horrible things happen. Circumstances exist. And heredity is a factor, too.

I think I’m pretty lucky because despite all the choices she made and things she went through, my mom was a pretty happy human. And my biological father was always happy too. That accounts, Brooks believes, for about 50 % of my happiness.

I once asked Shaun, “Babe, would you call your parents happy people?”

And he said, “Now or when I was a kid?”

“Kid?”

Then he made a long whistling exhale and said, “Not really. I mean they weren’t really unhappy. Probably happier apart.”

So maybe take a hot second and think of your parents, too, if you know them. Do you think they were happy?

Brooks said,

“Approximately 50% of your happiness is inherited and another big chunk is determined by your circumstances at any given moment. But the remaining part, about a quarter, comes from this portfolio, which is under your direct control.

“Another metaphor for happiness is a meal which has certain macronutrients but instead of food's macronutrients of protein, carbohydrates, and fat, the macronutrients of happiness are enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. And just like you need a balanced macronutrient profile in a healthy diet, you need balance to be a happy person.”

Brooks suggests taking a second and think of those four pieces of your happiness PORTFOLIO.

Your Life Philosophy – Do you have one? Do you have core personal values?

Your Family – Are there people you could call in an emergency?

Friends – Do you have a community somewhere? Where? Is it a club? A house? A school?

Purpose-filled Work – Does your work (volunteer or paid) make you feel valued?

Are you happy in those places?

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

It's okay for your happiness portfolio to be:

Poop

Sleep

Eat

Cuddles.

God, knows it's Shaun's.

PLACE TO SUBMIT

APPLE IN THE DARK

Submit Here

Open through May: Our first-ever flash fiction contest! Our judge this year is Chelsea T. Hicks.

Submit your unpublished work (no more than three stories/essays at once) through our Duosuma page.

(We’d very much appreciate anything you can donate to the Tip Jar there!) Simultaneous submissions are permitted, but do please let us know if your work has been accepted elsewhere.

Rights: AITD ask for first publication rights. You may publish your work featured on the site elsewhere following initial publication, but please credit AITD with first publication.

SUPER QUICK WRITING EXERCISE

This one is pretty fun. And though it's meant for poems, it can definitely be for short stories. It's from ThinkWritten.

"7 Days, 7 Lines: Write a poem where each line/sentence is about each day of last week."

PLACES WE MENTION IN OUR RANDOM THOUGHT

Bird flu and cow cuddles

CDC

Pork and brain worms

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.

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!

RESOURCES:

A cool book to check out is The Philosophy of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Subtitle: Stoic Philosophy as Rational and Cognitive Psychotherapy.

Brooks, Arthur. Managing Happiness. HarvardX. July 2022.

Celestial Bodies, Sexy Knees and Story Structure via Robert McKee

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 08 May 2024 19:49:01 +0000

You can learn a lot about culture by how it looks at what makes a good story and a good story structure.

In Western culture right now, we tend to think of stories as three acts (a beginning, middle, and end with the bulk being in the middle), and with a protagonist or hero or main character (whatever you want to call it) who drives the story forward.

So, it's sometimes good to remember that there are other ways of making story and other cultures where the bulk might not be in the middle or the main character might not be so proactive. Story reflects who we are as a people.

Nobody keys into this as much as Robert McKee, who is quite the guru of screenwriting and story.

There are three of his maxims, explained by No Film School that really show that.

Those are:

"Your protagonist needs to be the one who makes the decision that brings about the climactic action.

"Is your protagonist driving the story forward? Are their actions and choices putting the story into focus and kicking it into gear? Make sure they are active, and not just along for the ride. Give them something to do.

"Desire in your character is key.

"What does your character want? We talk about goals on here a lot. They need to have a goal, but also the reasoning behind it. That's where desires come in. I want to solve the case to make the city safer. I want to bring all my friends back from Thanos' snap. Give them something tangible and obvious.

"Character payoffs should always be emotional unless you have a special reason.

"Think about not only what happens inside your story but how these moments affect people internally. Does someone let a character down, or crush their heart with a rejection? Is there a way to hook that into the goal and show how things evolve within them? What do these emotional hurdles do to them or cause them to do? Let emotion guide the way."

For literature in our time, right now, and our culture, those are three big keys to making stories that will be purchased and will resonate with readers.

How does that reflect with our life though, right?

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

You've got to make things happen. Be the hero of your own story and make your people have emotional rewards when they give you what you want.

COOL WRITING EXERCISE

This is from Robert McKee and his book, Story:

"Lean back and ask, 'What would it be like to live my character’s life hour by hour, day by day?' In vivid detail sketch how your characters shop, make love, pray — scenes that may or may not find their way into your story, but draw you into your imagined world until it feels like déjà vu.

"While memory gives us whole chunks of life, imagination takes fragments, slivers of dream, and chips of experience that seem unrelated, then seeks their hidden connections and merges them into a whole. Having found these links and envisioned the scenes, write them down. A working imagination is research."

PLACE TO SUBMIT

The Bath Novel Award 2024 £5,000 international writing prize

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.

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!

LINKS TO LEARN MORE:

Strangeness Free-for-all

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Sat, 04 May 2024 13:44:25 +0000

It ended up being a bit of a free-for-all as we talked about the strange things people do sometimes.

SHOUT OUT TO STUBHY!

The snippet of our intro and outro music is only a snippet of this guy’s awesome talent. Many thanks to Kaustubh Pandav. You can check out a bit of his work at the links below.

www.luckyboysconfusion.Net or www.Facebook.com/mrmsandtheinfusions

Thanks for hanging out with us! And remember, don’t be afraid to let your strange out.

How Not to be a Butt-Hole in Real Life and on the Page

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 01 May 2024 23:23:54 +0000

So building a sympathetic character on the page is a lot like being a sympathetic character in real life. This sympathetic character is basically the opposite of a butt-hole.

There’s this great post on the SocialSelf blog that talks about what makes people likable and what keeps people from being likeable. And writers can learn from this, really.

The big things that make people likeable in real life are like a top ten list of awesome:

Be funny
Be a good listener
Don’t judge
Be authentic
Be warm and friendly immediately
Show people that you like them
Smile
Be humble, but also confident
Keep your promises
Know people’s names
Ask questions that aren’t yes or no answers.

They even have a bar graph about it.

When we’re writing, it’s hard to make a character listen to the reader or make eye contact with the reader, which scores high, but we can show them listening to other people, being kind to other characters instead of being all self-self-self and me-me-me all the time.

And you can make the character funny if that’s who they are. If you think back to ancient Buffy the Vampire Slayer shows, the characters were a bit much sometimes, right? Buffy especially, but they became likeable and fun because they were funny and they tried super hard to keep their promises and be there for each other.

But just as importantly, that blog has ways that people sabotage their likability in real life.

What are those ways?

Humble bragging
Name dropping
Gossiping
Oversharing on social media

Now, for a book character, humble bragging and gossiping can happen in dialogue and be annoying and off-putting. But oversharing can happen, too, in a first-person narrative, right? You can tell too much, so much, that it feels like the action isn’t happening and that will distance the reader.

When it comes to keeping those unlikable aspects off that page, it gets a little bit trickier because you have to keep the reader interested enough in what happens to the character to keep reading. That's all about likability.

This is why I talk about those super objectives and desire lines a lot. If you can give your character a yearning/a goal in each scene and chapter (sometimes it’s more pronounced that other times), then the reader will wonder if the character will get it. This helps to get the reader involved and gives you a little more time to build up the connection with the character. That's because the readers want to know what happens and if the character will get their goal/yearning/want. That gives you more time to make them care about the character.

But to make them really care about what happens, you have to make them care about the character and to do that, it can help to let the reader see the character’s wound, that defect, that thing that haunts them. You want to see them in a moment of weakness or vulnerability or loneliness.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Smelling buttholes is great but you don't want to be one! - Mr. Murphy quote of the day.

PLACE TO SUBMIT

BLUE LYNZ PRIZE FOR POETRY

The annual Blue Lynx Prize for Poetry awards $2000 plus publication for a full-length poetry collection. The Prize is awarded for an unpublished, full-length volume of poems by a U.S. author, which includes foreign nationals living and writing in the U.S. and U.S. citizens living abroad. Lynx House Press has been publishing fine poetry and prose since 1975. Our titles are distributed by the University of Washington Press.

Top Prize:

$2,000

Additional prizes:

Publication

Entry fee: $28

Deadline: June 16, 2024

COOL EXERCISE FOR WRITERS

Write a "slice of life" moment for your character. Make them have a sit-down dinner with others and show:

What they want
What has hurt them in the past
Them being kind

Do not show any of it via internal monologue.

LINK TO OUR RANDOM THOUGHT

Our random thoughts are at the beginning of the podcast and not transcribed.

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.

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!

Someone was sleeping outside her tent right next to her and how to make good writing habits

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 21:08:19 +0000

A lot of writers that I work with have a problem. The problem is that they want to be a writer, but before they come to me? They don’t write.

Here’s the thing. For a lot of us, we have to make time to be a writer. That’s just how our brains and process work. There are some writers who manage to get 10 days of alone time and writer time and they power through a book in that time, but most of us aren’t that wealthy or that lucky.

That means to be a writer, we have to create the habit of writing.

This is where James Clear’s method comes into play. This guy has built an empire around helping people create habits. And he believes there are four steps to creating a habit.

Those steps are:

Cue
Craving
Response
Reward

This man has a ton of books and information all over the internet and bookshelves about this, but very basically, what he defines each as is:

The Cue

This triggers your brain to do the behavior.

He writes: “It is a bit of information that predicts a reward. Our prehistoric ancestors were paying attention to cues that signaled the location of primary rewards like food, water, and sex. Today, we spend most of our time learning cues that predict secondary rewards like money and fame, power and status, praise and approval, love and friendship, or a sense of personal satisfaction.”

The Craving

This is the motivation, the force, the desire, the reason to act.

He writes: “What you crave is not the habit itself but the change in state it delivers. You do not crave smoking a cigarette, you crave the feeling of relief it provides. You are not motivated by brushing your teeth but rather by the feeling of a clean mouth. You do not want to turn on the television, you want to be entertained.”

The Response

This is the habit. It might be sitting at your desk at 8 p.m. every night and writing. It might be writing 250 words during lunch or waiting to pick up your kid from swim practice. It’s the habit.

“Whether a response occurs depends on how motivated you are and how much friction is associated with the behavior. If a particular action requires more physical or mental effort than you are willing to expend, then you won’t do it. Your response also depends on your ability. It sounds simple, but a habit can occur only if you are capable of doing it. If you want to dunk a basketball but can’t jump high enough to reach the hoop, well, you’re out of luck,” he writes.

The Reward

These are things that satisfy our craving.

He writes, “Rewards are the end goal of every habit. . . .We chase rewards because they serve two purposes: (1) they satisfy us and (2) they teach us.”

So, we sit down and write every day and eventually we get a book. That’s super simplified, but whatever.

There’s also that second part about how they teach us, right?

Clear writes, “Rewards teach us which actions are worth remembering in the future. Your brain is a reward detector. As you go about your life, your sensory nervous system is continuously monitoring which actions satisfy your desires and deliver pleasure. Feelings of pleasure and disappointment are part of the feedback mechanism that helps your brain distinguish useful actions from useless ones. Rewards close the feedback loop and complete the habit cycle.”

So, to build a habit, he says, to change your behavior, you want to think of each step (he calls them laws) to do the behaviors. The keys, he said are these (all direct from the post linked above and below):

It's pretty cool stuff, and you should probably check out his book or site if you're into this system and it rings true for you.

But for writers, especially, his clues on how to break bad habits and build new ones are just wonderful. Give yourself a really obvious cue that it's time to write (an alarm/notification/specific time), and make it attractive (light a candle/put on music you actually like) and make it easy (make small word count or revision goals) and make it satisfying.

DOG TIP OF THE PODCAST

Pogie has some anxiety, but she works by the cue system. She makes the things she wants attractive to you via hugs and puppy dog looks.

COOL EXERCISE

Stuck not being able to build a writing habit? Check out MasterClass' morning pages exercise here.

PLACES TO SUBMIT

Crook’s Corner Prize Eligibility: Debut novels set predominantly in the American South, published btwn January 1, 2023 and May 15, 2024 Prize: $5,000 Entry Fee: $35 Deadline: May 15, 2024

Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction Eligibility: All writers Prize: $1,000 + publication Entry fee: $30 Deadline: May 31, 2024

Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize Eligibility: Poets under 40 years of age Prize: $1,000 Entry fee: $15 Deadline: May 15, 2024

Ploughshares Emerging Writers Contest Eligibility: Writers who have not published a book or a book coming out before April 2025 Prize: $2,000 + publication + review from Aevitas Creative Management Entry fee: $30 Deadline: May 15, 2024

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.

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!

Strange Things In the Woods

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Sat, 20 Apr 2024 13:57:35 +0000

We found a topic! It ended up mostly being about poop and creepiness and three-foot tall humanoids.

Links we mention:

https://www.ranker.com/list/creepy-forest-ranger-stories/amandasedlakhevener

Overcoming Negativity Bias & Toilet Rats

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 21:04:57 +0000

Being an author or an artist or almost anyone is about navigating. You have to walk a fine line with criticism and praise, discern what's real and what's not, what matters or not, what is noise and what is important.

And sometimes?

Well, sometimes we only hear and dwell on the one negative thing that someone has said to us or written about us even though they (or others) have also said 100 positive things.

You're an author. You get a glowing review but there's one line in there that says, "I didn't like the mom character." That's all you focus on.

This happens in real life, too. Your husband might tell you that you're beautiful 100 times a day, but that one time that he says, "Baby, maybe don't wear your sweater inside out?" Well, that's what you focus on.

Or, let's say, in news. There are hundreds of lovely, beautiful things that happen in a community--even a small community--every week or month? But instead, we write about the one potentially scandalous thing a person or a board does. And when we read the news, we often gravitate toward the tragedy, the crime story, the corruption story. And that's important to write about and share, but that's not all there is.

Negativity is not all there is.

As Tasha Seegmiller wrote back in 2016, "The reality of reality is that we are programmed with a psychological and physiological predisposition toward negativity bias. Daniel Kahneman explains that “The brains of humans and other animals contain a mechanism that is designed to give priority to bad news. By shaving a few hundredths of a second from the time needed to detect a predator, this circuit improves the animal’s odds of living long enough to reproduce.”

"That bad review that you got? It’s going to linger longer than the good. Your fear of someone hating your book before it even comes out? Not all the way your fault."

We are programmed to be predisposed toward the negative. But we can lean away from that once we know it's there, sort of retrain ourselves toward the positive.

One of the ways to do that is a gratitude journal. Do not snark and look away. Writing down the good facts of your life not only trains your brain to see that good things have happened, but it also becomes a record that all is not poop.

As Alex Philippe writes,

"According to Winifred Gallagher in the book Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life, we literally don’t see as many things in our peripheral vision when we have negative emotions as when we have positive ones.

"And studies like the swimming rat experiment show how negativity can kill our perseverance: when a rat sees no way to escape, it will fight much less for its survival.

So, try it. Write something your grateful for. There's got to be one thing, right? Maybe tomorrow you can think of another.

Our random thought comes from here.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Don't think about all the "bad dog" moments. Think about all the treats you can get.

COOL EXERCISE

These are from a piece in Positive Psychology by Alicia Nortje, Ph.D. They are a direct quote.

"In the last week, what did you do that you are grateful for?
"In the last week, what did someone else do that you are grateful for?
"In the last week, what did you learn you are grateful for?"

PLACE TO SUBMIT

The Georgia Review

Fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and book reviews. Online submissions for non-subscribers are charged, but there is no fee for mailed submissions.

Details are here. Deadline: 14 May 2024 Length: Up to 9,000 words for prose, 6-10 pages of poetry Pay: $50/printed page of prose and $4/line of poetry, up to $800; $150 for reviews published on GR2.

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.

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!

Why it is okay to read books you've already read and sometimes there's an alligator in your kitchen

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 21:07:52 +0000

Here's our main premise this week: it's okay to read books you've already read.

Not only is it okay. It's helpful.

This is true for both writers and normal humans.

Rereading books gives you:

New ideas
Reminds you of ideas you'd forgotten about
Let's you notice new things because you aren't the same you who read that book the last time.

DONALD LATUMAHINA writes for LifeOptimizer, "'"Research shows that in just 24 hours people would forget most of what they’ve read. You might get a lot of good ideas from a book, but it’s easy to forget most of them. Rereading a book helps you refresh those ideas in your mind."

But what I like the most about what he is says is this, rereading . . .

"It helps you apply the ideas

"This, in my opinion, is the most important reason of all. Why? Because the primary value of reading is the application and not the reading itself. Mere reading could expand your knowledge but application could change your life. By rereading a book, you can see which parts of it you have applied and which parts haven’t. You can then focus your effort on the parts that need more work."

For authors, Victoria Grefger says all the way back in 2016,

"YOU REALIZE JUST HOW MUCH THE READER MAKES THE READING EXPERIENCE WHAT IT IS. This is important for authors, and since the majority of my readers here are authors, I thought this worth mentioning. By comparing what you thought of the book the first time around and what you think of it now, and what stood out to you then and what stands out now, you realize just how dependent a novel is upon its reader. This can remove some of the pressure that we feel as writers as we learn we can’t control the interpretative process of our work and don’t need to. That’s a load off, for sure!"

So go forth and read those books again! It's all good. The experts say so.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Murphy, the grand-dog, says that each redo makes you stronger. There's a much longer and more interesting version of this in the podcast.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

Our random thoughts come from here.

PLACE TO SUBMIT

AGNI

AGNI, Boston University’s literary magazine, accepts a wide variety of works for their online and print publications. The publication accepts poems, short stories, think pieces, essays, reviews and memoirs from writers all around the world.

Submission dates: September 1 to December 15; February 14 to May 31
Payment: $20 per page for prose; $40 per page for poetry (to a maximum of $300)

FUN WRITING EXERCISE

Over on the TED blog, there are 20 creative writing prompts from 642 Tiny Things to Write About:

Maybe try this one?

"Write the passenger safety instructions card for a time-travel machine."

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.

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!

Strange People Talking About Strange Life Stuff

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Sat, 06 Apr 2024 11:54:33 +0000

We went into the world of creepy and weird tonight.

And our sources for some of the stories (that aren't our viewers/friends) are here and here!

SHOUT OUT TO STUBHY!

The snippet of our intro and outro music is only a snippet of this guy’s awesome talent. Many thanks to Kaustubh Pandav. You can check out a bit of his work at the links below.

www.luckyboysconfusion.Net or www.Facebook.com/mrmsandtheinfusions

Thanks for hanging out with us! And remember, don’t be afraid to let your strange out.

The Spiral of Ick and Quiet Winners: You Don't Have to Flaunt Yourself to Succeed

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Thu, 04 Apr 2024 20:54:41 +0000

Recently, I read an interview with an author who talked about how much children loved her book and how they tell her this.

It annoyed me. It may have been good marketing, but it sure didn't feel like good human-ing, you know?

When you're interviewed by a reporter or when you do a school visit, as a children's book author, you have the ability to toot your own horn or you have the ability to toot someone else's.

This interview I read sort of sent me into a spiral of ick.

So, lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how to get more of my very long work day to not feel like work and how to make consistently enough money writing things to keep the family afloat.

Monday, on the blog, we talked about the Zone of Genius, a phrase I kind of hate and also the Flow State, which I’m much more into. This is just about places where work feels good, where it feels right.

What doesn't feel right to me is tooting my own horn.

And here on the podcast, I thought about how all this is really overcomplicating things. I am a fan of over complications, right, Shaun?

But life and happiness is really all about doing what you love. It’s about going for that and seeing what happens if you put the time in. Not about shouting "LOOK AT ME! I AM SUCCESSFUL!" Unless that's what give you joy.

It’s about doing what you love but also taking the steps to learn more and more about what you love, about listening to other people, about helping other people and also helping yourself by learning.

The best writers see outside themselves and into the lives and emotions, the yearnings, the obstructions, the needs and conflicts of others. The best storytellers know that stories aren't about just them.

Writers can do this. You’ve got to put in the time and go after your dream. You’ve got to stop worrying about the market and your niche and do the things that put you in that flow state, the things that give you joy.

You just have to start.

If you love writing, write. Share it. That’s it. But please don’t be an egotistical ass about it. It’s okay to communicate and focus on people who aren’t yourself, even if you’re an artist. Make it a habit to write and make it a habit to share what you write. And ask people to follow you wherever you are (substack, word press, x, medium, whatever). It’s okay to ask. Don’t constantly ask. Don’t only ask, but it’s okay to write and make money at it.

Recently, I've been on a bit of a Tim Denning kick, he's a writer and blogger. And he has an interesting bit about the habits of quiet winners. He writes about how they don't do media, don't flaunt their success, make fun of themselves, give credit to others. It's pretty interesting to me because it's how I was raised and it's also like that Lori McKenna song Tim McGraw sang, "Humble and Kind."

But one of the coolest bits in his blog is this: "Doing their work is what they like doing, not being noticed for doing their work. The meaning from their work cuts so deep that if a loud human being understood it they would give up their life and start again."

Our random thought came from here.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

PLACES TO SUBMIT

The Paris Review. Genres: Poetry. Payment: Not specified. Deadline: Opens April 1, 2024, and closes when they reach capacity.

Verve Poetry Press. Genre: Full-length poetry manuscripts. Payment: Royalties. Deadline: April 30, 2024.

Cast of Wonders. Genre: YA Speculative fiction. Podcast. See theme. Payment: $.08/word for original fiction up to 6,000 words. For reprints, a $100 flat rate for Short Fiction, and a $20 flat rate for Flash Fiction. Deadline: April 30, 2024.

COOL EXERCISE

This can be a lot of fun to do. Sometimes. It's from Dabble Writer, which has a ton of ideas for exercises about character development and story starters.

"Imagine someone who would be the polar opposite of your character. Describe them: how they look, what they love, what they hate, what they believe… everything. Then pick one trait and make it part of your character."

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.

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!

Shaun went off the rails, but this was supposed to be about how do you sustain a career as an author

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 20:16:32 +0000

This is obviously not the full transcript. You have to listen to hear the full weirdness, but . . . here's the core.

How Do You Sustain a Career as an Author?

It's a really good question, right? One, all of us authors are trying to figure out.

Rise With Drew writes,

"Creative careers are slippery. One-hit wonders abound, but fewer are enduring superstars,” Steven writes. “And this level of commitment requires not just originality but rather that ultimate expression of originality: the consistent reinvention of self. Again and again.

“Long-haul creativity isn’t about a first act or a second act. It’s a third and fourth and fifth act. It’s that ultimate impossible, the infinite game, where the goal is simply to keep on playing.”

There's a woman over on the Creative Penn who gives a pretty long interview about author sustainability, pimping out her book--which may be one of the keys of of sustainability--who has been writing since 2014. Claire Thomas is her name.

She's written books about this and uses a personality test (enneagram) to explain to writers their blocks. In the podcast she says, "In our industry, we have a crisis of people being stuck and trapped because they've limited their options. Their subconscious mind has limited their options because of the patterns that it's functioning in as a default.

"So they can't always see an aligned path forward when the industry undergoes swift changes, which it does very frequently. So I can give you an example.

"If you're an author who's what we call a type three, this is the achiever, then your core fear is lacking value or being worthless, and pretty much everything you do is to avoid confronting this fear or feeling like you lack value or are worthless, if you're three.

"A pattern that almost always arises from this is the belief that they earn value through accomplishments and achievements. This can look like how many books they have in their catalog, how high their books rank after launch, and how many subscribers they have on their email list."

So, when you look at your personality type, you can see what might be holding you back. What the old scripts are running through your head, how your complacency or peacekeeping tendencies might keep you from talking about your triumphs for marketing, or how your love for isolating research might keep you from actually putting words down. More on that in the audio.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Work through your blocks to advance and evolve. Channel your inner cat. Or inner duck.

COOL EXERCISE

Go figure out your Enneagram. See if it's blocking you. Do it for one of your characters that you're struggling with.

PLACE TO SUBMIT

Heron Tree

Deadline: May 1, 2024

We are accepting found poetry submissions for Heron Tree Volume 11. There is no fee to submit. Please see our submission guidelines at herontree.com/how/.

Creative Cosmos: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Art

Deadline: April 30, 2024

New monthly digital magazine, Creative Cosmos, seeking submissions of short fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and original artwork. Creative Cosmos challenges mainstream narratives and champions the power of intuition, creativity, and high sensitivity as essential forces for self-understanding and positive change. First issue June 2024. Please visit our website for details: creativecosmosmagazine.com/call-for-submissions/. Be sure to note the deadline for submissions.

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.

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!

LINKS WE TALK ABOUT OTHER THAN THE ONES UP THERE

https://www.ndtv.com/offbeat/thats-a-first-woman-gets-dumped-by-tinder-date-at-hawaii-volcano-5315753

Strange Movies and Stuff

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Sat, 23 Mar 2024 13:36:17 +0000

We were talking about movies--a bit, but it ended up being a bit of a free range podcast, which is what happens when we're live and interactive and weird.

Link we talk about

https://movieweb.com/exceptionally-weird-movies/

SHOUT OUT TO STUBHY!

The snippet of our intro and outro music is only a snippet of this guy’s awesome talent. Many thanks to Kaustubh Pandav. You can check out a bit of his work at the links below.

www.luckyboysconfusion.Net or www.Facebook.com/mrmsandtheinfusions

Thanks for hanging out with us! And remember, don’t be afraid to let your strange out.

The Info Dump from Hell and How to Avoid Them and Also UFOs

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 19:34:25 +0000

Talking about show vs tell at the scene level is a little bit harder than talking about it at the paragraph and scene levels.

But it’s also a tiny bit easier.

When you’re looking for telling at this level of the story, what you’re looking for is a couple of things:

A butt ton of backstory.
A butt ton of info dumps
A lot of flashback.

You can have bits of these things in your stories. Where us authors get into trouble is when we have a lot of it and we have a lot of it in telling language.

So, that really happens when we do this:

Bud Godzilla looked down on his sweet friend turned zombie. They’d been friends forever, so this hurt. Three page description of how they met – info dump or backstory

Or:

Bud Godzilla looked down on his sweet friend turned zombie. They’d been friends forever, so this hurt. Three page scene of how they met – flashback.

You usually want to limit these places and instead sprinkle in action/dialogue/details throughout to help the readers understand that the characters have history or the world exists before the book begins.

There’s a balance between telling too much and too little. You want the reader to anticipate that something cool is going to happen or has happened, but you don’t want to leave them confused or knowing way too much.

You know how sometimes you’ll be on the plane and the person will not stop talking for six hours about their boil, their aunts’ piano obsessions, their dinner plans while you just want to finish watching the inflight movie? That’s what happens with those paragraphs of backstory, flashbacks and info dumping.

Everything is paused. The stakes are gone. And when that happens? You risk losing your reader completely.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Pogie says keep your eyes on the prize, my friend, and laugh.

COOL WRITING EXERCISE TO MAX OUT YOUR SKILLS

This comes from the Writing Cooperative and it's really about how to spot your info dump, which is an exercise.

"Once you spot an info-dump, ask yourself the following questions:

"How much of this information is it essential for the reader to know right now? Most of the information will not be essential. Be ruthless. Cut it out.
"Of the information left — if any — how can I get the protagonist to do something which shows or implies the information? This may involve minor or major rewriting, but you do no-one any good by avoiding it. Rework or add scenes which convey the information through present situations and your protagonist’s actions.
"If the information is necessary, how can I use it to enhance the emotional effect of the scene? Key in on the emotional impact of the scene and if you must retain information that can’t be shown or implied, look for ways to add it in a way that will have an emotional impact. ;But the woman you saw can’t have been my mom, Angie. Mom died when I was a kid.'"

PLACE TO SUBMIT

The Blue Mountain Review launched from Athens, Georgia in 2015 with the mantra, “We’re all south of somewhere.” As a journal of culture, the BMR strives to represent all life through its stories. Stories are vital to our survival. What we sing saves the soul. Our goal is to preserve and promote lives told well through prose, poetry, music, and the visual arts. We’ve published work from and interviews with Jericho Brown, Kelli Russell Agodon, Robert Pinsky, Rising Appalachia, Turkuaz, Michel Stone, Michael Flohr, Lee Herrick, Chen Chen, Michael Cudlitz, Pat Metheny, Melissa Studdard, Lyrics Born, Terry Kay, and Christopher Moore. bluemountainreview.submittable.com/submit

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.

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!

LINKS WE REFERENCE

https://gizmodo.com/another-ufo-report-is-a-bust-so-why-do-so-many-people-1851331674

https://www.singularfortean.com/news/2024/3/7/search-for-crashed-object-is-one-of-the-largest-ufo-search-operations-in-the-history-of-norway-investigator-says

Control Your Tells, Don't Give In To the Passive

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 19:49:51 +0000

Babe,

I know you don’t want to talk about showing vs telling any longer, our massive series, but it’s really really important. It’s sunk many a cool book idea, stopped others in its tracks. It is a chaos agent in the life of many a good writer. And there are so many damn facets to it. I could fill a year of podcasts talking about it.

Don’t worry, I won’t.

But I would be remiss—no, we would be remiss—if we didn’t give people a couple more hints about how to locate told prose in their own text.

Here’s the thing. Told prose happens at three major levels:

The sentence.
The paragraph.
The entire scene.

And there’s different ways of hunting it out for each type.

Let’s talk about the sentence level. At this level, telling language is usually explaining language. The question most writers have is how to find it. Janice Hardy wrote Understanding Show Don’t Tell and she has a lovely breakdown of this at the sentence level.

Motivational tells

Explains why a character is motivated to do something.

Words to look for: to, when, because

Example: Bud Godzilla ran over to Hammy the Hamster because he loved Hammy so much and wanted to hug him.

How to revise it: “I love you!” Bud Godzilla screamed, running to Hammy. “Let’s hug!”

Emotional tells

Explains that a feeling is happening, usually by saying the feeling itself.

Words to look for: Any emotion words; felt

Example: Bud Godzilla felt pretty darn happy to see Hammy.

How to revise it: Bud Godzilla’s heart pitter pattered. Hammy was here! Right here! With him!

Mental tells

Explains thoughts without being immersed in the thought itself.

Words to look for: realized, believed, hoped, wondered, thought

Example: Bud Godzilla believed that if he could just hug Hammy gently enough and maybe give him some pizza, Hammy would love him, too.

How to revise it: He’d hug Hammy gently. Maybe give him some pizza. Then, Hammy would love him, too.

Stage direction tells

Explains stuff before it happens or is just a little too detailed about what’s happening.

Words to look for: by, since, before, after, when.

Example #1: Before Bud Godzilla could hug Hammy, Hammy coughed up phlegm all over the floor.

How to revise it: Hammy’s body heaved, shaking. “Bud! Don’t come closer!”

Bud stepped forward, arms open. “But, what’s—”

Phlegm spewed out of Hammy’s mouth. “Told you. Zombie bit me. Two hours ago.”

Example #2: Bud Godzilla sat in the car while Hammy got out of it. Hammy shut the door behind him, walked around the front of the car, hit the key fob to unlock Godzilla’s door, then reached out his hand and pressed the door handle, pulling it up and also pulling the door toward him so that it would open and Godzilla could get out.

How to revise it: Hammy and Bud got out of the damn car. I have no idea how Godzilla fit in it or how Hammy touched the wheel but whatever.

Descriptive tells

Explains what’s about to be sensed. I usually call this distancing language.

Words to look for: saw, heard, felt, smelled, watched, seemed, looked, ah, so many!

Example: Godzilla could see that Hammy had turned into a zombie. Godzilla felt sad.

How to revise it: Hammy’s mouth gawped open. “Brains. Need more brains.”

Passive tells

Live in passive sentences. What’s that? It’s when the subject of the sentence isn’t doing the important work of the sentence.

Words to look for: was + verb; is being + verb, by (sometimes)

Example: Hammy was pushed into the roadway by the radioactive pepperoni pizza breath of Godzilla.

How to revise it: Godzilla’s radioactive pepperoni pizza breath pushed Hammy into the roadway.

Whew! That was a lot. Carrie will be talking about this more on her substack, LIVING HAPPY AND WRITE BETTER NOW tomorrow.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Dogs are all about showing, basically because they can’t talk. Channel your inner dog, show people you love them.

WRITING EXERCISE OF AWESOME

This is from the fantastic Writer's Room:

"However, my favorite passive voice exercise is “the zombie test.” If you aren’t sure whether your sentence is active or passive, add “by zombies” after the verb. If the sentence still makes sense, then it’s passive. If it doesn’t make sense anymore, then it’s active."

PLACE TO SUBMIT

ADVENTURE WRITERS COMPETITION

Now open for submissions!

Enter between January 1, through April 30, 2024.

Click Here to Read the Rules

Click Here to Enter the Competition

RANDOM THOUGHT LINK

Chickensandmore!

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.

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!

Author to Author: Chris Lynch Interview

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 14:28:00 +0000

Award-winning author of YA novels? Check.

Printz honor author, ALA Best Book winner, National Book Award finalist? Check.

Has a middle grade coming out March 11 that's about to rock the world? Definitely.

Was so cool that Carrie was afraid to talk to him back in 2005 or 2006 or something? You know it.

Chris Lynch, award winning human and ridiculously gracious interviewee, graced Dogs are Smarter Than People with an author-to-author interview with Carrie Jones this week. He ignored Carrie's frazzled face, vaguely sweaty hair, and minor emergency to be one of the kindest, loveliest interviews ever.

Chris is the author of middle grade novel Walkin’ the Dog. He holds an MA from the writing program at Emerson College. He teaches in the creative writing MFA program at Lesley University. He lives in Boston and in Scotland.

And his book? It's amazing. You need to get it.

To find out more about Walkin' the Dog, click here.

More about Chris here.

LET’S SHOW YOU HOW SHOW VS TELL WORKS! Florida Man Poops on a Possum. We won't show you that

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 27 Feb 2024 18:55:11 +0000

Hey! Welcome to our series of podcasts and posts all about showing vs. telling, which we are on fire about right now, right Shaun?

Growls.

You can check out the rest of the series on Carrie’s Substack Write Better Now or just the podcast episodes on her blog, https://carriejonesbooks.blog/

So, a lot of my writers have a brain like mine, which is sad for them. Just kidding! Just kidding! A lot of them do better when they see an explanation of show vs tell rather than just having their editor or writing coach shout, “SHOW DO NOT TELL!”

So, here’s a paragraph that maybe could be tweaked for a little too much telling.

Once they reached Gwenda the Gerbil’s cage, Ham-Ham shoved himself inside before swiftly closing the trap door, notching it. He took a second to breathe while Gwenda stepped onto the hamster wheel. She sighed, and suddenly he felt her staring at him.

This is what happens when you immerse yourself in the scene a bit more.

Ham-Ham scurried into the cage, Gwenda following. This was bad.

“Latch the door!” she demanded, hopping to the wheel.

“I’m trying!” It clicked and his breath whooshed out, smelling of stolen dog food.

“They’ll never know,” Gwenda whispered, “come run up here with me before the human comes.”

“You have kibble on your fur.” “Oh,” she said, “I do. You want to lick it off?”

Not only is it less telling, but it’s in scene and we have a lot more context than just getting somewhere, closing a door, sighing, breathing and staring, right? One reads like blah. One reads like you’re in the moment (even though it’s in the past tense). One is flatter. One is more dimensional.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Look, you want to live your life in the moment, not have those moments told to you or via other people's/dogs/hamsters moments.

WRITING EXERCISE

This is from WillowWrites:

"Write a scene where two people are arguing. Show the anger and frustration without using the words angry or frustrated."

PLACES TO SUBMIT

NEA Literature Fellowships sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Genre: Poetry.

Prize: $25,000 grants to published creative writers that enable recipients to set aside time for writing, research, travel, and general career advancement.

Deadline: March 13, 2024.

Savage Mystery Writing Contest.

Genre: Mystery short story.

Prize: Winning stories are published in Toasted Cheese. If 50 or fewer eligible entries are received, first place receives a $35 Amazon gift card & second a $10 Amazon gift card. If 51 or more eligible entries are received, first place receives a $50 Amazon gift card, second a $15 Amazon gift card & third a $10 Amazon gift card.

Deadline: March 24, 2024. Opens March 22.

RANDOM THOUGHT LINK

We found the Florida man story here.

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.

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!

RELATED TO MONSTERS AND WRITERS, GET INTO THE READER'S BRAIN IF YOU WANT TO SHOW AND NOT TELL

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 20 Feb 2024 14:29:48 +0000

We’re continuing with our monster “Show Don’t Tell” series of podcasts and posts.

So, hey! Welcome to our series of podcasts and posts all about showing vs. telling, which we are on fire about right now, right Shaun?

Growls.

You can check out the rest of the series on Carrie’s Substack Write Better Now or just the podcast episodes on her website.

And we're soon going to have some monthly author interviews starting with Chris Lynch.

One of the hardest places to differentiate showing rather than telling in writing (or vice versa) is when it comes to those internal thoughts and feelings.

So, here’s a quick example:

Ham-Ham groaned; he’d forgotten to turn off the water bottle drip in the hamster cage again.

So, there’s the groan. That’s all good and fine because it’s an action. BUT then you have him forgetting and thinking about what he forgot to do, right? All of that part is too much explaining and too distancing from the thought or the experience.

Instead of living with Ham-Ham as he realizes he forgot to do something important for the hamster cage bedding, we are distanced from it. It’s more a play-by-play in a ball game than being a player in the ball game actually kicking the ball and making a goal.

Instead go right into Ham-Ham’s head:

Damn it. Ham-Ham hadn’t turned off the damn water bottle. Now there’d be water drip-drip-dripping all day in the cage. The wood chips would be soggy as hell.

This seems simple. It’s not that simple.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Don't over explain everything. If you want me to sit, just say "sit."

WRITING EXERCISE

This comes from Ride The Pen:

“Some words are signs that you are telling, not showing. These bad words are (view them as villains): Adjectives and any form of the word “to be.” They will seduce you to tell, not show. You must resist their evil powers!

“With adjectives, you can put a quick label on anything; something is “beautiful, big, funny, strange…” The same is true for variations of “to be”: “he was, she is, it was…” All of these lead to quick labeling, rather than showing.

“But I will give you an anti-spell against their evilness. The formula is to ask yourself:

“How do I notice she is quick/he is funny/it is delightful/etc…?

“Answer yourself that question, and you will have a great list of descriptions to show to your readers. This question is like your secret weapon against all adjectives.”

PLACE TO SUBMIT

Able Muse (Poetry, Fiction, Essays & More)

Deadline: July 15, 2024

Able Muse is now accepting submissions for our forthcoming issue, winter 2024/2025. Submit poetry, fiction, essays, book reviews, art, and photography.

Submission opens yearly January 1 and closes July 15. Read our guidelines and submit at www.ablemuse.com/submit/.

RANDOM THOUGHT

The story about Bill Sprouse's book and his uncle being the Jersey Devil is here.

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.

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!

THE PROBLEM WITH ADVERBS & BEARS IN THE DOGGY DOOR: Let’s Show, Not Tell.

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 13 Feb 2024 13:28:19 +0000

We’re continuing with our monster “Show Don’t Tell” series of podcasts and posts.

Adverbs are a big place where you tell and not show.

So, if I wrote,

“You are the sexiest manatee in the world,” Ham-Ham said hopelessly.

Would you think that works? Would you feel how Ham-Ham said it hopelessly?

Janice Hardy is brilliant and she has a really simple way of explaining how to determine whether or not you’re showing rather than telling. According to her, you should ask yourself if you can act something out.

If you can act it out, it’s showing.

If it’s not that easy to act out? It’s telling.

“You are the sexiest manatee in the world,” Ham-Ham groaned and put his head in his paws.

And it’s not just about dialogue tags, those he saids and they yelled and she moaned. It’s also about adverbs in action.

Take this one:

Ham-Ham quietly said something.

Can you show that a bit more without the quietly?

Ham-Ham whispered something unintelligible.

Ham-Ham whispered a sentence that nobody heard.

Ham-Ham whispered. What the hell did he just say?

It’s deeper, right? You feel it more. That’s why adverbs can really pull you into the world of telling. It’s a world you don’t want to stay in too long. A rabbit hole of boredom. Quick! Get out!

EXERCISE

So, how do you deal with this in your own writing? You can try to train yourself not to use too many adverbs, or you can revise those little poops out of there after your first draft.

Do a SEARCH in your story for the combination of LY. This won’t find all the adverbs in there (thanks to sneaky ones like VERY), but it will help. Cut them by two-thirds. Either cut them out or show that adverb in another non-adverb way.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

It’s okay to revise. It’s okay to take the time to really dig deep and show your humans what you want.

PLACE TO SUBMIT

Cool Beans Lit.

Spring 2024 Issue.

It takes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, cross-genre, interviews, reviews, art, photography.

No fee.

Deadline: March 1, 2024.

Guidelines are here.

RANDOM THOUGHT

Our random thoughts this week came from here.

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.

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!

Show Us Your Wounds Writers and Stealing Seven King Cakes

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 19:47:54 +0000

There’s this really great book for writers by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi called The Emotional Wound Thesaurus. It came out way back in 2017.

As they write in their prologue,

“Life is painful, and not all the lessons we learn are positive ones. As with you and me, the characters in our stories have suffered emotional trauma that cannot easily be dispelled or forgotten. We call this type of trauma an emotional wound: a negative experience (or set of experiences) that causes pain on a deep psychological level. It is a lasting hurt that often involves someone close: A family member, loved one (etc.)… or results from a physical limitation, condition, or challenge.”

So, the key here is to not just write a quick character study and be like, “My character Hammy the Hamster has resentment because his dad never thought he did a good enough job as exemplified by when he came in second place for the Hammy Olympic Wheel Roll.”

The key is to make sure that this emotional wound impacts:

The lie that festers inside of there (this is a false logic. Hammy believes he will never be good enough);
The fear that gets bigger and bigger and bigger as time goes on, the fear that’s because of this wound;
Their view of themself (Hammy thinks he’s a loser);
How their personality shifts when things happen because of the wound or the lie.

And there’s even a website, that we’ve linked in the podcast notes where you can look up emotional wounds. That’s called onestopforwriters. You have to pay to access the full features of that website.

But it writes, pretty simply, “Emotional wounds from the past have the power to greatly impact our characters’ personalities and choices in the future. Get to know your characters intimately by choosing the right emotional wound; understanding its effects will enable you to write realistic, fully-formed characters that resonate with readers and make sense for your story.”

Angela and Becca even have a ton of resources (they call it the motherlode) here. And one of those things is a pdf for a backstory wound profile. It’s all pretty amazing, honestly.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Pogie has a lot of emotional wounds and she says, "Don’t let your wounds rule you; don’t be afraid of them. You’ve got this."

WRITING EXERCISE

When was a time your character actually felt at peace? Describe it. Do they want to get back there again?

Does your character do anything for self-care? What is it? Why or why don't they do it?

How would your character be different if those traumatic events of their childhood never happened?

PLACE TO SUBMIT

Superpresent Spring Issue

Deadline: March 1, 2024

Superpresent is seeking submissions on the theme Survival. We are looking for all forms of poetry, writing, video, and visual arts. Please look at our website for details of the call and to get a feel for our magazine. superpresent.org

RANDOM LINK WE MENTION ABOUT KING CAKES

AP article

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.

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!

Promises, Promises, Writers Promise Readers a Lot Plus a Screech Owl Chilling With Board Games

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 20:18:53 +0000

Writers Are Promise Makers

Writers are promise makers. We tell our readers that we’re going to give them something just because of the cultural expectations that happen when someone opens our books.

What do we promise them?

We promise a character

The book is about someone. We reveal different aspects about that character as we show them act or react to the things that go on in the book.

The character will likely have something they want and something they yearn for and there will be things that keep that from happening.

We promise things are going to happen.

You can call this the plot if you’re into it. You don’t have to.

You can call this cause and effect or an action sequence. You don’t have to do that either.

But stuff happens in your story. That’s what makes your story a story.

To show the character and put them on a journey, we have to have things happening to them. Usually those things involve a problem for our character as they trudge forward and try to get their wants.

The character makes choices. Those choices have ripple effects. Sounds like life, right?

We promise that we’re going to tell the story in a certain way.

You can call this point of view and it has a lot to do with that.

You can call this voice and it has a lot to do with it.

You can call this mood even, but that’s a little reach.

The voice of the story creates an atmosphere. It tells the reader if they can trust the narrator or not. The word choice of the narrator and voice can tell the reader about the characters.

The point of view is all about how immediate the relationship between the reader and the narrator is. If it’s first person, that I point of view, then it’s going to be pretty immediate. Third person omniscient? That all knowing voice? Usually not so much.

We promise a setting

There needs to be a world where all of this takes place. Setting. Details.

And there’s one more big thing.

We promise to make sense.

An old editor’s blog post by Beth Hill puts it out there pretty succinctly.

“You promised an entertaining story.

“You promised a believable story.

“You promised a story that fits a genre if you write genre novels.

“You promised something different—a new character, a different world, a different dilemma. A different outcome.

“You promised cohesion and logic.”

We promise so much, don't me?

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Pogie says that if you tell someone you're going to take them for a walk, take them for a walk. Or, you know, they might not believe you any more about things--like that cats are not demon furballs from Oklahoma or whatever.

FUN EXERCISE

This one comes from IndieReader.

3. PIVOT!

In an episode of Friends, Ross enlists Chandler and Rachel to help get a new couch up to his apartment. They struggle to carry the hefty couch, to which Ross continuously yells “PIVOT!” as though if he exclaims this enough, the couch will glide on up the staircase. By the time they’re done, the couch has been chopped in half.

Don’t mangle your story to get it from your desired point A to point B. When you reach a point in the plot where the path seems irrevocably blocked, PIVOT on your heel and find another way. It doesn’t mean you can’t come back to this spot and try again later, but as Ross proves, kicking and screaming is not the best way forward.

For this exercise, go to the point of your story that’s troubling you and take it in a completely opposite direction. And go wild with it — introduce dragons and have the sky fall down and start writing in second person POV. You might just find that taking the strangest path helps you recalibrate your story’s compass.

PLACE TO SUBMIT

Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction Eligibility: All authors writing in English regardless of nationality or residence Prize: $5,500 + publication by Mad Creek Books, an imprint of the Ohio State University Press Entry Fee: $30 (nonmembers); $20 (members) Deadline: February 28, 2024

RANDOM THOUGHT LINKS

Learn about the screech owl in Connecticut here. Photo courtesy of the Town of West Hartford Police Department/Facebook.

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.

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!

TROPE ME OUT, BABY: THE JUMP SCARE AND JANUARY IS A BLISSED OUT MONTH

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 16 Jan 2024 16:59:30 +0000

There’s a lot of ways that trope is defined, but for us here on DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE, we’re going with the Grammarist’s definition, which is:

“A trope is simply a common or recurring theme or method used in storytelling across all forms of media. Tropes serve as a way for creators to convey certain ideas and messages to their audience in a familiar and recognizable way.”

They go on to write,

“Think of the last book you read or a movie you recently watched. Did you reach a point where you could predict what was going to happen? Or did a character arise, and you immediately know it was the villain? That’s because the creator used tropes to build up the idea or the character.”

So, tropes create expectations in the reader, right? They are things that reoccur across films or books or songs or art that create an expectation and often have a symbolic meaning (but not always). Those who hate them say that they are overdone, so passe, boring. Those who love them say that they give comfort and can be used to powerfully convey referential meaning.

Or as ThePleasurePen writes, “Tropes are not just narrative tools; they are also key in setting and sometimes subverting the expectations of your audience. Mastering this dynamic can elevate your storytelling, making your tales both satisfying and surprising.”

Tropes can create those expectations and subvert them or twist them or use them to shape stories. That’s because story doesn’t stop at the writer, right? Story is communication between the writer and the reader and tropes help the reader understand what you’re putting down there. Tropes are patterns. Patterns light up the readers’ brains in certain ways.

Here’s a way to think about it:

You’re watching a horror movie. There’s ominous music, a woman looks over her shoulder and then a man appears in front of her on the sidewalk. She jumps. We jump. The music and look over her shoulder create that expectation. The frame of the camera also helps create the suspense for a potential shock. It’s a jump scare.

But how do you do this in a book? That’s the question, right?

Usually, that’s done via suspense. In the book, THE TWISTED ONES, author T. Kingfisher has a woodpecker that the main character, Mouse, hears every night. Mouse hears that damn woodpecker every time she’s trying to fall asleep. Night after night. And then . . . as Ferrett Steinmetz writes for Tor . . .

“she realizes the things moving about in the night are living effigies, piles of bones tied together and somehow animated, and what she’s hearing is not a woodpecker but the stones hanging from the effigy’s ribcage knocking together as it’s been lurking outside her window this whole time.

“The delight of The Twisted Ones is how much the narrative implies, and how cunningly, without filling in all the blanks—it’s packed with subtle horrors left to fester as you take the thought further than the protagonist does.”

Other examples of tropes in horror are found footage or creepy clowns or the group splitting up to investigate or whatever when there’s a serial killer outside (or inside) the cabin in the woods. A trope in romance might be, oh no we have to share a hotel room. That sort of thing.

Paul Jenkins writes on Brilliantio, “There are countless literary tropes – from the misunderstood villain to the unexpected hero and everything in between. These classifications provide an essential framework for understanding how narratives are constructed and how audience expectations are managed.

“Moreover, Trope Evolution plays a significant role in establishing these norms over time. As cultures change and evolve, so do our stories and the tropes within them. For instance, the ‘damsel in distress’ trope has evolved significantly with societal changes reflecting stronger female characters who save themselves.

So remember this: every time you see a familiar plot twist or character type crop up in your reading journey—it’s not lazy writing but rather an intentional use of trope to craft a predictable narrative arc satisfying your innate longing for patterned storytelling. Understanding this helps deepen your appreciation of literature’s artistry and complexity.”

COOL EXERCISES

There are a zillion cool plot twist ideas and exercises here: Plot Twist Ideas and Prompts for Writers.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Pogie the Dog: Jump scares and cats are the greatest thing of all time.

L the Cat: Agree to disagree.

PLACE TO SUBMIT YOUR . . . NOVELLA!

Utter Speculation Novella Series

We are looking for stand alone speculative fiction novellas explaining or exposing the root of a real life supernatural mystery, urban legend or folklore, to include in a series we are building. (Please note, we don’t want a whole series by one author. At least not yet)

Submissions Open November 7 and close February 7

If we don’t find what we want, we may extend this deadline or reopen submission later

Please read and Follow All Guidelines Carefully or your story may be discarded without being read.

Novellas should be 20,000 - 35,000 words

Send a query with a story summary and a bio in the body of the email to:

specpubsubmissions@gmail.com

Payment is a signing bonus and royalty split to be discussed upon offer to publish.

Send full manuscript as a separate .doc or .docx attachment, Formatted in Shunn format style (Standard Manuscript Format)

Speculation Publication’s Utter Speculation Series is accepting novellas dealing with myths and legends until February 7th. Check it out.

RANDOM THOUGHT LINK

It's all about pretend aliens!

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.

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!

Hate Hard, the Beer Poems, and Building the Life You Want

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Thu, 21 Dec 2023 19:48:56 +0000

I’ve been going through holes of Reels and short-form videos at night lately, watching people remodel their house or home, decorate for holidays, and then, um, being an Amazon affiliate.

At the same time, a lot of the writers I work with are having BIG DOUBT MOMENTS as they query and read Twitter/X and see authors behaving badly or agents behaving badly or people getting yelled at for sucking at something.

And they are scared.

Now, there’s one part of this in that you need to put stuff into perspective. Losing your reputation isn’t the same as being in a war zone or in natural disaster or having someone violent in your own home, right?

We act like it is though.

Same thing about money. We act, sometimes, like it’s the only thing that gives our lives value. We all need to unlearn that.

What gives your life value is what YOU determine gives it value. That might be money if you’re into that. It might be family. It might be friends or having a sense of purpose. The point is that YOU get to determine that, not society, not TikTok viewers or literary agents.

When we go in to build or remodel or decorate a room, one of the most important questions is: What is the purpose of this room? What do I want it to feel like? What do I want to feel like when I’m in it?

When we go in to build a scene of our story, we ask those same questions: What is the purpose of this scene? Is it to show conflict, move the plot forward, dive more deeply into character, make a new obstruction? And more importantly, what do I want the reader to feel?

When we go in to build who we are as a person and our life, we can ask those same questions, too: What is the purpose of what I’m doing right now? What does my choice make me feel like? Who do I want to be here, right now, in this moment?

Kind of amazing but simple, right?

Who do we want to be? Are we making the choices to be that person?

I’ve lost that a bit lately. But I’ve made a list to start getting that back. I hope you will, too!

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Be the dog you want to be.

WRITING EXERCISE

This is from “What If,” which is a book of writing exercises. You can learn more about it here.

“Image Notebook

“Keep an image notebook and write down one image every single day by asking yourself “What’s the most striking thing I heard, saw, smelled, touched, or tasted today?”

PLACES TO SUBMIT

Gemini Magazine Fourteenth Annual Poetry Open Contest.

Unpublished poetry. Poems on personal blogs are accepted.

Entry Fee: $9 (three poems), $18 (six poems), $27 (nine poems), and $36 (twelve poems). Prize: $1,000 + publication, 2nd Prize: $100 + publication, and $25 + publication for four honorable mentions.

Deadline: January 2, 2024.

The 2023 Exeter Novel Prize is open to unpublished and published writers worldwide who are not represented by a literary agent. Entrants submit the first 10,000 words of their in-progress novel and a 500-word synopsis.

Entry Fee: £20.

Prize: £1,000 + a trophy, 2nd Prize: £100 + a paperweight (five winners).

Deadline: January 1, 2024.

SPECIAL NOTE:

We’re taking next week off! So, no posts or podcasts for the last week of December 2023! Happy new year and holidays to all of 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 “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.

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

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!

Dig Deep and Baby Owl in the Christmas Tree

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Fri, 15 Dec 2023 21:39:10 +0000

How to Dig Deeper in Your Scenes

A lot of time, a writer will get feedback and it’ll say something vague-ish like, “Dig deeper.”

And then the author cries or gets angry or feels an emotion that no author wants to feel.

The thing is that this advice is sort of vague, but what it usually means is:

1. You have no setting in your scene or chapter or story;

2. Your character doesn’t react to things and then act on things;

3. When your character does act and react to things, it doesn’t seem to be who the character is. Like you can’t have your introverted hamster making a flash mob dancing disco through the streets unless there is a lot of motivation;

4. There are no stakes going on.

A way to fix this is to realize it’s happening. At the first part of each scene, write:

1. What you want the reader to feel;

2. What you want your character to feel;

3. What the antagonist would think about this scene;

4. What senses are happening in the scene;

5. Look for words that distance the reader from what’s happening (see, looked, smelled, felt, noticed are a good start).

Now, here’s the thing. This works for life, too. Maybe you’re not feeling super fulfilled and you need a boost. Think about those questions about you and your choices. Can you figure out what you want to feel and how to get there?

DOG TIP OF THE POD

Go after the life you want even if it’s a reindeer. - PogieWRITING EXERCISE

Author Nicole Bianchi has a really, really great post with five writing exercises, and I’m kind of in love with it.

It’s here. And here’s an excerpt

“The Ernest Hemingway Exercise for Sharpening Your Observational Skills

In the 1930s, a 22-year-old aspiring writer named Arnold Samuelson traveled to Florida to see if he could get some writing advice from the author he idolized: Ernest Hemingway.Hemingway ended up inviting Samuelson along on a fishing trip and sharing writing advice during their time at sea.

In this video, I detailed the three-step writing exercise Hemingway gave Samuelson.Essentially, Hemingway challenged Samuelson to pick a situation to observe and then try to retell it on the page.

For Samuelson, this was fishing.

For you, it might be an event that happens when you’re commuting to work or shopping at a store or eating at a restaurant or playing with your kids.Pretend you’re an artist heading out with your sketchbook to capture what you see and feel. Pay close attention to everything that is happening and the emotions that you experience.

Hemingway said,‘Watch what happens today. If we get into a fish see exactly what it is that everyone does. If you get a kick out of it while he is jumping, remember back until you see exactly what the action was that gave you that emotion. Whether it was the rising of the line from the water and the way it tightened like a fiddle string until drops started from it, or the way he smashed and threw water when he jumped.Remember what the noises were and what was said. Find what gave you the emotion, what the action was that gave you the excitement.’”

You should check her out.

RANDOM THOUGHT LINK

Owl Story

PLACE TO SUBMIT YOUR WRITING

MenagerieIt accepts fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. “We believe in sentences so sharp they draw blood, the strange and inexplicable, the wild and weird and uncanny, words in thickets, clusters, and flocks, pieces that move us beyond caring what others think about said pieces.” You can read about them a here.Deadline: Open nowLength: Up to 5,000 words for prose, 3-5 poemsPay: $50Details here and here.

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.

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!

WHY YOU WANT TO NOT USE ING VERBS AND IF I WERE A FISH IS THE BEST SONG EVER

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 19:59:53 +0000

When I was a baby newspaper reporter, one of my editors, Grady Holloway, used to call me over to his desk. A lot.

I loved Grady. He had this great, grizzly beard before it was cool, wore a dirty hat, had been married to an ambassador’s daughter, rode horses, drove cab in Colorado when all the beat poets and journalists were out there, and liked noir mysteries.

But whenever he pulled me over to his big metal desk in the newsroom, I knew that I was about to get advised.

“Cici,” he’d say with this perfect, gruff whiskey voice, “you’re a great writer, but have you ever thought about . . .”

And then he’d tell me something I hadn’t thought about.

Passive verbs.
Starting sentences strong with the important stuff first.
The dreaded -ing

-Ings are addictive like all sexy grammatical elements are. They might not be as addictive as the debonair em-dash (—) or the lovely ellipses (…) or the goddess we know as the parenthetical ( ), but they are pretty close.

When you put -ing at the end of a verb that verb becomes progressive. You feel like the verb is happening right now in the present even if your tense is the past. Like this . . .

She was running, breathing hard and fast, shallow breaths that couldn’t quite make it all the way into her lungs. Running so that he wouldn’t catch up. And the ground was breaking beneath her, dead people’s hands reaching through the woods’ surface, fingers trying to clutch her sneakers, her ankles, even the laces. Anything.

Scary, right? Or, um . . . kind of?

Now let’s see that without the -ings on there.

She ran, her breath hard and fast, shallow breaths that couldn’t quite make it all the way into her lungs. She ran so that he wouldn’t catch up. And the ground broke beneath her. Dead people’s hands reached through the woods’ surface. Fingers tried to clutch her sneakers, her ankles, even the laces. Anything.

Wait. They both kind of work, don’t they? Absolutely. Sometimes you want to use those -ings for impact. But just like the em-dash, ellipses, and parenthetical statements, there can be too much of a good thing.

Crying because of the creepy man racing after her for five terrifying minutes, Carrie raced through the woods trying to get away and breathing out heavily even as horrifying zombie hands reached through the dirt and pine needles, hoping to grasp her shoes and bringing her down beneath the surface with them.

You can see the difference now right? We have present participles, adjectives, progressive verbs and even a gerund. Those -ings are doing a lot of work here and there’s just too darn many of them.

And what happens in that passage? The reader starts to get bored. It doesn’t feel fluid. The mind sort of numbs from all those -ings. And the bleed into each other, blending.

Yes, yes, I know! Blending has an -ing.

Now, let me try to do it without -ings.

She cried. She ran through the woods, each breath a prayer, an intake of hope as her feet raced across the pine needles. He was close. Too close. The thud of his footsteps pounded after her. The dirt trembled but not from her. Hands. Dead, decayed hands somehow broke through the hard ground. One poked up just as her sneaker hit the ground. It reached for her. Missed. Another tried. Another.

Different again, right? Same scene. No -ings. It’s pretty cool when you can see the difference of tone and feel that happen just by playing with one tiny element of the language.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Notice things. Don't drop the goods when you're running away.

PLACE TO SUBMIT

Rejoinder. The Archival is Political special issue. Fiction, nonfiction, poetry, comics, cross-genre, drama, graphic narratives, interviews, art, photography. No fee. Deadline: December 15, 2023.

Ploughshares. Regular Reading Period. Fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translations. $3 fee (free for subscribers). Deadline: January 15, 2024.

Burnside Review Press. Book Contest. Poetry. $25 fee. Prize: $1,000, book publication, 10 author copies. Deadline: December 31, 2023.

COOL WRITING EXERCISE

This one is from Reedsy,

Play a game of Truth and Dare with your characters

Most of us remember “truth or dare” from childhood sleepovers. Some would bravely declare “DARE!” and wait for the inevitably embarrassing challenge. Others would hazard a “truth…?” and wait nervously in their sleeping bags while the challenger mulled over which deeply provoking and juicy question to ask.

To dive deeper into your character’s emotional depths, ask a round of questions — both probing and seemingly innocuous alike. (Hey, you never know when your character’s favorite choice of ice cream topping might come in handy!) We recommend downloading our free character profile template — with the help of this worksheet, you'll be raring to go.

BEST RANDOM THOUGHT EVER

Well, it's just that . . . This is the best song ever.

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.

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!

Random Life Advice: Let’s Look At Each Other

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 23:52:38 +0000

When I go to classrooms on book tour or for school visits, teachers (or kids prompted by teachers) always ask me what the most important skill is for being a writer.

And I tell them a couple things.

No, it’s not about what a comma splice is or the coolness of objective correlatives.

It’s really a two part answer:

Notice what people are doing, their mannerisms, how they act, interact, hold their heads.
Live the biggest life you can, take opportunities, feel things, have adventures.

That’s what makes a difference on the page.

I once had a reporter ask me why I have details in my book and I may have laughed, which was super cruel of me, I know, but she was oblivious thankfully. And I said, “Details are what makes strong story, what shows character, what pulls someone into the world.”

By noticing other people or setting or how the air smells near a sewer grate or under someone’s arm, you create a world on the page.

This, is also pretty important advice for life, too.

Tim Denning writes,

“Get on a bus. Zombies everywhere.

No one is looking at each other or having a conversation. It’s just a sea of bodies looking at phones that are nothing more than a distraction.

Phones are dream killers. They’re full of other people’s priorities. What’s cooler is to have human conversations. It’s to look people in the eye and be present.

I had coffee with my old boss the other day. Every few minutes he kept glancing at his phone. He looked worried. He looked like he was under a spell. Or like a puppet master was pulling his strings.

He couldn’t relax or engage properly in the conversation. And this is the Great American Life that has been exported to most major nations, including Australia where I live. Sad.

Relationships are more important than notifications. And 99% of inbound phone calls aren’t urgent and can go to voicemail.

Life hack: put your phone on do-no-disturb mode, then add your family to favorites so only their calls can get through in case of an emergency.”

Julia Cameron, creator of The Artist’s Way says something similar, which is basically that by filling our time with distractions (Netflix, Wordle, Facebook, Tumblr, X, Threads, Instagram, YouTube, NYT Spelling Bee—the list goes on forever), we lose that connection to our muse—to the quiet within ourselves that creativity often springs from. We look only at a screen and fail to look at a world.

Wild, right?

DOG TIP FOR LIFE BY A CAT

Be noticed. But also notice things. Channel your inner cat.

WRITING TIP OF THE POD

Try to spend an hour without distractions on the screen and not even reading a book. What do you notice? Can you use that for your story?

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.

RANDOM PLACE TO SUBMIT YOUR STORY

Air/Light.

Genre: New and innovative works of literary arts across all mediums and genres including cross genre work. Length: Up to 4,000 words for prose, and up to 10 pages for poetry.

Payment: Poetry: $50; Responses and department pieces: $100; Fiction and essays/nonfiction: $200; Visual art, music, and multimedia: $200. Deadline: December 1, 2023.

Our random thought is from here.

A Simple Trick to Write Better: Get Rid of the Nods

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Thu, 16 Nov 2023 01:25:01 +0000

When I help writers with their stories, a lot of the times one of the things I tell them is that they need to dig more deeply.

They need to dig more deeply into the emotion and feel it with the characters.

They need to dig more deeply into the scene and see the characters there, interacting with their surroundings and each other.

And a lot of us writers in our early drafts of story, don’t dig all that deeply because we’re too busy making sure we get words on the page and plot moving forward and story right there, you know?

That’s totally okay! It’s normal. There is no judgement here, but what you want to do (if you want to make the best story you can) is dig a bit more deeply.

You go back in and look for places where:

People are shrugging, smirking, giggling, and nodding and smiling.
A lot of distancing words that keep the reader from feeling the moment with the character. Those are things like: He felt. She saw. They noticed.

SO WHAT DO YOU DO THEN?

You find those places and—boom—you insert something that shows character or setting or scene or you can more simply take out the offending words.

“Find and Replace” for those nods and when you see them you can either:

1. Cut them

2. Use those places as a spot to show setting or physical reaction with the setting.

3. Show a full body motion that is more grounded or telling.

Here, I’ll show you each of the examples.

The original.

Shaun nodded. “Yup. It’ll be full circle.”

You can just cut it.

“Yup. It’ll be full circle,” Shaun said.

You can use those places as a spot to show setting or physical reaction with the setting.

Shaun ran his pencil across the line of the hallway’s tile wall like he was trying to find a straight path forward. After a second, he dropped the pencil into his bag and refocused on us. “Yup. It’ll be full circle.”

You can show a full body motion that is more grounded or telling.

Students scooted by, rushing because of the bell, trying to be good, trying not to be late, not having their whole worlds randomly ripped apart. Shaun ducked back to avoid a cluster of students in goth t-shirts who were trudging quickly forward, heads down.

“Yup,” he said. “It’ll be full circle.”

Those nods and words like them are really just opportunities, placeholders for writers to go back in and make some richer setting or details to show and distinguish how each character is a bit different in how they react to the environment.

In that same scene, one character might duck his head down, shoulders slumping forward as he tries to wedge himself out of the way and out of the prying eyes of other students.

Another character might stretch and take up all the space he wants with his confident self and accidentally break someone’s nose with his elbow.

But the point is to use those moments to show the reader who the character is and what the setting is, to make it feel super immediate and real.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE VIA A CAT

Take no prisoners. Don’t live a shallow life. Take control of it.

WRITING EXERCISE OF THE PODCAST

Go into your story. Do a find/search or find/replace for a word like “nod.”

Count how many you have.

Cut that number by half.

PLACES TO SUBMIT

Hudson Review Short Story Contest. Genre: Short story up to 10,000 words. Prize: First prize is $500. Second and third prizes are $250. Winning stories will be published in The Hudson Review. All entries will be considered for publication. Payment at regular rates. Deadline: November 30, 2023.

J. F. Powers Prize for Short Fiction. Genre: Short fiction. Prize: $500. Deadline: November 30, 2023.

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.

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!

Dive Into The Conflict and Make Your Book Blurb Sing

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Thu, 09 Nov 2023 19:46:17 +0000

Two weeks ago, we started talking about how to write a book blurb for your story and began with the first step, which is a hook. You can check that out here. And the second step is here.

So, if the first step is creating that hook, the second step, according to Shayla Raquel is dangling the characters. Then our next step is what Shaun has no problem doing in real life with anyone other than his own daughter, dive into the conflict.

So:

Create hook
Dangle characters
Dive into conflict

What does “dive into the conflict” mean?

It means that in that book blurb, you want to show your potential reader what the conflict of the story is.

What’s a conflict?

It’s just when one force goes against another while the character tries to get their goal. The character wants something. The conflict is the obstacles that stand in her way. Super simple, right?

Or as Sean Glatch says in Writers.com,

“At its most basic, conflict is the clash of opposing forces with a character’s own pursuit of a goal. The character must overcome these opposing forces to achieve the goal. These opposing forces might take on numerous shapes, and might even exist solely within the character’s own psyche.”

Shayla Raquel has a couple great examples of blurbs that show conflict.

Frederick Starks has it all—a gorgeous wife who was his high school sweetheart, three beautiful children, a mansion and cars others envy, millions in the bank, respected in his community, admired by his employees, loved and respected by loyal friends. He revels in the hard-earned power and control he’s acquired.

As the saying goes, “All that glitters is not gold,” which Starks discovers when gut-wrenching betrayal by his wife sends him over the edge and into a maximum security prison.

—When the Serpent Bites, Nesly Clerge

THE FOURTH STEP

This brings us to the fourth step and that’s DETERMINE THE CONSEQUENCES.

You want to show what is about to happen. It’s that formula we talked about before.

“Conflict (“Character must do this”) + Stakes (“Or this will happen”) = Consequences.”

This is basically showing the reader what will happen if the character does or doesn’t get their goal.

THE FINAL STEP

And the final step according to Shayla Raquel? It’s just DINE ON THE BIG QUESTION, which, of course, makes me hungry.

She writes,

“End your blurb on an intriguing question or a point of tension—something that will convince the reader to take a chance on buying your book.

Example:

Bruce the bear likes to keep to himself. That, and eat eggs. But when his hard-boiled goose eggs turn out to be real, live goslings, he starts to lose his appetite. And even worse, the goslings are convinced he's their mother. Bruce tries to get the geese to go south, but he can't seem to rid himself of his new companions. What's a bear to do?

—Mother Bruce, Ryan T. Higgins

Whew. And there you go.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Sometimes, you know, I don't think about the consequences, but it's important to or else you might get put in time-out for the dog kennel - Pogie

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.

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!

LINKS WE MENTION

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_foods

Baby bears are the new bison and how to write a book blurb

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Thu, 02 Nov 2023 23:29:59 +0000

Last week, we started talking about how to write a book blurb for your story and began with the first step, which is a hook. You can check that out here.

So, if the first step is creating that hook, the second step, according to Shayla Raquel is dangling the characters.

What does that mean?

It means that the thing that propels your story needs to be in your book blurb.

Or as Shayla says, “Your characters are the story.”

You only have 150 to 200 words in that blurb, so you can’t tell your potential reader everything about those adorable characters, but you want to give them some details to hook onto.

She uses an example of Marissa Meyer’s Cinder to show how to do this:

Sixteen-year-old Cinder is considered a technological mistake by most of society and a burden by her stepmother. Being cyborg does have its benefits, though: Cinder's brain interference has given her an uncanny ability to fix things (robots, hoovers, her own malfunctioning parts), making her the best mechanic in New Beijing. This reputation brings Prince Kai himself to her weekly market booth, needing her to repair a broken android before the annual ball. He jokingly calls it "a matter of national security," but Cinder suspects it's more serious than he's letting on.

Although eager to impress the prince, Cinder's intentions are derailed when her younger stepsister, and only human friend, is infected with the fatal plague that's been devastating Earth for a decade. Blaming Cinder for her daughter's illness, Cinder's stepmother volunteers her body for plague research, an "honor" that no one has survived.

But it doesn't take long for the scientists to discover something unusual about their new guinea pig. Something others would kill for.

You see how it tells us a bit about Cinder and what’s wrong with her world?

She’s 16.
Her wicked stepmother and the world thinks she’s a mistake
She has the hots for Prince Kai
Her younger stepsister is sick and she gets the blame.

You can see from that blurb what step three is, right? It’s that there is a conflict set up. Cinder vs her mom, maybe against society, and so on.

And there are stakes, which brings us to step four, which is “determine the consequences,” Shalya says, writing,

“When there’s conflict, there are consequences to a character’s actions. What hangs in the balance for your characters?

“Formula: Conflict (“Character must do this”) + Stakes (“Or this will happen”) = Consequences”

And an example from Chris McGeorge’s Guess Who blurb

“If he doesn’t find the killer, they all will die.”

Hard to get more explicit than that. Next week, we’ll have the final step.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Always know the consequence - Pogie

WRITING EXERCISE

This is from Dabble Writer.

“Choose three objects at random, then look them up in a dream dictionary. Write down what each object symbolizes and imagine the person who would dream about them. What is the dreamer going through? Build a story from there.”

But instead, make that person, your main character. How can you weave in those images into the subtext of your story? How can you weave in their meaning?

PLACES TO SUBMIT

The New Verse News Seeks Current Events Poetry

Deadline: Year-round

Since 2005, The New Verse News has covered the news of the day with poems on issues, large and small, international and local. It relies on the submission of poems (especially those of a politically progressive bent) by writers from all over the world. The editors update the website every day with a poetic take on a current and specific headline. See the website for guidelines and examples. Then paste your non-simultaneous submission and a brief bio in the text of an email (no attachments, please) to nvneditor(at)gmail.com. Write “Verse News Submission” in the subject line of your email.

Jelly Bucket Call for Neurodivergent Writers and Artists

For Issue 14, Jelly Bucket will feature a special section dedicated to neurodivergent writers. Guest edited by Nathan Spoon, we’re looking for creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry, 10-minute plays, and art specifically from writers and artists who identify as neurodivergent. Submit via Submittable: General submissions ($2) thru 12/1. Special section (no fee) thru 12/15. jellybucket.submittable.com/submit

We’ll talk about the final step in her process next week.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/section-blue-ridge-parkway-closed-after-visitors-allegedly-104550600

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.

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!

How to Make Your Book Blurb and Trippy Art About Dragon Intimacy How to Make a Shart Tantalizing?

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Fri, 27 Oct 2023 17:10:31 +0000

I’ve decided it’s time for a new series of podcast now that we whacked character lies down to a mush of sobs.

There are all different ways to write these blurbs and make them tantalizing to readers, but there are set steps. We’re going to focus on the first one here.

First let’s explain what a book blurb is, right? It’s just the description of your novel that goes on the sell page on Amazon or other places. It’s short. It’s sexy. It’s enticing. You use it on social media, on Amazon.

It is the ad for your book that is everywhere your book is available to be sold and some other places too.

HOW LONG?

Oh, this baby is about 150 to 200 words.

HOW DO YOU MAKE ONE?

Shayla Raquel has a great post from last year where she writes, “Similar to what a writer would do for a query letter, a hook is meant to entice the reader to bite. It takes several tries to get the hook just right, but once you’ve got it figured out, the reader won’t be able to resist. When writing your hook, consider the following:

Who is the main character(s)?
What do they most deeply desire?
What stands in the way?
What is the setting or context for the story?”

She then gives some great and quick examples of this:

Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars.

Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there.

—The Martian, Andy Weir

Could you survive on your own, in the wild, with everyone out to make sure you don't live to see the morning?

—The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins

The Reedsy blog uses this one as an example. It’s Uncanny Times by Laura Anne Gilman.

Huntsmen, according to the Church, were damned, their blood unclean and unholy. Yet for Rosemary and Aaron Harker, the Church was less important than being ready to stand against the uncanny, as not being prepared could lead to being dead.

But Blurbmedic has a really lovely infographic and guidelines, which is probably why it’s Blurbmedic.

It creates a template that’s really amazing at showing how the blurb is a teaser and also organizes the story, connecting emotion and tension to make a blurb interesting.

Hooks can be opened or closed.

And that site says that the open hook is the “statements or questions that make a reader ask more questions. The reader will have to read the book to find out.”

Carrie is dying. The moment she opened that door, her life had turned poopy.

You’re like, “Wait, what? Why is Carrie dying? What door? Why did she open it? what happened?”

The closed hook makes you ask questions and find answers.

Carrie is dying.

First, she opened the door that let in the zombie. Then the zombie bit her, but this kind of zombie doesn’t want to eat brains. It also eats poopy.

The point here, according to Blurbmedic, is to get the reader to be afraid of missing out on knowing what happens. The hook will build up the tension and make everyone intrigued.

It’s a really big first step.

EXERCISE TO HELP

A great exercise for this is to use the Killogator logline formula created by Graeme Shillin.

He says to write:

“SETTING: When and where your story takes place.
PROTAGONIST: Who your main character (hero or heroine) is.
PROBLEM: The issue or event that causes your Protagonist to take action.
ANTAGONIST: Who or what tries to stop your Protagonist.
CONFLICT: The major obstacle, difficulty, or dilemma your protagonist faces.
GOAL: What your Protagonist hopes to win, achieve, find, or defeat.”

You put it in here, also created by Graeme. Cool, right?

“In a (SETTING) a (PROTAGONIST) has a (PROBLEM) caused by (an ANTAGONIST) and (faces CONFLICT) as they try to (achieve a GOAL).”

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

In real life, you don't want the question of defecation location to be open ended.

PLACE TO SUBMIT

Emerald City Seeks Fiction

Emerald City seeks fiction for our upcoming issues. We are a quarterly online fiction magazine that publishes traditional short stories, flash fiction, and hybrid works. We believe fiction is a necessary part of life; captivating storytelling transports us to other worlds while allowing us to make more sense of our own. We’re less interested in what genre something is or its literary status than we are in how much it moves us. Whether traditional, experimental, or something else fun, we publish well-crafted stories that make us reevaluate ourselves and our place in the world. emeraldcitylitmag.org

LINK WE TALK ABOUT

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/oct/26/weird-medieval-guys-olivia-m-swarthout-art-rabbits?ICID=ref_fark

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.

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!

Smuggling Giraffe Poop and Tell Me Lies, Tell Me Sweet Little Lies: Character Misbelief is Hot When You Write Novels

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 19:04:07 +0000

So far we’ve talked (and written) twice about character misbeliefs. Then we took a baby break because we’re like that, but we’re back on it now, my friends.

Those earlier posts are linked below.

First off to recap, the big lie or character misbelief in your story is what motivates them or causes them to act in a certain way. If your character grows in a positive way, during the story, they usually realize by the end that the lie was a big ole lie and not a glorious simple truth and voila—life is better.

Your lie has to move the plot forward and it has to relate to your story’s theme.

According to LitCharts, theme is just “a universal idea, lesson, or message explored throughout a work of literature.”

So a character lie is something like “MIGHT MAKES RIGHT” because your character believes this with all their mighty heart. The theme might be love is more powerful than might. Often, the theme disproves the lie, right?

Cool.

Now, when you’re building characters for your novel and building the plot around them, you want to use that theme and that lie to make your story resonate, to make your readers or audience feel for the characters involved and root for them to stop lying to themselves and get some wisdom (in the form of the story’s theme).

So basically, you find the theme and the opposite (kind of tweaked) is usually the character’s misbelief.

So, here’s how it goes, step by step for those of you who like steps:

Figure out the theme.
Think of what’s the opposite of the truth of that theme (the lie).
Think about why your main character believes this hideous lie.
Write a little scene about it. Call it backstory. Think deeply about whether it actually needs to be in the story AS SCENE or if it can be sprinkled in.
Think about other moments that made your poor honey of character believe this BS.
Think about how believing this lie has totally messed up your character’s life right now in the story.
Figure out if your main does something that they think sparks joy because of this BS lie but they are totally wrong?
How does your character go after a goal that deals with the lie or the theme? This is the plot of your book.

Cool, right?

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Every once in awhile reassess the things you believe about yourself and the world. Are they really true? Why do you even believe them?

What’s the theme of your life? It sounds like we’ve had some Mary Jane, but seriously, as Kira Newman at the Greater Good asks,

“If your life were a movie, where would the plot be headed right now?

“You may not be immortalized in film anytime soon, but your life is still a story. According to psychologists, we all have an internalized narrative that explains how we became the person we are today and where we are headed tomorrow. Like any Hollywood blockbuster, this narrative has settings, scenes, a plot, characters, and themes.”

WRITING TIP OF THE POD

A lot of books are flat not because they aren’t clever or the plot doesn’t have cool things. They are flat because the characters are. The characters are often flat because there’s no big lie that’s part of their motivation.

PLACE TO SUBMIT

Exploration and Recovery: Mental Illness and The Awakenings Review

Year-round

“The Awakenings Review is an award-winning literary magazine committed to publishing poetry, short stories, nonfiction, and photography by writers, poets, and artists who write from experience with mental illness: either in themselves, family members, or friends. Located in the Chicago area but international in scope, our print publication is one of the nation’s leading journals of this genre. By its nature, mental illness is a troubling, distressing, and painful experience. At The Awakenings Review we love to get works of renewal and healing, a positive outcome to your suffering and distress. We are currently accepting submissions for our Spring 2024 issue. Please read our submission guidelines at www.AwakeningsProject.org.”

RANDOM EXERCISE FOR THEME

Over on the Reedsy blog, there is a post about finding your novel’s theme. You can read it in full over there, but we’re going to encapsulate it here:

Write nouns that deal with your novel. Hobbits. Friendship. Powerful ring. Hot elves.
Pick one to be your center noun. Power.
Make a thematic statement with that theme. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

THOSE LINKS I WAS TALKING ABOUT

Write Better Now Neither of Us are Lookers, Seventh Grade Insults and Character Misbeliefs

Carrie Jones

Sep 28

Read full story

Write Better Now YOUR BIG LIE OR CHARACTER’S MISBELIEF

Carrie Jones

Sep 21

We’re doing a hybrid writing tip and podcast this week. All the important stuff is written down here. All the fun stuff and Shaun aka The Talent is in the podcast where we talk about this important writing stuff and other things. So, let’s get started.

Read full story

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.

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!

Living Happy and Write Better Now! is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Happily Ever After or Happy For Now

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Thu, 12 Oct 2023 23:29:55 +0000

It’s a romance brawl. Not really. But it’s a bit of one. And it comes down to this:

Does a romance have to have Happily Ever After or Happy For Now to be a romance?

Does there need to be a positive, happy ending in order for a book to be a romance?

Let’s talk about it.

Unspoken agreement with the reader

WRITING TIP OF THE POD

If your story isn’t happily ever after, it may be a love story, but it might be hard to market as a romance.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

A goal of happy for now? It’s a damn good goal. Squirrels move. Mailmen come and go. The treat jar might diminish, but making the goal a for now goal? That helps keep it in balance.

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.

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!

https://writingcooperative.com/hea-vs-hfn-aea4ad42f7c5

Neither of Us are Lookers, Seventh Grade Insults and Character Misbeliefs

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Thu, 28 Sep 2023 23:21:36 +0000

On our last podcast and post, we talked about the character misbelief, which is basically what the character in your story believes that isn’t real or true.The big component of this is that your character believes this big lie about life or about themselves because of something that hurt them in the past.

The thing that hurt them in the past that causes that big untruth that dictates their lives is often called a wound.

Whew. So much lingo.

False belief/big lie
Wound/thing that hurt them in the past

So, the cool thing is that you can use these false beliefs to make a better story. We talked about those false beliefs in our last podcast, but it could be that they aren’t lovable, they are unworthy, that might always makes right.

The wound makes this a logical thing for them to think even though it’s super wrong. The big trick is that you want to show this to the reader rather than tell them.

You can’t just write:

Carrie cried because she was unlovable, which she knew because Steve Sills told her so at the seventh grade dance.

And you can’t just write,

“I’m only doing this,” Carrie said, “because of what Steven Sills told me at that seventh grade dance.”

You want to show these beliefs rather than tell them. Instead, you want to show the reader by how the main character reacts to something BECAUSE of their false belief.

It’s all about our character’s mind tricking them into lies. That’s called a cognitive distortion in real life, right?

There’s a great post by Jami Gold that talks about 15 ways to show false beliefs in our characters. And honestly, they are so much like real life that it kind of hurts. She talks a lot in that post about Michael Hauge who talks a lot about this and is kind of the guru of false belief.

Here we go:

15 Ways to Show False Beliefs in Our Characters

(Note that these cognitive distortions are not exclusive. We can use multiple methods to show characters’ false beliefs throughout a story, so we don’t have to choose just one.)

If characters believe X about themselves (e.g., they’re unlovable), they might react in one or more of the following ways:

Filtering: Magnifying the negative and ignoring the positive They’ll dwell on plot events that prove their belief right and they’ll gloss over those that prove them wrong.
Polarized Thinking: Seeing things in black-or-white They’ll deem any attempt to overcome that flaw a failure if it doesn’t turn out perfectly.
Overgeneralization: Basing conclusions on single piece of evidence They’ll pick out a single word, act, or event to reinforce their belief.
Jumping to Conclusions: Assuming others’ feelings or motivations They’ll assume others’ actions are driven by their flaw.
Catastrophizing: Expecting disaster to strike They’ll worry a minor mistake due to their flaw will cause great tragedy.
Personalization: Taking everything as a direct reaction to them They’ll see themselves and their flaw as the cause for everything others do or say.
Control Fallacies: Seeing themselves as a victim They’ll either think fate forces them to be a victim of their flaw, or they’ll make themselves into victims by accepting blame for everything because of their flaw.
Fallacy of Fairness: Judging life by “fairness” They’ll expect things to turn out positively to make up for the pain “life” inflicted with their Wound.
Blaming: Blaming others for troubles They’ll think others are responsible for the pain of their Wound.
Shoulds: Prioritizing “rules” They’ll set up rules for how to deal with situations caused by their belief and feel guilty when they violate those rules.
Emotional Reasoning: Believing feelings automatically true They’ll trust their feelings about their belief above all other evidence.
Fallacy of Change: Expecting others to change They’ll expect others to change to accommodate their belief and think their happiness depends on meeting that goal.
Global Labeling: Extreme and emotional mislabeling They’ll exaggerate and overgeneralize their flaw to the point of creating unhealthy emotions.
Always Being Right: Being right is most important trait They’ll argue about their belief with the insistence that they’re right—no matter the costs (including to others’ emotions).
Heaven’s Reward Fallacy: Expecting actions to “pay off” They’ll expect life to reward their sacrifice in the name of their belief.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Sometimes a misbelief can be helpful. Pogie thinks she's a bad ass. She is not.

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.

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!

RANDOM THOUGHT LINK

https://shepherdexpress.com/puzzles/news-of-the-weird/news-of-the-weird-week-of-september-28-2023/

YOUR BIG LIE OR CHARACTER’S MISBELIEF

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Thu, 21 Sep 2023 23:35:12 +0000

We’re doing a hybrid writing tip and podcast this week.

All the important stuff is written down here. All the fun stuff and Shaun aka The Talent is in the podcast where we talk about this important writing stuff and other things.

So, let’s get started.

The big lie or the character’s misbelief in your story is a major key to your character’s story arc, which is basically the emotional change and development of who you character is.

The lie drives the stupid or wonderful things that they do in the story.

It’s what motivates them in a way.

Sometimes the protagonist or main character or hero of your story doesn’t believe THE BIG LIE, but everyone else does. That’s super cool, too.

The lie can be a small deal—I am going to win the Little Miss New Hampshire Song and Dance Contest though I can’t move my hips and I am ancient and the contest is for 8 year olds and under. (I now want to write this story)

The lie can be a big deal on a societal and personal level—Might always makes right, so I’ll beat everyone up to get my way.

On Writers Helping Writers they say that the big thing is this: Your lie has to move the plot forward and it has to relate to your story’s theme.

They also break it down to inner and outer lies (which are a bit like character-driven lie and plot-driven lie, right?).

They write:

“Plot-driven stories often focus primarily on an outer-world Lie such as Hunger Games‘ Lie that “oppressive government is necessary” or Jurassic Park‘s Lie that “science should always be advanced.” Character-driven stories usually focus on an inner Lie, such as “men and women can’t be friends” in When Harry Met Sally or “money is the measure of worth” in A Christmas Carol.

“An inner-world Lie will affect the character’s outer world, sometimes even to the point of becoming the outer world’s Lie. And vice versa, an outer-world Lie will likely become crucial to the character’s inner conflict and self-estimation.

“The distinction is important not so much because of how the Lie manifests in the story as it is because of where the Lie originated. Where did this Lie come from? Who (or what) gave this Lie to the character? And what do the answers mean for the character’s motivations and ultimate arc within this story?”

Carrie is going to be talking more about this in the upcoming weeks, but we want for you to think about those questions for your own life too.

Is there something you believe that might not be quite right? Sometimes it might be that you’re bad at art or sports or school. Sometimes it might be that you can only be loved if you are perfect. Sometimes it might be that if you just work hard enough you can be Bill Gates rich.

Just like for your characters, your lie can be destructive to your own life.

On Writers Helping Writers, Angela Ackerman writes,

“We are often our own biggest critics, aren’t we? Whenever something goes wrong, we feel disappointed, frustrated, upset, or hurt. The fallout might cause others around us to suffer too, causing further anguish and guilt. When this happens, unless the situation was in no way tied to us, we tend to blame ourselves:

“When the character’s thoughts circle disempowering beliefs (that they are incompetent, naïve, defective, or they lack value) as a reason for their failure, it eats away at their self-worth. This, combined with a need to identify the pain’s cause will lead to a specific effect: an internal lie will form. This Lie (also called a False Belief or Misbelief) is a conclusion reached through flawed logic. Caught in a vulnerable state, the character tries to understand or rationalize his painful experience, only to falsely conclude that fault somehow lies within.”

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Pogie’s big lie is that she’s a super toughie. She is not. Do you have this lie?

WRITING TIP OF THE POD

Think about your character’s lie. What is it that they wrongly believe?

LINKS WE TALK ABOUT

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.

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!

Strange Storm Things

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Sat, 16 Sep 2023 11:38:56 +0000

It's a weird, wild, not PC live ride into strange storm things as we wait for Hurricane Lee. I tried to keep this podcast on track. I failed.

Links We Mention

https://www.factretriever.com/hurricane-facts

https://bestlifeonline.com/storm-facts/

http://www.theworldgeography.com/2011/04/top-8-weirdest-natural-disasters.html

https://news.yahoo.com/7-weird-weather-phenomena-around-200000567.html

SHOUT OUT TO STUBHY!

The snippet of our intro and outro music is only a snippet of this guy’s awesome talent. Many thanks to Kaustubh Pandav. You can check out a bit of his work at the links below.

www.luckyboysconfusion.Net or www.Facebook.com/mrmsandtheinfusions

Thanks for hanging out with us! And remember, don’t be afraid to let your strange out.

Repurpose Spider Hairs, Licking Rocks, and Counting Dead People's Nose Hairs: Logic Matters and so do the Ig Nobles

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Thu, 14 Sep 2023 23:00:03 +0000

In our random thought we talk all about the Ig Nobles. We don't transcribe that, so you'll have to listen. Sorry!

But now, let’s talk about logic.

When you are writing a novel and something doesn’t make sense—let’s say someone has brown eyes on page 2 and blue eyes on page 1—your editor if you have one is going to call you on that. If they don’t call you on that, the readers’ brain will hitch when they are reading.

Editors are awesome.

And what I’m saying is that we need editors for real life. That’s because a lot of time people don’t seem to listen to facts. Reason is what helps us justify our beliefs. But someties that means that we aren’t awesome at seeing the truth. We like to cherry pick facts that support our own ideas and then we get biased. We start looking and seeing information that holds with what we already believe rather than information that goes counter to how we believe.

These two cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber believe that reasoning is to help us function as a social group rather than as people who seek truth.

A Psychology Today article by Jessica Schrader writes:

"A number of studies document the many ways in which our political party distorts our reasoning. One study found that people who had strong math skills were only good at solving a math problem if the solution to the problem conformed to their political beliefs. Liberals were only good at solving a math problem, for instance, if the answer to that problem showed that gun control reduced crime. Conservatives were only good at solving this problem if the solution showed that gun control increased crime. Another study found that the higher an individual’s IQ, the better they are at coming up with reasons to support a position—but only a position that they agree with.

"Belonging to a particular political party can also shape our perception. In one study, researchers were asked to watch a video of protestors. Half of the participants were told the people in the video were protesting the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. The other half were told that the people were protesting an abortion clinic. Liberals reported saying the protestors were more violent and disruptive if they were told they were watching abortion clinic protestors, and the opposite was true for conservatives—even though everyone was watching the same video."

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Hoarding all your toys on the couch isn't the best idea.

LINKS TO LEARN MORE

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/words-matter/201810/why-people-ignore-facts

https://apnews.com/article/ig-nobels-prize-2023-3f34e020cfb9154c240dfef7c076f177

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.

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!

Is Your Life a Stand Alone or A Series?

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 29 Aug 2023 23:51:11 +0000

Chuck Wendig has a piece on his blog, Terrible Minds, called "Series vs Standalone: Cage Match," which shows that Wendig is great at blog headlines and marketing.

But his riff on a BlueSky conversation between a lot of writer elite. And it’s why he’s writing standalones mostly from now on instead of a series.

Quickly, his reasons are:

"Writing a series is depressing.
Publishers tend to give all the support only to that first book.
Standalones have new hope for ancillary rights
Standalones have a new shot at discoverability.
If that first book really doesn’t work, you’re committed to the series anyway.
Paper prices are becoming a problem.
People tend to be readers of a series and not as much readers of an author."

That’s a lot, right? But it made me think about the state of publishing and the state of living. Do we want to be a group of series or standalones? Do we want our life to be part of a bigger connective something or inclusive in itself.

WRITING TIP OF THE POD

Stand alone or series is really about the story and your own personal goals as a writer. Don't let others pigeonhole you into b.s.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Connections can be okay. - Pogie the Pup

LINKS WE TALK ABOUT

The ones above and also . . .

https://news.yahoo.com/homeowner-mystified-strange-cheese-puff-093000484.html

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.

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!

Young Woman at the Cocktail Party

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Mon, 28 Aug 2023 12:22:14 +0000

A poem for Monday!

A Deep Dive Into The Strange

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Sat, 19 Aug 2023 12:45:27 +0000

This week we tried to take a deep dive into the strange, but basically just told four stories. God only knows what went wrong, honestly.

LINKS WE MENTION:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/8htqnq/what_strange_thing_have_you_witnessedexperienced/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Weird/

Brave Fart and Florida Man, Let's Talk About How Anger is Not The Enemy for Writers and Other Humans

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 15 Aug 2023 19:46:06 +0000

So, a lot of self-help out there on TikTok and blogs is all about being . . . Well, happier, more efficient, better humans. We explore this all the time ourselves as we try to lead better lives, but one of the big things about this is that it sort of makes it seem like we live in a bubble where only we exist, that if we just work harder, better, more, in a different way, then we can get everything we need.

That's what we talk about, plus brave fart and Florida Man headlines and writing.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Anger doesn't usually help you get bacon. Be choosy in how you use it and remember there are other souls out there who have to interact with you.

WRITING TIP OF THE POD

Allow your characters to experience a full range of emotions.

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.

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!

How to Stay Motivated Even If You’re a Writer

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 01 Aug 2023 22:15:13 +0000

How to Stay Motivated Even If You’re a Writer

A lot of writers hate writing. They sit and stare at the blank page or screen. They end up posting about how hard writing is, how torturous. Their post will get them a million likes.

But it wasn’t always like that for that.

Most of us write because at one point we really loved writing. Drawing? The same thing.

There was a study of little kids in a school setting and these little kids really loved to draw. They chose it as a free-time activity over and over again. So the researchers started to give them gold stars for drawing as a reward for the activity. The kids kept drawing. Then the researchers took the gold stars away. The kids stopped drawing—this thing they loved—because they were no longer getting an external reward and dopamine rush for it. Their internal reward that had compelled them to draw earlier? It no longer mattered.

We do this to ourselves all the time. We look to external rewards and validation instead of to the inside.

Dopamine is basically this feel good chemical (or neurotransmitter) that brings information from one neuron to another. Our brains let the dopamine loose into the nervous system when we do the horizontal mambo, when we eat something yummy, when we do cool things, even when we drink or do drugs (which is why those things can be so addictive, right?).

When we do painful things (like running or studying or writing our epic novel about two gerbils against the universe), our brain will release dopamine later for the reward, but in the moment you have to say:

I am doing this by choice
I am doing this because I love it.
This is hard, but hard is good because hard means striving, hard means that I’m probably in a growth mindset.

You want to turn effort into reward and pull pleasure from the effort itself, not the reward that comes at the end because that makes you resent the effort. Or if you’re an overthinker (cough), you might realize that there may be no reward at the end, no seven-figure book contract, no marathon that you magically finish in the top ten.

You want the dopamine to be linked to the effort of training, of running, of studying itself, of putting your butt in chair and writing about Xena Gerbil Princess and her true love the gerbil bard, Gabby.

There’s a Navy Seal, David Goggins, retired, right? And he is all about this: about giving what you do everything you have so that you can achieve greatness and self discipline and toughness.

Now, a Navy Seal seems light years away from a writer sending out social media posts about how much they hate writing and how painful it is or about the writer who only looks toward the reward of publication (traditional) or massive sales (independent or traditional).

Why does this matter?

I work with a ton of authors who are so talented. But some can’t bring themselves to write any more. I work with a ton of authors who are so talented. But some are too afraid of rejection to lean in and enjoy their talent or process or even send out some pages.

“Our culture has become hooked on the quick-fix, the life hack, efficiency. Everyone is on the hunt for that simple action algorithm that nets maximum profit with the least amount of effort. There’s no denying this attitude may get you some of the trappings of success, if you’re lucky, but it will not lead to a calloused mind or self-mastery. If you want to master the mind and remove your governor, you’ll have to become addicted to hard work. Because passion and obsession, even talent, are only useful tools if you have the work ethic to back them up.” ― David Goggins, Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Play for the love of playing. - Pogie Pup

LINKS WE MENTION

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/dopamine

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.

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!

Feel the Awe and Get Through the Tough Times

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 25 Jul 2023 23:03:38 +0000

Awe can get us through time times, scientists are saying. We'll check this theory out, define awe a bit, and obviously--get goofy.

DOG THOUGHT FOR LIFE

Sparty says: Slow down. You move too fast. Smell every tree and fire hydrant.

LINKS WE MENTION

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_awe_can_help_us_through_tough_times

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-35200-w

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/six_ways_to_incorporate_awe_into_your_daily_life

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.

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!

Let's Talk About Creepy Things

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 21:02:11 +0000

Ghosts. Sasquatch. Cryptids.

There are entire Facebook posts about them where people share their experiences, one after another after another.

We're going to break format today, share a couple, and trying to figure out why people are so into Bigfoot and why Bigfoot is just not that into you. :) Just kidding!

But seriously, why isn't he into me? I'm super nice.

https://rmsobigfoot.blogspot.com/2023/07/giant-canton-sasquatch-near-abandoned.html?fbclid=IwAR35KDwkxt-pC96rbzCNZvjnJE75xcS455CY-kBNDSP6p6HJe4RAuaKTVDQ

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.

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!

Would You Quit If Your Employer Made You Exercise? Plus, a Mile-Long Cloud of Flying Ants

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 11 Jul 2023 23:37:13 +0000

There’s a company in Sweden who is now run by a super fitness guy. He’s all in on the exercise. And when he took the company over, some people in the company quit. They were not all in, right? It was just an hour at 9 a.m. on Friday, but they were like hell to the now.

And it’s funny because in school and for a lot of us in college, exercise or sport was something that we had to do. It was play, right? We moved our body and cooperated (sometimes) and had fun.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Exercise is a good idea. Sparty even loves it despite his massive girth and arthritic hips.

LINKS WE TALK ABOUT

https://news.sky.com/story/radars-detect-mile-long-swarm-of-flying-ants-near-uks-south-coast-12917527

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.

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!

Living in the Present Tense

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 27 Jun 2023 20:17:33 +0000

This episode we're riffing on living in the present tense and also a bit about using it in your writing.

As Peter Selgin says

"Apart from its ubiquity, there are good reasons to be wary of the present tense. Unlike the past tense, which allows narrators unrestricted movement between the past and the present, the present tense locks us into each moment, allowing for little if any reflection. And while the past tense lets us expand, compress, or bypass events according to their dramatic import, since in the present tense everything is happening here and now, it tends to treat all moments equally, however important or not, so a headache gets as much attention as an earthquake."

So, it’s harder to write in the present tense because we are confined a bit more. And hoity-toity writers tend to think of it as a fad though Dickens did it (and others going back to the Ancient Greeks, but whatever . . .

So here are some advantages of the present tense:

It’s way more immediate because it is indeed in the moment. We are there as things happen.
The immediacy raises the stakes.
It can reflect the type of protagonist you have. Is your main character someone who lives in the moment and doesn’t spend a lot of time with their brain in the past or the future? Are they a bit rush-in as a human? This can reflect that character trait.
It can also show the theme of the work. So, if you are writing a ground-hog-day style story, using the present tense can reflect that there is only this one present at the moment while all the other ones were experienced before and can be changed.
It makes life easier when it comes to grammar. There are 12 tenses in our language. Present tense stories only have four usually.
It’s easier to make unreliable narrators.
It feels more cinematic.

Things that suck about present tense:

That restriction, compression of time and our ability as authors to use more than four tenses and hop around.
Sometimes it’s hard to show the complexity of the main character because they are indeed in the moment most of the times. The characters often feel more simple.
It’s harder to foreshadow the things that are going to happen because the character doesn’t know that they are going to happen yet.
It sometimes makes us writers meander into tangent and too much internal thought.
Sometimes adult readers get snobby about it.

HOW DOES THIS RELATE TO OUR LIVES?

According to PositivePsychology.com,

"It’s vital to live in the present moment.

In our current twenty-first century lives, it’s not easy. There’s always something coming up that we need to prepare for or anticipate, and our lives are so well-documented that it’s never been easier to get lost in the past.

Given the fast pace and hectic schedules most of us keep, a base level of anxiety, stress, and unhappiness is the new norm. You may not even realize it, but this tendency to get sucked into the past and the future can leave you perpetually worn out and feeling out of touch with yourself.

The cure for this condition is what so many people have been saying all along: conscious awareness and a commitment to staying in the “now.” Living in the present moment is the solution to a problem you may not have known you had."

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Sparty says to live for today. Scratch on the door when you want to get out. Poop when you need to. Don't think about the pounds of your doggy past. Enjoy your now.

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.

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!

Buying Beyoncé's Bidet and Is It Excitement or Is It Dread?

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 20 Jun 2023 15:45:34 +0000

Those two topics aren't necessarily connected.

As a human being, I tend to get sort of an anticipatory anxiety before I do things—a lot. I think of it as stage fright.

And it turns out that this anticipatory sort of anxiety can be a symptom of generalized anxiety disorder or a panic disorder.

Recently, though, I started to think of it as maybe an adrenalin rush that comes from excitement.

Anticipatory anxiety is sometimes overwhelming for me when I watch a video or a movie I have to look away or do something else at the same time. In a book? I’ve been known to turn to the last page just to make sure that everyone says.

Rafa Euba says, “Labeling anxiety as mere excitement seems a bit frivolous, although this might be a question of semantics to a certain extent. I agree that the apprehensive excitement one may feel while parachuting, or on a rollercoaster, may be enjoyable overall, even though it will contain an element of anxiety.”

So, I’m still not sure personally. But I know the feeling before I’m about to give a speech is a very different feeling than when I’m worried about making money.

That dread feeling—that worry for the characters—is a key thing that keeps a reader reading or a viewer watching, but it might not be so awesome as an element in our real lives, right?

Though, side note, there can be positives to some amounts of anxiety. It can help us focus. It helps us not do super stupid things that would kill us. Anxiety keeps us from getting Darwin Awards for trying to feed alligators Bud Light.

So, how do you start to deal with anxiety when it’s not part of a bigger mental health diagnosis?

Try to create a calming routine—work with intention to bring some chill into your day. That might be breathing, meditating, relaxing your muscles, journaling. Record and track your thoughts.

Linda Esposito writes:

"Track your thoughts. A common practice of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is recording your thoughts, followed by the subsequent feelings, and how your feelings then inform your actions.

"For example:

Thought: If things don’t go as planned, I will be miserable.
Feelings: Hopeless, afraid, worried, unsafe, unmotivated.
Behaviors: Isolating from friends and family, avoidance of activities you formerly enjoyed, refusal to engage in problem-solving.

"Here’s an example of a reframed thought:

Thought: Although I don’t like uncertainty and I’m worried about the future, I have agency over how much time and energy I spend worrying.
Feelings: Hopeful, somewhat sad, less worried, and more feelings of being in control.
Behaviors: Asking “Am I being realistic?” Focusing on what's going well in your life, and choosing problem-solving over excessive worrying.

And realize you can’t control everything. And stop with the big all-encompassing words like always, complete failure, total success, everybody, never, nobody.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE FROM SPARTACUS

Try to cultivate your chill

LINKS WE TALK ABOUT

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/you-are-not-meant-to-be-happy/202305/is-there-such-a-thing-as-good-anxiety

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/anxiety-zen/202011/how-cope-anticipatory-anxiety

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.

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!

Shaun Ran For Office And Going After Your Dreams

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 14 Jun 2023 19:04:04 +0000

This week's podcast is about Shaun running for office and going after you dreams. These aren't actually related. :)

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Sparty would like you all to know that you can readjust your dream to be the only dog in the house and yes, it is horrifying, but dream tweaking has to happen because of outside circumstances sometimes.

LINKS WE MENTION

https://www.npr.org/2023/05/27/1178478110/service-dog-college-diploma

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.

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 Fart on Your Readers Or Other People, Writers

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 06 Jun 2023 18:29:21 +0000

So, this podcast we're talking about expectations readers have and how we don't want to blow those expectations off.

It's all about reader expectation theory, but also delivering what you're reader wants. Most of the time they aren't into farts.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Sometimes humans fail to meet your expectations, but just go with it. Eventually, you will get a treat.

LINKS WE TALK ABOUT

https://www.newsweek.com/florida-man-arrested-after-allegedly-forcing-alligator-drink-beer-1463693

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40037-022-00708-w

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.

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!

Trending and a pbj with Cheetos is the world's best sandwich

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 30 May 2023 20:29:23 +0000

This week we talk all about trending. Is it good? Bad? Both? And also about a certain sandwich

DOG TIP FOR LIFE:

Choose your trends wisely

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.

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!

LINKS WE REFERENCE

https://www.today.com/trending

https://apnews.com/hub/trending-news

https://www.cmswire.com/digital-workplace/the-lost-art-of-critical-thinking-why-following-trends-can-be-bad-for-business/

No Death Bed Regrets, OK? Channel Your Inner Bezos

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 24 May 2023 17:54:38 +0000

It’s not about being risk averse, it’s about being regret averse.

There’s a pretty well known story about Jeff Bezos, the guy who started Amazon. The story goes like this: Jeff Bezos quit his nice hedge-fund job to start Amazon. He did this big leap of faith because he imagined he was 80 and he wanted to be an 80 year old who had as few regrets as possible.

Back in 2021, Utkarsh Amitabh wrote about career transitions in the framework of the regret minimization formula for the Harvard Business Review, he talks about how Bezos’ boss walked around New York’s Central Park to talk about why Bezos wanted to quit. His boss gave him two days to decide to quit.

Bezos theorized that even if he failed, he would regret not trying, because when you ignore your dreams you become a curmudgeon yelling at kids and dogs to stay off your lawn.

Amitabh writes,

“Transitions aren’t just about doing something different. A career transition is a lifestyle redesign that often entails rethinking how you want to feel at the end of the day, how you want to spend your time, and how this relates to your longer term goals. When you feel this need for change, it isn’t necessarily related to a fancier title or more money, but your inner voice whispering that you could do more, be more, experience and achieve more.”

Morgan Housel writes,

“David Cassidy’s last words were, “So much wasted time.”

What a terrible thing to realize when it’s too late. And I wonder if it’ll become more common as many of us spend our days aimlessly scrolling our phones.

Regrets are a dangerous liability because their final costs are often hidden for years or decades. And decisions that are easiest in the short run are often the most costly in the long run."

For Hausel and for Bezos it isn’t necessarily about risk; it’s about making sure that they aren’t going to be old and full of regrets.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE FROM SPARTY DOG

Get all the love before the animal control officer gets you.

Use your teeth while you still have them.

LINKS WE MENTION

https://news.yahoo.com/florida-man-gets-arm-ripped-152000483.html

https://www.yourtango.com/self/late-life-regrets-avoid-all-costs

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.

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!

All Body and No Beak: Should You Leave Social Media?

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 17 May 2023 18:39:52 +0000

This week we talk about Shaun's potential Only Fans and whether or not we should be on social media and if not all, which ones should we be on.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Be consistent.

Do what makes you happy.

LINKS WE REFERENCE

Medium article

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.

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!

For texture or for worse: Americans are weird about food

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 09 May 2023 18:48:50 +0000

It's all about texture and culture and why Shaun doesn't like okra or tomatoes. Come hang out with us as we discuss how a lot of Americans don't have words for food textures and how that might be changing.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Try anything.

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.

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!

LINKS WE REFERENCE

https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2023/05/08/Guinness-World-Records-boxing-glove-tennis-ball/6811683557047/

A Burp Don't Travel Well

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 03 May 2023 23:14:22 +0000

This podcast, which is a day late and a million dollars short, is not our normal format. Apologies!

But here you go.

Listen if you dare.

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.

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 Let Your Farts or Your Ego Get In Your Way

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 25 Apr 2023 17:04:22 +0000

This brilliant podcast--wink, wink--we talk about how both farts and your own ego can threaten to take over your life if you don't take some control over their eruptions.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Be willing to flop in the grass. It all isn't about being better. Sometimes it's just about being alive and farting when you need to.

LINKS TO LEARN MORE

https://apnews.com/hub/oddities

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ambigamy/201911/12-tips-getting-real-about-your-ego

dailystoic or for its emails

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.

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!

Crawling Through The White House Fence And Let's Get Stoic

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 18:06:11 +0000

This podcast episode, we talk about a trespasser and security threat: a naughty toddler.

We also delve a bit into one of the ways stoicism helps you be more resilient and how this helps for writers, too. YES! Even writers!

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Walk with purpose, humans.

Sparty

LINKS

https://apnews.com/article/white-house-toddler-fence-secret-service-6ece5fc94204dbc3001457403269c28e

https://dailystoic.com/

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.

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!

Stop Talking Smack to Yourself and Have You Heard About Peeps?

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 11 Apr 2023 23:45:45 +0000

This week, it’s all about Kate Middleton’s nails. Her nails, apparently, are scandalous. Red manicure for Easter, which apparently goes against the British tradition.

And also people are saying that Peeps are dangerous. They allegedly have a known carcinogen.

And finally, the real part of the podcast? Negative self talk. Things you should not say to yourself.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

LINKS WE REFERENCE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htsnZzFA9nQ

https://www.bustle.com/p/11-things-to-stop-saying-to-yourself-to-stop-anxiety-in-its-tracks-15644667

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2023/04/06/peeps-easter-candy-has-potentially-cancer-causing-red-dye-3-warns-consumer-reports/?sh=6774a6cf4f09

https://www.glamour.com/story/kate-middleton-broke-unofficial-royal-protocol-with-her-bold-easter-manicure

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.

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!

How You're Messing Up Your Visualization and Mainers Have the Biggest Disks

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 04 Apr 2023 20:21:50 +0000

So, today I was talking to one of my writing clients, who is a therapist and I was actually audacious enough to suggest a tool to help her get through her block about writing her query letter and synopsis, both part of a writer’s proposal package or submission package when they query agents in the quest to be traditionally published.

And this tool, basically comes from Mel Robbins, who is an author, podcaster, and speaker. And, um, apparently the #1 education podcast in the world even though, um, I had never heard of her.

Cough.

Don’t judge, Shaun. She’s also very good at self marketing and is considered a self-publishing phenom and is pretty cute, which means she has a ton of photos of herself on her website.

So, basically the opposite of us except Shaun is cute.

Anyway, enough preamble, she suggests, no insists, that people have a morning routine. It can be five minutes. It can be an hour.

Within this morning routine, you want to focus on an actionable step and nothing else for 15 minutes. During this time, you want to write down your goals, but you actually have to do this big second step, which is imagining yourself taking the steps to get there. According to Robbins, you visualize the steps to get to that end goal and the third step is to imagine and feel the emotions that are connected to each step. Pride? Excitement? Joy? Get all of them in there.

This is similar to Simon Sinek’s who says to go after the things that you want, he tells the story of hiself and a friend going out for bagels.

See the thing that you want. Or see the thing that prevents you from getting what you want. When you go after what you want, he stresses, you don’t want to get in the way of other people’s wants.

Bas Korsten wrote for Harvard Business Review, “Think about it. Great athletes train their bodies for days, weeks, and years to whip them into peak performance. Why, then, wouldn’t a creator do the same with their brain?”

A.J. Adam writes about the science behind visualization for Psychology Today,

“For instance, in his study on everyday people, Guang Yue, an exercise psychologist from Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio, compared results of those who did physical exercises to the results of those who carried out virtual workouts in their heads. In the physical exercise group, finger abduction strength increased by 53%. In the group that did "mental contractions", their finger abduction strength increased by 35%. However, "the greatest gain (40%) was not achieved until 4 weeks after the training had ended" (Ranganathan et al., 2004). This demonstrates the mind's incredible power over the body and its muscles.”

Ideas come. They come all the time, right? But the thing is that you have to imagine those ideas, practice what it feels like do them, and then have the energy to get off your bum, get out of bed, get out of your chair and actually do those ideas.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

For any change to happen, you have to activate your energy. Be like Pogie. Activate all the energy.

Links To Learn More

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/flourish/200912/seeing-is-believing-the-power-visualization

Take Control of Your Life: How to Silence Fear and Win the Mental Game - https://amzn.to/2EfL8c5

The 5 Second Rule: Transform your Life, Work, and Confidence with Everyday Courage - https://amzn.to/2Xb8uqI

https://apnews.com/hub/oddities

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.

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!

Shame on Us No More. Own Who You Are, Baby.

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 29 Mar 2023 20:28:05 +0000

I cannot tell you how much fear of public shaming and disdain has held me back my entire life. I've pretty much smalled myself down because I was so nervous about random, anonymous (or not) mean things happening. And I talk about that more specifically in the podcast.

Teddy Roosevelt has this quote from a speech in Paris in 1910 just after he ran for president. There were over 2,000 people there. “Citizenship in a Republic,” or “The Man in the Arena.”

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

The applause lasted more than two minutes. Multiple times.

“The first time I read this quote,” Dr. Brené Brown wrote in the intro to her book Daring Greatly, “I thought, This is vulnerability. Everything I've learned from over a decade of research on vulnerability has taught me this exact lesson. Vulnerability is not knowing victory or defeat, it's understanding the necessity of both; it's engaging. It's being all in.”

So here goes:

Ignore the noise.

Blow off the haters.

Do your work.

Follow your passion.

Love your people.

Power through or love your way through your insecurities.

RANDOM THOUGHT LINK

We talk about feet sort of, but really facilitated meeting ice breakers. Either one? Totally sexy.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Sparty doesn't care if people call him a toothless weirdo. He just loves every moment. Be like Sparty.

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.

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!

How Do You Fill the Void? And My Dog Doesn't Love Me.

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 16:49:21 +0000

There are so many times that we're driven to succeed, to attain goals and hit milestones and then we think--ah, life is awesome.

Or do we?

It's really about not being stagnant when you want to be a better version of yourselves. You seek out ways to become better. You look for information.

So, how do we fill that void.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Apparently, according to Shaun, Sparty doesn't love me, Carrie

Sparty: Don't let him play you like that, baby.

RANDOM THOUGHT LINK

https://apnews.com/hub/oddities

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.

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!

Naughty License Plates and How To Sleep Like a Boss

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 14 Mar 2023 20:44:17 +0000

This week we delve into sleep and how to sleep like a boss and why you might want to, but it's your life and your choice.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Have your routines. Mine is eat, poop, snuggle, find dark place, sleep.

You can learn from this.

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.

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!

Links to Learn More

https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/sleep/why-sleep-important

https://apnews.com/article/maine-vanity-license-plates-profanities-1149eb44063bb3608574b2f017e6cc99

Connect with Dr. Matt Walker

How To Talk To Your Cat About Gun Safety And Other Ridiculous Books

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 16:03:05 +0000

This week, we venture aware from the world of self-development and into the world on the weird because we honestly just need a break.

Hopefully, you'll be along for the ride.

DOG TIP FOR LOVE

This week's advice is via Sparty who says, "You know, if you love squirrels, it's okay to love squirrels. Love who you love, man. Or, you know, just love the squirrel you're with."

LINKS TO LEARN MORE

https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/truth-is-out-there-just-not-here-two-old-farts-offer-wisdom-georgia-park/Y3SSC5IW4BCGHDADMBQWK6KSCU/

https://alwaysjudgeabookbyitscover.com/

https://theuselessweb.com/

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.

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!

Darwin Awards and Plan Your Day Like a Boss

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 28 Feb 2023 19:12:48 +0000

I wrote over on LIVING HAPPY about some time management tools for planning your day, and today, Shaun and I are checking it out a little bit more.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Day planning needs to include walks, poops, and water. Just saying.

LINKS WE MENTION

https://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2022-07.html

https://livinghappy.substack.com/p/how-do-you-actually-manage-your-time-e5b

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 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!

90 Day Goals Can Change Your Life

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 21 Feb 2023 22:07:46 +0000

First off, many apologies, because Shaun was super naughty this podcast.

There's a belief that if you make 90-day goals, it super charges you.

We're going to explain that. And we're going to give it a try.

Plus, general weirdness. Come hang out for 20 minutes.

And remember when you make goals:

write those bad boys down;
make them specific and have outcomes;
make a deadline.

Good goal: Finish first draft of Weirdos of Bar Harbor by April 1.

Bad goal: write a book.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Go after your snacks. Be all about your goal. Do you. Don't let other people neg your goal.

LINKS WE REFERENCE

https://www.forbes.com/sites/netapp/2015/02/11/90-day-goals/?sh=5af3a5526260

https://apnews.com/article/caribbean-bahamas-b7de53a43d7ed762100527dae2596723

https://apnews.com/article/climate-and-environment-brooklyn-new-york-city-animals-f5914137cc03e5bfc1b88ca1a836c142

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.

Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every other week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

ANIMAL MATING RITUALS ARE WEIRD AND APPARENTLY LOVE IS ALL YOU NEED IS REALLY A LOT OF BS

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 14 Feb 2023 19:00:34 +0000

Yep. It’s Valentine’s Day so we are talking about how you need more than love to be happy and fulfilled. Or here, let’s rephrase it: It’s not necessarily love that makes you happy and fulfilled. And that's what we talk about this podcast. Plus, giant pandas take each other hostage to court and giraffes have a lot of water sports.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Loving each other is way more important than fighting over who is alpha or blaming each other. Also, hug people when they come home and wag your tail as much as possible.

LINKS WE REFERENCE

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/stronger-the-broken-places/201507/is-love-really-all-you-need

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/strange-love-13-animals-with-truly-weird-courtship-rituals/ar-AA17s9RR

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.

Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every other week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Little boy orders a thousand dollars worth of Grubhub and how to actually get your goals

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 07 Feb 2023 20:00:01 +0000

A lot of people set goals or resolutions and not all of us complete them. This is especially true about resolutions where only about 9% achieve them.

Sometimes that’s about a fear of failure. It becomes such a big fear that it keeps us from moving forward.

You have to fail to succeed.

There’s a lot of belief out there that if you fail at something, that failure labels you, defines you. This episode we talk about the strategy to get your goals and also about a six-year-old boy who hid in the basement and ordered $1,000 of Grubhub on his dad's cell phone one night.

And also a woman who started breathing at a funeral home.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Don't let anyone call you anything you don't want to be called especially if they are calling you a failure. Go after your goals and don't worry about the ridicule.

https://apnews.com/article/oddities-detroit-michigan-business-5ade1109c559a09d42190f3a2b7ead42

https://apnews.com/article/new-york-state-government-7caaefc9d212da3556e4c163a7a29f6c

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/28/tony-robbins-use-this-4-step-strategy-to-achieve-any-goal.html

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.

Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every other week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Fried Chicken Incense, Farts, and Not Letting Your Worries Master You

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 19:29:49 +0000

This podcast is about farting, worries, and fried chicken incense. What other self-improvement podcast can give you such smelly happiness? None, right?

Come hang out for a bit!

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

If it's farts or love declarations or a loan application, don't be afraid to let it out. Yeah, it might not go awesomely, but it's better than not knowing. All movement matters. You don't want to hold it in. Especially the farts.

LINK WE MENTION

https://www.uexpress.com/oddities/news-of-the-weird/2023/01/27

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.

Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every other week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Don't Drink 40 Shots With The Undertaker. The Voices In Your Head Craft Your Success

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 24 Jan 2023 19:35:00 +0000

“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.

The Butter Canal And Finding Your Personal Values

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 17 Jan 2023 15:22:09 +0000

We know! We know! The title? It will all make sense in a second.

Hopefully . . .

Join us!

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Your personal values can change. That's okay. That's growth or personal evolution.

LINKS WE MENTION

https://www.lifehack.org/866227/personal-values

https://www.foxnews.com/us/wisconsin-historic-canal-filled-with-butter-after-dairy-plant-catches-fire

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.

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Losing Your Junk and Swimming in the Pool of Commoners

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 18:55:53 +0000

So, over on our substack, LIVING HAPPY, I’ve been talking a lot about creating our own realities in relation to success and meaning. This is really just sort of diving deep to realize that maybe your perspective isn’t the one you want.

When you attain your goals, do they satisfy you? That’s really the question. Listen to us talk about this, losing your junk (and word choice) and finding success your own way.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Sometimes you just have to define your own success and if that's flopping on the couch all the day in the living room? So be it, dog.

LINKS WE REFERENCE

Crafting Realities: Work, Happiness, and Meaning

Video Series on Managing Our Inner Worlds

https://shepherdexpress.com/puzzles/news-of-the-weird/news-of-the-weird-week-of-january-5-2023/

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!

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Please Don't Fart On Me: Making Systems For Success

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 17:34:34 +0000

Yep, we're going there, because we're the only self-development podcast that will.

Join us as we talk about brawls in the Waffle House, farting, and creating systems to actually achieve your goals.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Sometimes you have to review the system to stop having resource guarding. Cough. Pogie. Cough.

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!

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

LINKS WE TALK ABOUT

https://www.thirstyfornews.com/2022/12/29/customers-start-wwe-style-brawl-in-texas-waffle-house/

We also talk about a link from Medium that won't embed up there, but the link is in the narrative. Thanks for joining us and here's to a good 2023!

Eight types of drunkards and law-breaking Santa clauses a scene in the UK

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 20 Dec 2022 15:22:59 +0000

Since it's the time of holidays for many religions, we thought it would be a great time to talk about the ancient types of drunk-foolery from the 1500s and how they still exist today.

And, a random story about a sleigh-riding Santa.

There’s a great post on Medium from back in November by Jack Shepherd one of Buzzfeed’s former directors. I know nothing about Jack Shepherd but he has a post “These Are the 8 Types of Drunk, According to the 16th Century” and since NYE is coming up, I wanted to have a podcast about it.

All of Shepherd’s list comes from Thomas Nashe wrote a pamphlet called “Pierce Penniless: His Supplication to the Devil.” Nashe was on this Earth in the late 1500s and he was a silly man.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Don't wait to be drunk to tell people you love them. Embrace who you are without the intoxicating liquors, human.

Links We Reference:

https://nypost.com/2022/12/14/sleigh-riding-santa-claus-ticketed-by-grinch-cop-petty-to-say-the-least/

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!

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Weird Junk Finds and Key Take-aways from spending time with Spiritual Leaders

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 13 Dec 2022 16:13:31 +0000

This week we talk about the take-aways from spending time with the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, plus weird junk finds. Because why not?

Filmmaker Peggy Callahan spent a lot of time listening to spiritual leaders while working with author Doug Abrams who co-authored The Book of Joy.

She wrote for the Today Show, “Their message is needed now more than ever. We’re heading into the “most wonderful time of the year” and yet so many people are struggling. We’re wrestling with how to bring “joy to the world” when life is wrought with stress and challenges.”

They also created “Mission: JOY — Finding Happiness in Troubled Times,”a documentary.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE!

There's nothing wrong with loving your stuff. - Pogie the puppy.

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!

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

LINKS WE REFERENCE

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/it-s-back-1-800-got-junk-s-list-of-weird-junk-finds-in-2022-1031969251

https://www.today.com/life/essay-life/dalai-lama-archbishop-tutu-joy-rcna60757

https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/washington-company-discovers-famous-shipwreck-150-years-later/281-cc813e7f-2fa1-487e-a721-55f81296a3c7

Dealing With Sexual Hangups Part 2 and Florida Man Story

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 06 Dec 2022 16:47:46 +0000

It's part two of how to deal with being uptight about sex.

Yes, this is a two-part podcast series Carrie isn't cool with. :) Plus, we have a Florida man story about a bad choice in a Wal-Mart filled with cops.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE FROM SPARTY BOY

Take your opportunities when you can and don't let hangups hold you back. Even if you have to hump with a half-eaten burrito in your mouth, go for it if you want to.

LINKS

https://www.womansday.com/relationships/sex-tips/advice/a1004/get-over-your-sexual-hangups-92993/

https://nypost.com/2022/11/25/couple-gets-letter-revealing-creepy-secret-rooms-in-their-130-year-old-home/

https://www.foxnews.com/us/florida-man-busted-trying-steal-walmart-filled-cops-bad-idea-brad

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!

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Uptight About Sex And How To Get Over It, Part One

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 29 Nov 2022 13:21:41 +0000

So, this podcast episode is probably going to be Shaun’s favorite because he grew up in a family that was not uptight about sex.

I, however, grew up in a family where a couple of the branches pretended we were all born out of the immaculate conception or just maybe sperm drops on a toilet or something.

We have some friends—good friends—who are currently exploring all things sexual in a consensual, relationship way.

They aren’t uptight.

Shaun’s not uptight.

And one of these things are not like the others.

Spoiler: Me. I’m the thing that’s not like the others.

But, it turns out that a lot of people are like me. Join us as we talk about five ways people are uptight and our bonus random thought about people who received a letter about secret spaces in their new home.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Sometimes you just got to grab on and go for it (consensually, of course)

LINKS

https://www.womansday.com/relationships/sex-tips/advice/a1004/get-over-your-sexual-hangups-92993/

https://nypost.com/2022/11/25/couple-gets-letter-revealing-creepy-secret-rooms-in-their-130-year-old-home/

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!

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Those malicious mo-fos aren’t evil, they are just stupid

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 23 Nov 2022 00:13:13 +0000

Over on Medium, Michael Lin has a post of short tidbits that he’s learned from reading 100 self-development books.

That’s a lot of books.

And it’s a lot of two-three sentence tidbits that he has, but one of them leapt out at met his week.

And it’s this:

“Don’t attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity. Most of the world is not trying to fuck you over. Most of the world can do stupid things though, especially me.”

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

You might expect everyone to throw you into the dog pound or the UPS man to come steal your bacon, but it's just fear. Not reality.

LINKS TO LEARN MORE

https://news.yahoo.com/woman-mistakes-seasoning-packet-for-bath-salts-has-very-weird-bath-i-just-turned-myself-into-literal-soup-203340089.html

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!

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Kitty Pee in the Pantry, The Chicken Man and Scale of Positive Experiences

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 15 Nov 2022 14:19:15 +0000

Let’s say your cat gets trapped in the pantry overnight and manages to chew through two bags of cat nip, spread it throughout the pantry and then have a panicked pea on top of a bucket of cashews before knocking over a vase, which smashes to the ground alerting you to the fact that she’s been stuck in there all night.

Or let's say you're a guy who decides to eat 40 whole chickens for 40 days.

You can take those experiences and be . . . something? This episode we look into the chicken man and the cat peeing in the pantry and the scale of positive and negative experiences.

SOURCES

Diener, E., Wirtz, D., Tov, W., Kim-Prieto, C., Choi. D., Oishi, S., & Biswas-Diener, R. (In press). New measures of well-being: Flourishing and positive and negative feelings. Social Indicators Research.

https://psychologyroots.com/scale-of-positive-and-negative-experience-spane/

Schimmack, U., Diener, E., & Oishi, S. (2002). Life-satisfaction is a momentary judgment and a stable personality characteristic: The use of chronically accessible and stable sources. Journal of Personality, 70, 345-385.

Schimmack, U. & Reisenzein, R. (2002). Experiencing activation: Energetic arousal and tense arousal are not mixtures of valence and activation. Emotion, 2, 412-417

Schimmack, U., & Grob, A. (2000). Dimensional models of core affect: A quantitative comparison by means of structural equation modeling. European Journal of Personality, 14, 325-345.

Diener, E., & Biswas-Diener, R. (2008) Happiness: unlocking the mysteries of psychological wealth. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

Eat a Frog For Breakfast And Being More Efficient

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 09 Nov 2022 00:31:52 +0000

This week's episode is all about special dog dinners and eating frogs for breakfast. So, yeah, basically time management.

Come hang out with us!

REFERENCES

https://apnews.com/article/san-francisco-restaurants-dogs-a6c1ba368023209a1bb5afd027b76742

https://liberalarts.tamu.edu/psychology/2019/09/26/what-is-time-blocking/

https://betterhumans.pub/4-unsexy-one-minute-habits-that-save-me-30-hours-every-week-5eb49e42f84e

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!

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Naughty Ghosts and Is Hard Work and Consistency Really The Key To Financial Success

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 02 Nov 2022 11:52:57 +0000

Let’s talk about life lessons, you know those pity-ass short messages that are meant to give us massive epiphanies that turn our lives around completely.

I want to tell you that I hate life lessons.

And we talk about naughty ghosts in a house in Texas, too.

Come hang out!

SOURCES

https://www.foxnews.com/media/texas-homeowner-hooker-ghosts-taken-over-rental-property-trying-stir-up-business

https://www.anxietyculture.com/puritan.htm

https://www.ramseysolutions.com/retirement/the-national-study-of-millionaires-research

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!

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Meth In Your Underwear And Is Farting Your True Purpose

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 20:23:11 +0000

Join us as we talk a little more about finding your damn purpose and sticking to it the way your dog will stick to farting in your office. And no, your purpose is not to change out the toilet paper rolls unless you want it to be.

LINKS WE TALK ABOUT:

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/seven_ways_to_find_your_purpose_in_life

https://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/national/article267795392.html

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!

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Addicted to Self Help and Puppy Dog Eyes

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 12:59:00 +0000

This episode we talk about the two traps of self-improvement: the unworthy trap and the unapplied knowledge trap.

And also puppy dog eyes.

As Tony Robbins says (and Roomer quotes),

“Knowledge is not power…it’s potential power. Execution will trump knowledge any day.”

— Tony Robbins

DOG TIP FOR LIFE FROM SPARTY DOG It's okay to know who you are and go after what you want. 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!

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

The Dog You Love Tells A Lot About What Kind of Person You Are

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 11 Oct 2022 23:51:18 +0000

This week we talk about how the type of dog you have allegedly tells a lot about the type of person you are AND also David Levitin's tips for an organized mind. Yep, it's sexy talk about the hippocampus. And apologies. Shaun was extra this time.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Organize your toys and leave them in one happy place so you always know where they are.

Woman Wipes Her Dog's Bum and No Talent No Problem

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 04 Oct 2022 12:13:09 +0000

First we talk about this woman who saw Elvis in her McDonald’s ketchup and then a little bit about a lady who lets her dog sit at the table and wipes his bum.

Steve Martin, author, comedian, musician, cool human, has this MasterClass where he talks about how when he started out in show business and had absolutely no talent at all. But he took a chance at a comedy writing job where they basically just needed young people to write jokes.

He has three big wisdom chunks we share with you before Shaunie derails completely into the Land of Naughty.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Be always in reaching distance of the person who has the food and demand a seat at the table.

LINKS!

https://positivepsychology.com/happiness-wellbeing-coaching-perma/

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/mum-double-take-after-spotting-28148114

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/i-wipe-dogs-bottom-eat-28141647

Beers All Over the Highway and How To Get to that Flow State

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 12:25:00 +0000

This podcast is about a butt ton of Coors Light on a Florida highway and flow states.

A few years ago, we talked about FLOW on our podcast and then I just did again over on our LIVING HAPPY newsletter, but I thought it would be pretty cool to talk about it for another hot second because more people are talking about it now.

We’re trendsetters, baby.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE:

To get that flow state, stay focused, persistent, give yourself time, minimize distractions and make it a tiny bit hard. It’s like chasing a cat. You always think you might catch it, but it’s not easy.

RANDOM THOUGHT LINK

https://www.npr.org/2022/09/22/1124451096/florida-coors-light-beer-cans-highway-crash

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.645498/full

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5763465/

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/flow-state

Warped Brains For The Win

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 20 Sep 2022 16:32:14 +0000

Join us as we talk about calling a new born baby an aunt and cognitive distortions.

Cognitive distortions are basically when you notice something that happens outside of yourself and you distort the hell out of it and create this super exaggerated, super negative view of yourself or another person.

There are at least six of these bastards.

The first is called Catastrophizing. I’m a master at this, but let’s go through all of them according to Esther Perel, a therapist and author.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Sparty Dog says to only worry about the now, baby. Eat your treats, scratch your fur, snore, and call it good.

LINKS

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/how-to-recognize-and-tame-your-cognitive-distortions-202205042738

https://www.masterclass.com/classes/esther-perel-teaches-relational-intelligence/chapters/developing-self-awareness

https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/family/older-dads-weird-demand-to-family-over-babys-name-baffles-internet/ar-AA122iLR

Is Fear Keeping Us Dumb and Dip Your Balls in Coffee

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 13 Sep 2022 13:13:00 +0000

W. Edwards wrote “Drive out fear so that everyone may work effectively for the company.”

Paul Zak says, “When learners are psychologically safe, they acquire new information easily because they have the cognitive and emotional bandwidth to concentrate on course material. Anxiety takes significant metabolic energy and inhibits learning.”

Join us as we talk a little bit about coffee balls, how anxiety makes it hard to learn and dog tips for life.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE FROM SPARTACUS THE DOG

Don’t worry about anything. Just get your treats and snack and sleep whenever you can.

SOURCES

https://www.edutopia.org/blog/the-science-of-fear-ainissa-ramirez

Paul Zak, Immersion (releases today!)

https://apnews.com/article/switzerland-climate-and-environment-83cc3ee9959e48301b98d68d15693b64

Our brand-new-amazing-creepy podcast is DUDE NO! It’s true crime with an occasional foray into the paranormal and macabre and it’s awesome.

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!

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Creepy Stories Randomly On The Internet

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Sat, 10 Sep 2022 13:40:00 +0000

Our creepy stories episode!

Baby Wipes, Drug Farts and How Foreplay All Day Helps Your Relationship

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 06 Sep 2022 14:12:06 +0000

This week’s podcast is all about Belgian psychologist Ester Perel who has two great podcasts and talks all about relationships and sex and you know, the stuff that gets us an explicit rating.

Listen in! There’s some great stuff in there!

RESOURCES

https://www.ted.com/speakers/esther_perel

https://www.estherperel.com/about

IN OUR RANDOM THOUGHTS, WE MENTION THIS ARTICLE AND THE LINK IS HERE

https://www.npr.org/sections/strange-news/

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!

Our brand-new-amazing-creepy podcast is DUDE NO! It's true crime with an occasional foray into the paranormal and macabre and it's awesome.

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That’s a lot!

Alligator Hunting and Why Shaun Is Gone, Plus New DUDE NO Podcast Preview

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 16:00:00 +0000

So, Shaun is off in Florida HUNTING ALLIGATORS (!) leaving me alone to podcast, which means that all the talent is gone! This is short and sweet. :)

Check out our upcoming true crime podcast for people who don't like to sleep, DUDE, NO! The website is here. The site for private bonus stuff is here.

And thanks for hanging out with me even when Shaun is off adventuring.

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!

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Dogs Cry Happy Tears When You Come Home Maybe We Should Too

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 23 Aug 2022 14:05:11 +0000

In our random thoughts, we talk about dogs crying, empathy, tribalism and social media. Those aren't fully transcribed here.

Pharrell Williams says in a Masterclass that his imagination helped him survive, but as he grew up he realized that he was only seeing the world in one way, which was from his experience. The day that you stop being curious, you stop learning, he thinks.

“The universe doesn’t stop,” he says, “so why should my curiosity?”

Empathy helps people be more creative. Empathy towards other helps you realize that you know that they exist. When you’re in partnerships, he said, empathy is the role call, it’s where you show that everyone exists and it allows you to be open and create bigger projects and relationships.

So, let’s think about that in the bigger picture about our society and kids, okay?

In a New York Times article by Matt Richtel, he focuses on U.S. teens and their depression, anxiety, suicide and self-harm. He chronicles one ten-year-old’s journey on an iPod Touch that their grandparents gave them.

The kid posted selfies.

Some people (men) sent photos of their penises and asked for the kid to send naked photos back and also solicited them for sex.

The kid, C, tried to ignore it.

“That plan did not work out. The internet seeped into C’s psyche; severely depressed, they found kinship online with other struggling adolescents and learned ways to self-harm,” Richtel writes.

For teens in the U.S. the risks are no longer drugs, drinking, and getting pregnant. Now they are anxiety, self-harm, suicide, depression.

“What science increasingly shows is that virtual interactions can have a powerful impact, positive or negative, depending on a person’s underlying emotional state,” Richtel writes.

He adds that “The ability of youth to cope has been further eroded by declines in sleep, exercise and in-person connection, which all have fallen as screen time has gone up. Young people, despite vast virtual connections, or maybe because of them, report being lonelier than any other generation. And many studies have found that adolescents who spend more time online are less happy.”

The data? It’s grim. And it effects happiness and empathy.

Richtel writes, “From 2007 to 2016, emergency room visits for people aged 5 to 17 rose 117 percent for anxiety disorders, 44 percent for mood disorders and 40 percent for attention disorders, while overall pediatric visits were stable. The same study, published in Pediatrics in 2020, found that visits for deliberate self-harm rose 329 percent. But visits for alcohol-related problems dropped 39 percent, reflecting the change in the kind of public health risks posed to teenagers.”

He quoted how a doctor who talks about how a lot of kids try to find community online, adopting even the tic disorders of Tik-Tokers. They want, desperately, to belong.

We see tribalism all the time, that need for cliques, for belonging, especially in political parties, but it’s not just there. It’s everywhere—that need to fit in, to belong, to be part of a pack even if you never actually meet the other pack members. Dogs show it beautifully when they are full of joy greeting you at the door. Why aren’t we all like that? Maybe we’re meant to be—about our family and our friends—joyous to see them again, excited to hear about their days and adventures.

Robert Reffkin, who launched a real estate technology company, Compass, realized people wanted community and culture and people who give you energy rather than take it away in relationships and in workplaces. He said that most employees feel that their businesses and organizations need more empathy.

“Leaders need to really honor and respect the diversity of challenges in people’s lives,” Reffkin says.

It can be as simple as not expecting everyone to be an extrovert and talk over each other at a meeting, understanding communication styles are different, or that sometimes someone needs a day off because they have a life beyond the office. That kindness, that understanding, gives your employees more support and makes them feel a part of something. That goes for your kids, too.

Robin Arzón, an ultramarathon runner, says when you feel a part of something, then you feel like you have agency. During her career, Arzón was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and had to readjust to the changes and challenges to her body. Other runners supported her as she supported them. They empowered each other and empathized with each other during training and races.

“I believe empowerment is contagious. I believe joy is contagious,” she says.

A study in Japan looked at 823 college students and learned that the students with high or moderate physical activity self-reported more cognitive empathy than the students with low physical activity (The Journal of Physical Fitness and Sports Therapy, 2021). That doesn’t happen when we’re all on social media, stuck inside, joining a TikTok group. Or if we’re scrolling through Twitter looking for a hashtag to focus us on hating other people.

“Empathy is everything,” Arzón says. “It extinguishes assumptions and limitations.”

Empathy helps you to empower other people because when you see where they are at, you are able to help pull them along to their goal.

“Empathy’s greatest potential is equality for all mankind,” Williams said. Empathy is the best tool for equality, he says. But it’s also the best tool for belonging. When we realize others’ pains; when we work toward connections? We move out of our tribes, our bubbles, and become something much healthier and bigger.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Cry when your people come home, because holy god, they made it back!

SOME COOL LINKS TO LEARN MORE

https://www.masterclass.com/classes/the-power-of-empathy-with-pharrell-williams-and-noted-co-instructors/chapters/do-something

https://www.theledger.com/story/news/state/2022/04/26/florida-school-book-bans-these-library-titles-being-reviewed-school-boards/9542938002/

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/dogs-cry-happy-tears-owners-27803328

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!

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream 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 poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Do NOT hide in a stuffed bear when running from the cops and where the hell is the empathy, you jerks

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 17 Aug 2022 00:48:00 +0000

“You can’t love someone or something without relating to its existence,” says musician Pharrell Williams in a MasterClass about empathy. “In order to relate, you have to empathize.”

For Williams, it’s about changing your vantage point. “A lack of POV is a lack of context” he says, and when you don’t have a context then you can’t understand the greater situation that's around you. It's like you're looking at just the mountain in front of you and don't realize that there's an entire landscape behind it.

“When you open your mind’s eye, you get a bigger view,” he says. This goes for people too.

He suggests thinking about a demographic and trying to imagine an hour of what that person is going through, he says. It's best to think about a segment of the population that is very different from you or one that you have a bias against.

“We tell people to just get over it and let it go,” he says about when people are oppressing you, but if you close your eyes and try to imagine what it’s like to live their experience, you might stop oppressing others.

“Empathy is a crucial step in forgiveness,” he says because it makes us realize that “we might have made some insane choices in similar circumstances.”

Empathy is the first step in forgiveness and understanding because it’s a step of awareness. It becomes a democratizing and political force, Williams says.

Developing empathy is something you can actively cultivate, which is cool and hopeful, but scientists also think it might have to do with this thing called “mirror neurons,” which is still kind of a concept right now.

As Psychology Today explains,

“These neurons, it is theorized, enhance the capacity to display, read, and mimic emotional signals through facial expressions and other forms of body language, enhancing empathy. But whether mirror neurons actually operate this way in humans is a subject of longstanding scientific debate, and some scientists question their very existence.”

So, yeah, they aren’t sure if they are real. But whatever. It's still cool-just like empathy.

The thing is that empathy does a lot of cool stuff when it comes to making yourself better and your community and world better.

Empathy helps us be friends, cooperate, make decisions that are moral and helps us help others. And we start showing it in infancy. It’s built into us. But I think sometimes fear strips it away, or maybe it's selfishness that does that or society saying kindness isn’t tough, all that BS.

But empathy is so important. As Psychology Today says,

“Empathy Developing empathy is crucial for establishing relationships and behaving compassionately. It involves experiencing another person’s point of view, rather than just one’s own, and enables prosocial or helping behaviors that come from within, rather than being forced.”

Some surveys indicate that empathy is on the decline in the United States, which is honestly pretty terrifying.

A study in 2010 by Konrath and O’Brien found:

“That empathy is declining sharply among college students today. The authors examined the responses of nearly 14,000 students who had completed a questionnaire measuring different types of empathy. The results show that the average level of “empathic concern,” meaning people’s feelings of sympathy for the misfortunes of others, declined by 48 percent between 1979 and 2009; the average level of “perspective taking,” people’s tendencies to imagine others’ points of view, declined by 34 percent over the same period. There was a particularly steep decline between 2000 and 2009.”

And dude, that’s terrifying because empathy is what makes us a good society, a kind society, a work-together society. So then you have to think, okay. There’s a problem in that we as a culture are losing our empathy, so what do we do? How do we build it back up, right?

There’s actually a TedTalk by Thu-Houng Ha that centers on that.

THREE STEPS TO UP THE EMPATHY

“Strengthen your own resources”

Ha writes:

“Think about something you’re struggling with and how it makes you feel. Then imagine a friend coming to you with that same problem and how you’d respond to them. Doing this can highlight the chasm between the kindness we give to the people in our lives and the kindness (or lack of) that we show ourselves. You’ll probably find a significant difference in how you’d treat your friend — most likely with patience, generosity and forgiveness — versus how you’d react to yourself — perhaps with blame, harshness and self-criticism.

2. Be kind to other people when you are all “dude, I cannot handle any more”

“At some point in your day, especially when you’re stressed or feel like you don’t have any spare bandwidth, spend in some small way — whether it’s in time, energy or money — on someone in your life. Send a text message of support to someone who’s having a hard time. When you’re running errands, pick up your partner’s favorite coffee. Carry an older neighbor’s groceries upstairs. “Building empathy isn’t necessarily about donating half of your salary to charity. It’s about the little things that we do each day,” says Dr. Zaki. “It’s about habits of mind.”

“In an attempt to conserve energy for ourselves, we tend to turn inwards when under pressure. While it may seem counterintuitive, Dr. Zaki has seen that performing these tiny acts — especially at moments when we feel like we can’t — can be energizing and enlivening. “Students are happily surprised to find that when they give to others, they don’t end up depleting themselves,” he says. “Happiness and well-being are not a zero-sum situation.”

3. Don’t debate when you don’t agree

You can disagree, but explain where your opinion came from and let the other person you're disagreeing with do that too. Don’t do this with someone who hurts you or who is a bigot about your demographics because you have to protect yourself too, but if it isn't someone like that just try to talk about your difference of opinion without thinking that person is the anti-christ.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Dogs have empathy so should you. Notice when other people need a good lick on their face or a lay on their lap.

RESOURCES AND PLACES TO LEARN MORE, MAN!

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/research_digest/empathy_on_the_decline

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/empathy

https://www.masterclass.com/classes/the-power-of-empathy-with-pharrell-williams-and-noted-co-instructors/chapters/changing-your-vantage-point

"Changes in Dispositional Empathy in American College Students Over Time: A Meta-Analysis"

Konrath, S.H., O'Brien, E.H., Hsing, C. Personality and Social Psychology Review, August 2010, Advance online publication.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/uk-teen-car-thief-caught-hiding-giant-stuffed-teddy-bear-police

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!

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

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

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 15:52:00 +0000

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!

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Here’s the link.

Write Better Now - Writing Tips podcast for authors and writers loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird Carrie Does Poems

Are you a cheerleading mutant?

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 02 Aug 2022 16:16:10 +0000

Cheerleading mutant. It sounds pretty awful, but it’s actually a good thing. Because that optimism and gratitude help make your brain healthier and life better. That gives you the sort of cheerleading persona, but where does the mutant come in? Hang on and we're going to tell you . . .

First let's define gratitude

“Gratitude is associated with a personal benefit that was not intentionally sought after, deserved, or earned but rather because of the good intentions of another person” (Emmons & McCullough, 2004).

Arthur C. Brooks wrote in an article called, “Choose to Be Grateful. It Will Make You Happier.”

‘Beyond rotten circumstances, some people are just naturally more grateful than others. A 2014 article in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience identified a variation in a gene (CD38) associated with gratitude. Some people simply have a heightened genetic tendency to experience, in the researchers’ words, “global relationship satisfaction, perceived partner responsiveness and positive emotions (particularly love).” That is, those relentlessly positive people you know who seem grateful all the time may simply be mutants.”

Though we may not have those genes, we can make the choice to become happier by working on being more grateful. It’s like that smiling thing, we talked about ages ago (last month) where if you really smile and move all your facial muscles, your brain gets tricked into thinking you’re happy.

Brooks says,

“If grinning for an uncomfortably long time like a scary lunatic isn’t your cup of tea, try expressing gratitude instead. According to research published in the journal Cerebral Cortex, gratitude stimulates the hypothalamus (a key part of the brain that regulates stress) and the ventral tegmental area (part of our “reward circuitry” that produces the sensation of pleasure).”

Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology, believes that if you write notes to people telling them you’re grateful for them, it makes you happier. That outgoing gratitude makes you more positive. He suggests writing two a day.

According to positive psychology.com’s Madhuleena Roy Chowdhyr,

“Simple practices like maintaining a gratitude journal, complimenting the self, or sending small tokens and thank you notes can make us feel a lot better and enhance our mood immediately. Couple studies have also indicated that partners who expressed their thankfulness to each other often, could sustain their relationships with mutual trust, loyalty, and had long-lasting happy relationships.”

“It was revealed that the reason why some of us are naturally more grateful than others, is the neurochemical differences at the Central Nervous System. People who express and feel gratitude have a higher volume of grey matter in the right inferior temporal gyrus (Zahn, Garrido, Moll, & Grafman, 2014).”

The article goes on to say that gratitude lessens pain, improves the quality of your sleep, gets rid ‘of toxic” emotions and helps anxiety, depression and stress regulation.

SOURCES!

https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2014/01/26/could-gratitude-your-genes/jEFJBo92dxOHLa1trSmDKN/story.html

https://positivepsychology.com/neuroscience-of-gratitude/

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/woman-warned-someone-secretly-living-27635233

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!

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Here’s the link.

Write Better Now - Writing Tips podcast for authors and writers loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird Carrie Does Poems

Sometimes a robot breaks your finger-Live Happy Anyway

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 26 Jul 2022 12:57:34 +0000

In “Behind Our Anxiety, the Fear of Being Unneeded,” a 2016 New York Times op-ed, the Dalai Lama and Harvard professor and president of the American Enterprise Institute Arthur C. Brooks join together to write:

“How strange, then, to see such anger and great discontent in some of the world’s richest nations. In the United States, Britain and across the European Continent, people are convulsed with political frustration and anxiety about the future. Refugees and migrants clamor for the chance to live in these safe, prosperous countries, but those who already live in those promised lands report great uneasiness about their own futures that seems to border on hopelessness.Why?”

This was an interesting op-ed for me to read a day after I talked with twelve students in my Write! Submit! Support! class out of the Writing Barn in Austin. The students are spread out all over the country and so many of them had difficult Julys when it came to getting words on the page and one eloquently asked, “How do you write when you’re so worried about the world?”

To my sort of brain that’s the perfect time to write because I’m one of those “write your way through it” kind of people, but obviously not all brains are wired like my brain. Thank God, right?

It also made me think about our marriage. Shaun is a wicked caretaker and I’m not used to that. He’s also severely independent and so when I try to take care of him? It doesn’t always happen because he’s also super alpha, right? And that makes me feel like . . . Well, like I don’t have as much of a purpose, that I’m not needed in that fundamental way that he’s needed to unscrew the tops off jars, to get the pressure washer to work, to lift all the heavy things like our dog, Sparty.

And I felt the same way when my daughter left for college.

Brooks and the Dalai Lama actually address this a bit in that op-ed saying,

“Virtually all the world’s major religions teach that diligent work in the service of others is our highest nature and thus lies at the center of a happy life. Scientific surveys and studies confirm shared tenets of our faiths. Americans who prioritize doing good for others are almost twice as likely to say they are very happy about their lives. In Germany, people who seek to serve society are five times likelier to say they are very happy than those who do not view service as important. Selflessness and joy are intertwined. The more we are one with the rest of humanity, the better we feel.

“This helps explain why pain and indignation are sweeping through prosperous countries. The problem is not a lack of material riches. It is the growing number of people who feel they are no longer useful, no longer needed, no longer one with their societies.”

And that’s why I often feel unhappy personally. I feel superfluous and I don’t want to. How about you?

Brooks and the Dalai Lama write:

“Feeling superfluous is a blow to the human spirit. It leads to social isolation and emotional pain, and creates the conditions for negative emotions to take root.”

So what can you do?

On an individual level, they say, do this.

“Start each day by consciously asking ourselves, “What can I do today to appreciate the gifts that others offer me?” We need to make sure that global brotherhood and oneness with others are not just abstract ideas that we profess, but personal commitments that we mindfully put into practice.”

And from there, they say, we build into a society that is compassionate and happier, where children are educated with practical and ethical skills to move them towards peace and “economic security.”

They write,

“Many are confused and frightened to see anger and frustration sweeping like wildfire across societies that enjoy historic safety and prosperity. But their refusal to be content with physical and material security actually reveals something beautiful: a universal human hunger to be needed. Let us work together to build a society that feeds this hunger.”

But it’s more than that. Our society is full of polarities and hate, devisiveness, trolls on internet posts, and it’s hard sometimes to not constantly feel personally attacked. And to not attack back.

In another op-ed, this time for the Washington Post, the Dalai Lama and Brooks team up again and address this by writing:

“Each of us can break the cycle of hatred, starting today. Do you feel that you’ve been attacked on social media? Respond with warmheartedness, disarming your attacker with forbearance. Overhear someone make a snide remark about people who think as you do? Respond with kindness. Want to say something insulting about people who disagree with you? Take a breath and show generosity, instead.”

That sounds impossible, doesn’t it? Anger can be a motivating force. Don’t we have a right to be angry?

Yes, we do. We have the ability to feel a plethora of emotions. The difference is what we do with those feelings--how we act on them--how long they fester.

We totally failed at this when the Supreme Court overturned Roe V. Wade and someone was a butt on my Facebook post and Shaun called them a f-stick. I should have used that opportunity to educate and work towards betterment, but instead I was just angry—a person-oriented anger that I used to strike back rather than strike forward. I didn’t harness my anger toward social change, toward the system that made this guy think he could say that stuff to me. I just lashed back at him.

Brooks and the Dalai Lama write that how we respond can

“ . . . help counter the widespread crisis of contempt? Warmheartedness is contagious. Just as people mimic bad behavior, they mimic good behavior. We all want to be happier and better people. The best way for each of us to improve society is to model behavior that offers a way forward. Others will follow. It may take a long time to change society, but it won’t come sooner than our own individual actions.”

Random Thoughts

A robot broke a little boy's finger during a chess match in Russia.

There's a video here.

LINKS!

Their article at the Washington Post.

Their article at the New York Times.

XIV, Dalai Lama, and Cutler, Howard C. The Art of Happiness, 10th Anniversary Edition: A Handbook for Living. Penguin Publishing Group, 2009, 294.

Dalai Lama, by Christopher Michel, October 14, 2012. Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/50979393@N00/8089285536. License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/.

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.

AND we have a writing tips podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW!

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook.

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Here’s the link.

Write Better Now - Writing Tips podcast for authors and writers loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird Carrie Does Poems

Nap Like An Ancient Warrior

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 19 Jul 2022 13:31:00 +0000

When our daughter was little, she would shout, “Napping is for the weak!”

Which was super annoying, obviously, but we’ve forgiven her. Despite for her love for Alexander the Great (who definitely took naps), she truly fed into the Western culture ideal that napping means that you’re either weak minded or weak bodied. We as cultures are so anti-napping that we medicate our bodies with caffeine to make it through the day. The British have a four o’clock tea time.

Sleep makes your brain work better. It’s legit your body’s best friend. And naps are a part of that.

Imagine your health is a three-legged stool, right? One leg is sleep. One leg is eating healthy. One leg is exercise. We focus a lot of money and time on two of those legs, but blow off the third and that makes the whole damn stool wobbly.

Adults are meant to sleep between 6-10 hours a night. And according to the CDC, 1 in 3 Americans don’t get six hours a night. So, that's a problem.

All the self-help people say the same things. You want to go to sleep at the same time at night. You want to wake up at the same time. Set your damn alarm. Cover your windows, don’t look at screens before bed. Blah. Blah. Blah. We hear it all the time.

But how about a nap? How does this help things? It's all about the brain.

Well, a brain has neural circuits.

A neural circuit according to The Psychology Dictionary is

“The structural arrangement of neurons and their interactions with each other when placed end-to-end. Circuits typically completed one task, such as forming a negative feedback loop opposed to multi-tasking.”

A nap resets those circuits and that needs to happen. You want to not sleep more than 40 minutes, but at least five. And the best time to do that is in the afternoon usually, not close to your actual bedtime but after lunch like in many Southern European and South and Central American cultures.

According to Will Parker at Scienceagogo.com,

“New experiments by NIMH grantee Alan Hobson, M.D., Robert Stickgold, Ph.D., and colleagues at Harvard University show that a midday snooze reverses information overload and that a 20 percent overnight improvement in learning a motor skill is largely traceable to a late stage of sleep that some early risers might be missing. Overall, their studies suggest that the brain uses a night’s sleep to consolidate the memories of habits, actions and skills learned during the day. The bottom line: we should stop feeling guilty about taking that “power nap” at work or catching those extra winks the night before our piano recital”

When you nap, your limbic systems get all activated and that is the emotional center of the brain. So once it is activated it lowers monoamines, which actually are depression reducers. They reduce anxiety and are used to treat schizophrenia. Napping lowers the risk of heart attacks, strokes, diabetes.

Naps are rock stars for making you feel better and healthier. That’s why we talked about them back in May, too. Look, Alexander the Great never lost a battle in fifteen years, named dozens of cities after himself and he napped. You can, too.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Sparty the dog says that you should really revolve your life around your naps and not vice versa.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

Family living in children's museum with weapons . . . of course.

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.

AND we have a writing tips podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW!

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook.

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Here’s the link.

Write Better Now - Writing Tips podcast for authors and writers loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird Carrie Does Poems Our Other Episode About Naps

Multitasking Is Stupid and Naked Florida Men

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 12 Jul 2022 12:05:00 +0000

We talk about the naked Florida man in the random section of the podcasts. We don't transcribe that part, and believe me, you don't want us to, but here's the link to the article.

So I’ve been reading this book called The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload, by cognitive psychologist and neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin.

Anyone who has had wine with me (or a rum and root beer) will know eventually that cognitive neuroscience is my big regret—like it’s the date I went on and wanted a relationship with, but I had put so much time in with my BF political science that I just couldn’t dump him and swipe right on the cognitive neuroscience profile.

His book is full of cool stuff about how our brains are just really overwhelmed and wasting a lot of time dealing with things like 40,000 items in the grocery store or hundreds of emails and notifications and god-forbid texts starting before 7 a.m.

He suggests not trying to grab all the info all the time and be a little more chill because that’s what our brains need us to do. We have to focus on the important stuff, slow down, and work efficiently.

Daniel Levitin writes:

“Multitasking has been found to increase the production of the stress hormone cortisol as well as the fight-or-flight hormone adrenaline, which can overstimulate your brain and cause mental fog or scrambled thinking. Multitasking creates a dopamine-addiction feedback loop, effectively rewarding the brain for losing focus and for constantly searching for external stimulation. To make matters worse, the prefrontal cortex has a novelty bias, meaning that its attention can be easily hijacked by something new—the proverbial shiny objects”

Every time we make a decision, it uses up energy in our body via our brains. All those choices can distract us from the cool stuff sometimes.

So how do you make that better?

Get rid of clutter. Clutter actually increases the stress hormone in women (cortisol) and seeing it while we’re trying to focus? It breaks us.
Turn off the notifications on your email. He estimates that knowing and seeing those emails waiting decreases your working IQ by about 10 points. So avoid distractions.
Find organization systems and categories that work for you. Give all your things a place and put it back in that place so that the hippocampus (a part of our brain) knows where it is. Think of how your kitchen is organized or your clothes. Forks go with other silverware, right? Socks probably are hanging out for socks. That’s a system.
“Shift the burden of organizing from our brains to the external world,” Levitin writes. That’s why to-do lists on paper or digital are way better to have outside of our brains. We don’t want to have to retrieve things all the time. Levitin goes with “drop it, delegate it or defer it,” and if you can do something super quickly (like less than two minutes) just do it right away.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Don't try to get a treat and poop and chase a squirrel all at once. Focus on one task at a time.

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.

AND we have a writing tips podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW!

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook.

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Here’s the link.

Write Better Now - Writing Tips podcast for authors and writers loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird Carrie Does Poems

Marital Hate and Have Trevor Noah and Terry Real Figured Some S- Out?

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 05 Jul 2022 21:07:46 +0000

Sometimes I think one of the toughest choices you can make publicly is to call out false binaries.

That’s what comedian Trevor Noah recently did on his show where he was specifically talking about abortion saying that just going down to catchphrases like pro choice or pro life was reductive and took away conversation and nuance to views. And people got enraged on Twitter (both Republicans and Democrats).

To be fair, people get enraged about a lot on Twitter and off Twitter now.

But rage by itself? It’s just rage. If you want change, you have to go after action. Carrie had a post about this on her own Facebook where apparently her call to action over a political issue wasn’t what one of her local acquaintances wanted from me.

So he turned his rage about politics into rage at me for not being rage-y enough.

Yes, Carrie is still processing this, while Shaun just called him a f-stick and got over with it.

This weekend, one of the many things that were trending in the world of Twitter conversation was the new book of an American family therapist, Terry Real, entitled, “Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship,” where he argues it is because we’ve created “a toxic culture of individualism.”

We have not read the book and honestly, the fact that he’s a celebrity therapist who counsels people like Bruce Springsteen, makes me want to not want to read it. Springsteen wrote the introduction.

But all the book reviewers at all the big papers are.

He has two big terms in the book THAT WE WANTED TO MENTION:

Adaptive child
Wise adult

He defines them both in an interview with the New York Times’s Maggie Jones (no relation) as:

“Wise adults are present-based. They’re not flooded with the past and can see things clearly. They have the capacity to see the whole of the relationship. They have the capacity to stop and reflect and choose.

“When we move out of our prefrontal cortex, out of our wise adult self, we are in our adaptive child self. We get trauma-triggered, and the adaptive child — the things you learned to do as a kid because of emotional neglect or violence — part of us comes in and takes over. One of the bitter pills here is that the adaptive child part of us doesn’t want to be intimate. It wants to preserve itself. It’s about me, me, me. You-and-me consciousness is an adversarial world in which one loses and the other wins. It’s a big power struggle.

“By repeating the same adaptive child move over and over again, you get in a dysfunctional relational stance. I’ll give you an example. Angry pursuit is a dysfunctional stance. Angry pursuit is an oxymoron. You will never get someone closer to you by complaining about how distant they are. Controlling your partner, retaliating or withdrawing will never solve your problem. These are the hallmarks of the adaptive child part of you. And the first skill is shifting out of that part of you into the wise adult.”

Whew. That’s a lot of quote right? But to me what he’s saying is that if we want to be good, wise adults with happy freaking healthy marraiges we have to let go of the adaptive child.

We need to think with nuance and empathy, which brings me back to Trevor Noah, right? Because Trevor is also talking about this.

What our culture in the U.S. (at least) needs more of is that movement toward the wise adult, the ability to converse, to think with nuance, to go beyond false binaries, catch phrases and performative social media posts and work towards changing ourselves and our relationships and our country.

Real talks about the mysticism of marriage in that interview and says,

“There may be super placid couples who aren’t terribly intimate, and they don’t bug each other. But usually there are three phases of love: harmony, disharmony and repair. Those phases can occur 20 times during one dinner conversation or span over decades of your marriage or long-term relationship. The harmony phase is love without knowledge. You may have a soul recognition that this is your guy. But you don’t know what he does with his socks in the morning.

“The disillusionment phase is critical. It’s the stuff of intimacy. It’s the collision of your imperfections and how we handle it. Our culture doesn’t equip people to deal with that disillusionment. It’s rough. It’s dark. I’ve run around the country for 20 years, talking about what I call “normal marital hatred” and not one person has ever come backstage to ask what I meant by that.”

And it’s a bit like we aren’t just doing that to ours spouses, we’re doing that to everyone. When we repair our country, we want to look to that repair the way Real advocates repairing marraiges—as a relationship, a group effort, a look to the higher good. Real thinks a lot of this also stems from patriarchy and our separation from nature and desire to dominate it.

He says we have to move away from trying to control everything, but collaborate and to do it humbly, saying in that same interview how all of the world is interconnected. “You’re not above the system, you’re in it. You breath it.”

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Don't let other people bite your jowls.

LINKS

https://nypost.com/2022/06/30/i-married-my-exs-dad-everyone-hates-me-but-its-the-best-sex/

https://nypost.com/2022/07/05/men-with-large-penises-wanted-for-doc-too-large-to-love/

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.

AND we have a writing tips podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW!

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook.

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Here’s the link.

Write Better Now - Writing Tips podcast for authors and writers loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird Carrie Does Poems

Huck the Roof Dog and Defining Happiness Doggy Style

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 28 Jun 2022 12:28:00 +0000

Every once in awhile, a dog climbs on the roof of a house and chills out, but if you're Huck the dog, you do this all the time. How often? So often that your owner has to put a sign on the door.

Join us as we talk about Huck and also about defining happiness, doggy style.

Have you ever come home and been like, “Dang, why is my dog so happy?”

In general dogs are really pretty cool happy animals. And they are amazing because unlike some of us (cough) they don’t hide how they feel. It’s all just out there.

According to Global Dog Breeds, the reasons dogs are so happy are these:

They forgive
They live in the present
They are happy with what they have right there, right now.
They embrace life.
They know how to get cozy and comfy.
They trust their owners.

Carrie’s taking a pretty cool course for free on EdX (sadly, this is not an ad) all about happiness and it’s taught by Arthur Brooks, a professor at Harvard. And all these things about why dogs are happy made her think about that class and some of the teachings from it.

Brooks says,

“It turns out that the way we think about happiness is informed by where we live. For example, in some cultures, happiness is defined by social harmony. In others, it's defined by personal achievement. So the way we answer the question are you happy depends, to an extent, on where we're from.”

Brooks interviewed the Dalai Lama and his Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso shared the following (the quote is taken directly),

“I think very purpose of our daily life. For happy life, firstly, we need some sense of oneness of 7 billion human being on this planet. We have to live together. An individual's future depends on them, one individual, one of the 7 billion human beings in the group know that.”

Brooks summarizes his points as follows,

“The first is he taught us tonight that happiness comes from being useful and having a life's purpose, and that purpose, the purpose that we have, our highest purpose is caring for each other, lifting each other up, remembering that each of us is one of 7 billion human beings.

The second way that he made this point is when he talked about unhappiness, which is our own creation.

Unhappiness comes in our own mind because of self-centeredness.

We become unhappy because we're unnatural, and we are unnatural whom we are thinking only of ourselves. We can only be truly happy when we get out of this creation that is unhappiness by focusing on other people.

The third point that he made was about our intellectual lives, about research and investigation, about our brains, and the importance of sanctifying our intellectual work by putting it in service of our hearts, putting it in service of our love for other people, that in fact, our hearts can be most effective when our brains are fully engaged in the purpose, sanctifying that purpose and loving each other.

And finally, the fourth way that His Holiness made this point that happiness comes from love for others is that we need education, that we need an education system that teaches each of us unity and oneness and sisterhood and brotherhood. And that is our leadership challenge.”

In an opinion piece for the Washington Post, Brooks and the Dalai Lama wrote,

“The objective is not to vanquish a person I considered my enemy; it is to destroy the illusion that he or she was my enemy in the first place. And the way to do this is by overcoming my own negative emotions.

Perhaps taking that approach seems unrealistic to you, like a kind of discipline only a monk could achieve through years of concentrated meditation. But that isn’t true. You can do it, too, regardless of your belief system. The secret is to express warmheartedness, kindness and generosity, even in disagreement — and especially when others show you contempt or hatred.”

How do you do that when it feels like other people are taking away yours or others essential human rights? Or putting lives at stake? Or creating or revoking or refusing to revoke polices (be it about guns, abortions, clean water, property rights) that you feel are essential?

That’s really the question.

LINKS AND RESOURCES

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/03/11/dalai-lama-arthur-brooks-each-us-can-break-cycle-hatred/

XIV, Dalai Lama, and Cutler, Howard C. The Art of Happiness, 10th Anniversary Edition: A Handbook for Living. Penguin Publishing Group, 2009, 294.

Course: “Managing Happiness,” HarvardX, accessed June 27, 2022.

“Why Are Dogs So Happy.” No author stated. Global Dog Breeds.

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.

AND we have a writing tips podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW!

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook.

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Here’s the link.

Write Better Now - Writing Tips podcast for authors and writers loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird Carrie Does Poems

Topless Mom Saving Her Pet Goose and Smile Like You're Happy, Damn It

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 21 Jun 2022 11:06:00 +0000

It actually works.

Back in 1862 Duchenne De Boulogne noticed that certain muscles in our face engaged whenever we were joyous.

It was an involuntary reaction of our cheek muscles, the zygomatic major, and the orbicularis oculi. That’s a muscle right in front of our temples and below our eye. And when those cheek muscles and that special little muscle engage? That’s when we smile.

The weird thing is this is a human universal. It happens all over the world despite gender, sex, culture, race, etc.

The weird thing is that if we make ourselves smile like this, with those muscles engaged, we actually usually start to feel happier.

The process reverses.

There’s a guy who teaches the Introduction the Art of Happiness at a Harvard X class, Arthur Brooks, who has an experiment where you take a pencil and hold it between your teeth and you keep it there for 45 seconds.

Do it.

Seriously.

When you do this you flex those muscles in your cheeks and your heart rate starts to decrease and your stress in your body? It starts to release.

What does that mean? It means that happiness is a shared condition of humans around the world.

It means we can see happiness expressed in people’s bodies.

And finally, most importantly, we can actually make ourselves feel happier just by doing that easy dorky experiment where we hold chopsticks or a pen between our teeth. How cool is that?

Brooks believes that “happiness is something that grows in us when we give it away,” and also that “happiness doesn’t just happen to you, you can manage it.”

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Manage your happiness! Work for it! Wag your tail. Grab a stick. It's awesome.

LINKS

https://learning.edx.org/course/course-v1:HarvardX+happy+2T2021/block-v1:HarvardX+happy+2T2021+type@sequential+block@dd8f672ef4ca4f44879ffd7ea4a38956/block-v1:HarvardX+happy+2T2021+type@vertical+block@049cf8336845451eb71bed94ecf75623

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2319446/

https://nypost.com/2022/05/19/topless-mom-in-her-undies-rescues-pet-goose-from-bald-eagle/

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.

AND we have a writing tips podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW!

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook.

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Here’s the link.

Write Better Now - Writing Tips podcast for authors and writers loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird Carrie Does Poems

You are so biased so how do you stop it

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 15 Jun 2022 00:46:20 +0000

There’s this guy named Sid who wrote about cognitive biases over on Medium. Sid got me thinking about all the ways we make decisions based on wrong assumptions or biases.

He lays out ten, right?

And I just wanted to talk about the first two this week and maybe make this a series.

Why?

Well, because as Sid says, “Being aware of our cognitive biases helps to recognize their power in shaping our thoughts, opinions, attitudes and the decisions we make. Let’s check out these effects by analyzing ten cognitive biases that shape our world today.”

So, those first two are:

The Availability Heuristic

The Affect Heuristic.

Let's start with the first one. The availability heuristic

According to the Decision Lab, the availability heuristic is a bias that “describes our tendency to use information that comes to mind quickly and easily when making decisions about the future.”

It’s basically memorable moments that are made influence our decisions in ways that they shouldn’t.

The decision lab has a great example.

“Imagine you are considering either John or Jane, two employees at your company, for a promotion. Both have a steady employment record, though Jane has been the highest performer in her department during her tenure. However, in Jane’s first year, she unwittingly deleted a company project when her computer crashed. The vivid memory of having lost that project likely weighs more heavily on the decision to promote Jane than it should. This is due to the availability heuristic, which suggests that singular memorable moments have an outsized influence on decisions.”

And this sucks because bad memories are easier to remember than good ones. And that means we aren’t making our decisions logically.

This happens because our brains need shortcuts. We like shortcuts because it’s less energy. So we recall the strongest facts, the most biggest memories.

The first step to avoid this bias is to know it exists, right, and maybe have a baby pause before we make our decision and think about why we're making it.

The Affect Heuristic

According to the verywellmind,

“The affect heuristic is a type of mental shortcut in which people make decisions that are heavily influenced by their current emotions.1 Essentially, your affect (a psychological term for emotional response) plays a critical role in the choices and decisions you make.”

It's another shortcut. And it’s about how good or bad something or someone feels.

They give this example:

“Imagine a situation in which two children arrive at a local park to play. One child has spent a lot of time playing on swings at a neighbor's house, so he has nothing but positive feelings when he sees the swing set at the park. He immediately makes the decision that the swings will be fun (high benefit, low risk) and runs to play on the swings.

“The other child, however, recently had a negative experience while playing on the swings at a friend's house. When he sees the swings at the park, he draws on this recent negative memory and decides that the swings are a bad choice (low benefit, high risk).”

Basically, we aren’t relying on facts to make choices; we’re relying on emotions. Politicians and retailers know this and use fear to influence decisions because fear is a really strong emotion.

Jerks, but clever jerks.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Don't just always make automatic decisions. Pause. Sniff. Figure out where those decisions are coming from.

RANDOM THOUGHTS ABOUT PYTHAGORAS 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.

AND we have a writing tips podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW!

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook.

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Here’s the link.

Write Better Now - Writing Tips podcast for authors and writers loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird Carrie Does Poems

Take a Nap Like Alexander the Great and Fight Burnout

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 24 May 2022 12:41:00 +0000

So, sometimes we burnout.

We work and work and strive and strive and juggle multiple obligations and opportunities and we just stop being fully there because we’re so tired.

Before I go on, let’s define burnout. I’m going to go with this definition because it's not a Medium or blogger guru, but from the National Institute of Health.

“The term “burnout” was coined in the 1970s by the American psychologist Herbert Freudenberger. He used it to describe the consequences of severe stress and high ideals in “helping” professions. Doctors and nurses, for example, who sacrifice themselves for others, would often end up being “burned out” – exhausted, listless, and unable to cope. Nowadays, the term is not only used for these helping professions, or for the dark side of self-sacrifice. It can affect anyone, from stressed-out career-driven people and celebrities to overworked employees and homemakers.”

That NIH article also has some nice rundown of symptoms:

"Exhaustion: People affected feel drained and emotionally exhausted, unable to cope, tired and down, and don't have enough energy. Physical symptoms include things like pain and gastrointestinal (stomach or bowel) problems.
"Alienation from (work-related) activities: People who have burnout find their jobs increasingly stressful and frustrating. They may start being cynical about their working conditions and their colleagues. At the same time, they may increasingly distance themselves emotionally, and start feeling numb about their work.
"Reduced performance: Burnout mainly affects everyday tasks at work, at home or when caring for family members. People with burnout are very negative about their tasks, find it hard to concentrate, are listless and lack creativity."

It’s a lot like depression, right? But it’s not the same. Typically, people with burnout don’t’ feel hopeless, suicidal or have low self-esteem.

So, now that we’ve got that out of the way, how do you get some down time when you’re working so hard that you’re either burnt out or in great danger of getting there?

GETTING A GRIP AND GRATIFY YOURSELF

First you want to look at the patterns of us overachievers who tend to burn out. We often were the ‘good kids’ in school who learned that in order to get praise (and not get in trouble) you had to get all your assignments done and on time. We’re all about the goals and completing those goals.

Chilling out? Resting? That doesn’t feel goal-oriented.

We think that we can delay our gratification and keep delaying it and keep delaying it so that we can get all our goals done. Delayed gratification, we all learn in our beginner psychology classes, means we will have better success in our life. They test children about this. It’s a thing. But when we’re super focused on achieving, we burn out because that delayed gratification equates to us not realizing that we are breaking down physically and mentally.

BE CHILL AND LET GO OF THAT DAMN GUILT

And it’s not just that. We want to get a lot done and to do it well. If our work isn’t awesome, we feel like we aren’t awesome. Resting, we foolishly think, keeps us from getting all our awesome things done. It keeps us from writing, running three miles, finishing the project for work, making the perfect lunch for our kids.

It’s worse than that though. We feel guilty. If we rest, we feel guilty.

We should be working, doing, creating. We should be better than this. We don’t need naps.

TAKE A NAP, DAMN IT

Here’s a secret: Alexander the Great took naps. He still got to be called ‘great.’ Ben Franklin? Took naps.

So, the first step is to realize that.

People who have changed history actually rested. That means you can, too. If you don’t, your performance starts to get kind of crappy. You don’t want that, do you, super goal-oriented one? No, of course not.

Then you have to remember that everything doesn’t have to be a goal and everything doesn’t have to be your job and responsibility.

Make a to-do list, sure. But in that make a top priority list and focus on those.

And remember, it’s okay to not be amazing all the time, to not be reliable all the time, to not do everything for everyone all the time. It’s so hard especially when you’re struggling to survive, but you have to remember it’s okay to suck sometimes. We all do. And it’s okay to nap.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Take naps! Only get off the couch for food. No, not really. But do take a nap if you need one.

LINK WE REFERENCE

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/mystery-terrifying-big-grey-man-26996822

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.

AND we have a new writer podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW!

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook.

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Here’s the link.

Write Better Now - Writing Tips podcast for authors and writers loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird Carrie Does Poems

Flirts, Take Charge of Your Biological Clock.

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 18 May 2022 00:37:42 +0000

There’s this thing called a biological clock and it’s basically the timer of a bunch of things that your body does. It controls when you go to sleep, when you shoot out an egg, when your energy is high and when it crashes.

People who work third shift or whose shifts change have biological clocks that get all scattered. This happens to people who travel big distances too, right? We call it jet lag.

But even in a normal day we sometimes are more energetic and sometimes we are dragging and just want to find a couch and flop on it.

That clock though? It controls a lot. It also controls how alert you are, when you’re hungry or more easily stressed. It can even impact your immunity and hormones and temperature.

When you understand how it works? That’s when you can figure out how to optimize your life.

According to JE Driskell and B Mullen who co-authored “The efficacy of naps as a fatigue countermeasure: a meta-analytic integration” for Hum Factors, our energy levels decrease a bit when early afternoon hits. So, if you want a nap? And you can take one? That’s the time to do it.

Or, it’s an okay time to text your crush or sigfig if you know they aren’t super busy. Never text when you know someone is super busy.

And if you can’t take a real nap, if you can change up your work for a bit or take a break? It can really help your energy levels and focus and mood for the rest of the day. Cool, right?

That is the same time of day (noon to four) when concentration becomes a long lost friend. Thinking and focusing right after meals is also a bit hard. Most of us are able to think best during the late morning. But those times when focusing is hard are actually times when creativity is kick-butt. Wild, right?

Again, a good time to flirt text.

Not a good time? When you know someone is starting work, hanging out with their friends, running a marathon.

Understanding your own clock is a lot like understanding the clock and schedule of people you want to text. You’ll notice that there are times when you have long flirty conversations and times when it takes an hour for a response. Our bodies are like that, too.

Very Well Mind suggests that you can make your schedule more productive by not just knowing these facts, but also using them to establish a new daily pattern and also creating a steady sleep schedule where you go to bed and wake up at set times.

Gasp!

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Be smart. Text your fave in a way that doesn't make you annoying.

LINKS WE MENTION

Johnny Cash's Water Tower Peeing Incident

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.

AND we are transitioning to a new writer podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! You'll be able to check it out here starting in 2022!

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook.

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Here’s the link.

Write Better Now - Writing Tips podcast for authors and writers loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird Carrie Does Poems

You can totally hack into other people’s heads

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 10 May 2022 11:17:11 +0000

You can totally hack into other people’s heads. It sounds dastardly, right? But you can tweak other people’s memories.

On Mind Hacks, Heather Fishel cites the work of Dr. Jon Lieff and writes:

“Once an event occurs and time moves on, it becomes a part of your memory. Each time you recall that event and its details—smells, sounds, details, and so on—you're not, in fact, remembering the original moment. Instead, you're recalling the last time you remembered that memory.”

But it’s more than that. We tweak those memories to make better stories:

Fishel says:

“Wired writer Jonah Lehrer points out, human nature makes us love stories, and the more exciting and engaging a story is, the more we'll want to share it. As a result, when we recount our memories both internally and to others, we ignore any facts that don't suit the plot. Our minds allow us to toss aside any information that we dislike, replacing truth with pure fiction. Why? We simply want to fit in, and unless we change what we remember, our stories will suck.”

We will tweak our own memories so we don’t look dumb, so we fit in, so we tell a better story, and we usually don’t even realize that we’re doing it. And sometimes we have totally false memories.

What is a false memory?

According to VeryWellMind, false memories

“are misremembered, distorted, or fabricated recollections of past events. Such memories can be trivial, such as mistakenly remembering where you put your car keys, but they can also be much more serious.”

The big time consequences of false memories are the stuff of novels and tv shows: false convictions, financial loss, lawsuits, children dying in heated, locked cars.

But it is also a smaller scale thing. You are sure you left your cell phone on the desk. It is not on the desk. It is on the table. You have to wonder how many poltergeist cases are rooted in false memories, right? You think you shut the closet door, but the closet door is open. You are positive you locked the door. The door is unlocked.

You think you saw Bigfoot when you were six, but did you really, Carrie?

Ahem.

I’m the first to admit that I’m no longer sure.

Verywellmind has three strategies culled from researchers to help deal with false memories, which we are quoting here.

Use imagery: Researchers have found that when people use imagery to create a visual representation of information, their memory for that information is better and less susceptible to false memories.10

Search your memory: Experts also suggest that selectively searching memory for mistakes and falsehoods can sometimes be helpful.11

Evaluate and corroborate memories: If you find a memory that you aren't sure about, evaluating it based on your expectations and then collaborating it using other people's recollections or other historical data can help verify or disprove it.11

But what’s really wild is that psychiatrists like Elizabeth Loftus have found that there’s a misinformation effect with memories. So, if you witness or experience an event and then talk about it, are questioned about it in a leading way, view tweets or news stories, or are exposed to the wrong information repeatedly? It can change your memory of that same event.

Novelists can use this to help develop plots for novels. Mystery writers do it all the time making a detective call out the inconsistency in a witnesses’ testimony, and sometimes in real life and novels people confess to a crime because of a false memory, believing they have committed a crime even though they haven’t.

But people can do this to each other too, as Fishel writes:

“Try lying to them in a different way: tell them they didn't complete a task that they, in fact, did. For example, if your roommate can't seem to understand that doors need to be locked when leaving home, point out the unlocked door every single time you leave. Do this repeatedly over time, and your roommate will start double-checking and questioning himself every time he leaves home. "Did I lock the door? Did I completely forget?"

What are the ethics here? Some people believe that this can be a force for good. But is controlling another person ever a force for good? It’s like gaslighting but tweaked, right? So, use this knowledge wisely, friends.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Only manipulate your humans for good.

LINKS WE REFERENCE

https://nypost.com/2018/09/27/scientists-discover-evil-people-share-a-dark-triad-of-traits/

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/weird-yellow-brick-road-discovered-at-bottom-of-the-ocean/ar-AAX4kJd

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.

AND we are transitioning to a new writer podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! You'll be able to check it out here starting in 2022!

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook.

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Here’s the link.

Write Better Now - Writing Tips podcast for authors and writers loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird Carrie Does Poems

Pot Food at the Wedding and Positive Motivation Theory

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 04 May 2022 00:20:18 +0000

Last week on WRITE BETTER NOW, we talked about fear for our characters as we write, and not all of you are writers, but I bet a lot of you are characters. Sorry! We couldn’t help teasing you there.

Anyway, FEAR is great when it comes to writing novels and short stories and getting our characters to do things proactively on the page.

But in real life? Eh . . . It can be a problem.

A lot of us use fear to motivate us to do things. Sometimes we do this consciously. Sometimes we do this subconsciously. But it’s basically the act of doing things because we don’t want an outcome that we’re afraid of.

Like what?

We go to work because we’re afraid of losing our house to bankruptcy.

We go on a diet because we’re afraid of people’s scorn if we’re at our maximum density.

We are kind to our spouse when they are being a putz because we’re afraid of being alone.

And all those things? They are stressful.

It stresses you out if you’re always doing things because you’re afraid. And it also stresses you out if you’re always not doing things because you’re afraid.

Fear may keep you employed, fit, and in a relationship (albeit a potentially toxic one), but it’s not super helpful if you’re trying to not be anxious and stressed.

So, how do you motivate yourself instead?

One cool way is protection motivation theory.

What’s that?

According to CommunicationTheory.org,

“The theory therefore says that in order for an individual to adopt a health behavior, they need to believe that there is a severe threat that is likely to occur and that by adopting a health behavior, they can effectively reduce the threat. The individual should also be convinced that he is capable of engaging in the behavior which should not cost him a lot.”

Wait, doesn’t that sound like some fear-based motivation?

A bit. But a big part of it is that there is both a threat appraisal and a coping appraisal.

As the Warbleton Council writes

1. Threat assessment

Fear of illness or injury predisposes to act (for example, when you are smoking and coughing a lot).

In turn, this element is made up of the perception of severity (the possible harm to be suffered) and susceptibility (the level of risk the person is at), in addition to the intrinsic benefits of risky behavior.

2. Assessment of coping behavior

It is the probability of success perceived by the person, that is, the perception they have that their response will be effective in reducing the threat, in addition to the perception of self-efficacy (the person will be able to adopt preventive measures).

These variables will provide in the person a perspective on the costs and benefits of performing the behavior.

When you appraise the threat and coping mechanisms, you start to figure out if you should make change and what amount of changes you should undergo.

The Communication Theory article breaks all this down pretty brilliantly, so you should check it out, but it’s about intention and how you keep yourself safe and change your behavior when you perceive threats.

There’s a fascinating article about this theory and food purchasing behavior during COVID-19 and our shopping habits.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Just go for it, damn it. No fear.

LINK WE MENTION IN RANDOM THOUGHTS

https://www.ladbible.com/community/bride-slammed-for-entering-wedding-walking-groom-on-a-leash-20220423

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.

AND we are transitioning to a new writer podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! You'll be able to check it out here starting in 2022!

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook.

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Here’s the link.

Write Better Now - Writing Tips podcast for authors and writers loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird Carrie Does Poems

Are you really a couple if you don’t drink each other’s blood and how not to be overwhelmed

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 27 Apr 2022 00:12:46 +0000

In our random thoughts we talk all about drinking each other's blood. Thanks, Megan Fox and MGK.

Here's the rest of the podcast though.

So, this is going to be a short podcast because we’re going to give you some super simple advice this week. Ready?

BLOW OFF YOUR PHONE

Your phone rings? You don’t recognize the phone number? Don’t answer it.

Seriously.

Every single time your phone rings and it’s not a number you know, it means it could be a spammer wasting your time.

More than that though, each of those calls in an interruption that you aren’t expecting and you aren’t wanting. Even if it’s someone awesome, you aren’t in a position to deal with that call to the best of your ability.

Make them leave a message.

If it’s important, they will.

CHECK OUR EMAILS TWO OR THREE TIMES A DAY, NOT AN HOUR

The same thing goes for email programs. Don’t check it all the time. It’s a distraction. Yes, sometimes the emails are super important, but most of the time it’s Texas Tamales telling you that you have only twenty-four hours left to get a fantastic deal that includes queso.

You have to prioritize your to-do list and your time. For that reason, don't check that email first thing in the morning either. Get something else that is super important done.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Constant distractions make you lose your goal.

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.

AND we are transitioning to a new writer podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! You'll be able to check it out here starting in 2022!

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook.

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Here’s the link.

Write Better Now - Writing Tips podcast for authors and writers loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird Carrie Does Poems

Condoms in Easter Eggs Saying Yes and A Little Sex Talk

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 19 Apr 2022 10:57:00 +0000

Some things you just don't want to say yes to like say passing out condoms in Easter eggs at your kids school, but other times? You do want to say yes.

Improvisational comedians and actors know that every time they go up on the stage with no script, they are vulnerable.

What if they just stand there and no ideas come?

It’s the same as writers looking at a blank page. Or podcasters staring at an empty sound file.

But with improvisers, they can ask the audience for ideas.

“Give me a noun,” they’ll say. “Something you eat. A musical song. An emotion.”

And the audience members shout things. The improv performers don’t say, “Um, gerbil? I don’t eat gerbil.”

They just say yes to the ideas thrown at them, and then they create something that’s almost always funny.

The secret to their success and to so many other people’s success is that they say yes when they aren’t quite ready to say yes, yet.

A long time ago, a classmate from my MFA program asked me to teach a six-month program mentoring writers. I didn’t think I could do it, and I had a bit of a panic, but I said yes, and that yes has spiraled into a six-figure career teaching, editing and coaching other writers.

I did every single thing I could to make sure that those writers were being served well and getting the help they need.

It was the same thing when I decided to stop being a newspaper editor and get an MFA in Writing from Vermont College. I sent in the application before I could allow myself to think about it. I said yes to the idea, and it was only after I sent in that application that I realized that Vermont was pretty much the Harvard of children’s writing programs. Whoops.

I panicked when I got on campus, overwhelmed by people, tried to leave, stuck it out and within a year had three books under contract.

But this podcast isn’t all about me. It’s about you. And maybe even Shaun. You can always let your fears overwhelm you, be risk averse, be terrified of failure, of losing your life’s savings, of ending up living in a car. But you only have one big chance at this life and your dreams.

You have to say yes before you’re ready because you’ll never be ready.

Say yes.

Say yes to things that make you a tiny bit afraid.

Say yes to things people don’t expect you to do or be or care about.

Say yes to making new friends and exploring new places.

Say yes to pushing yourself a little or a lot beyond your expectations.

Don’t let anyone else define you. Only you get to define you, okay?

So define yourself as someone who explores, who lives, who says yes.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Say yes to playing with puppies. They need love, too.

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.

AND we are transitioning to a new writer podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! You'll be able to check it out here starting in 2022!

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook.

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Here’s the link.

Write Better Now - Writing Tips podcast for authors and writers loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird Carrie Does Poems

Stop Stomping on People

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 12 Apr 2022 19:34:30 +0000

There was recently a piece by a lawyer/poet critiquing a younger, more celebritified (we made up that word) poet that caused a bit of an uproar for multiple reasons.

Here’s the thing: Just because a poem doesn’t speak to you or your ‘idea’ of what a poem is doesn’t mean that it’s not a poem or that the person who wrote it isn’t a poet.

One man writing about one woman doesn’t get to decide that woman is or isn't an artist or a poet no matter how adamantly he digs in his heels. One liberal doesn’t get to decide that about a conservative or vice versa. We shouldn't think we have the power to label or un-label another person.

Being a critic doesn’t mean you have to be an asshole.

It isn't just people on the internet though.

We were walking our puppy, Pogie, and our older dog, Sparty, this weekend, and a woman Carrie often tries to avoid stopped to talk.

The woman said that we needed to take our chunky, arthritic Sparty on more walks so he could lose some weight. She has no idea how many walks Sparty goes on. Disclosure: It's more than it seems.

Next, she looked at our newly painted blue stairs and said, “Oh, that white splotch is still there. That's been there forever.”

Then she gave our chubby dog a dog treat. A couple actually. Yes, the same woman who told us we needed to walk him more to lose weight.

Here’s another thing: Being observant doesn’t mean you have to be an asshole either. People don’t need to be celebrities for other people to want to take them down, to criticize, to refuse to say one positive thing.

In this world? It’s so easy to criticize each other, to snark, to deride.

But just because something is easy doesn’t mean that it’s right.

You know what’s hard? It’s finding bits of good in people that have given up on themselves and finding good in people who others have given up on, too. Yeah, it’s so much harder than just criticizing, but you don’t evolve if you don’t do the hard stuff.

And evolving? That’s sexy.

We all think we’re good people. I’m sure that woman walking her dog does. I bet that angry poetry critic and political pundit does.

But here’s the question for all of us: When was the last time we helped someone who was having a hard time?

Here’s another question: When was the last time you ignored someone when they were doing poorly?

Did you criticize their dog, how often they walk them. Did you say, “The blue of your front steps is nice?” Or did you just say, “Oh, that white splotch is still there?” Did you write an essay about how a young Black woman in her early twenties was not a ‘poet,’ and how her poetry, her voice, had no merit?

Authentic leadership and character requires lifting as we climb, not stomping on people below us so hard that they are dragging themselves through the dirty ground or yanking people above us off the ladder so forcibly that they break bones and spirit in their fall.

Nurturing other people’s talents even when it’s hard to see those talents? It’s a skill. It’s leadership. It’s what being a good person is about.

Lifting as you climb is more than a slogan; it’s a way of life. And it’s a good one.

Topple as you ignore? Stomp as you criticize? Doesn’t really work quite so well.

We are all human. We are all flawed, but we are all capable of so much more. Let’s help each other achieve those great things, the great selves we’re capable of.

LINKS WE MENTION

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/javelina-stuck-in-car_n_6254a37de4b052d2bd58fd50

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/giant-snake-causes-chaos-seen-26690881

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.

AND we are transitioning to a new writer podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! You'll be able to check it out here starting in 2022!

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook.

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Here’s the link.

Write Better Now - Writing Tips podcast for authors and writers loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird Carrie Does Poems

Don't Chunk! The Brain Science Behind Bad Exposition

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 06 Apr 2022 14:00:50 +0000

Hi, welcome to Write Better Now, a podcast of quick, weekly writing tips meant to help you become a better writer. We’re your hosts with NYT bestselling author Carrie Jones and copyeditor extraordinaire Shaun Farrar. Thank you for joining us.

This week it’s not so much a writing tip, but a writing explanation as we dive a little deeper into why too much exposition is bad.

It’s all about the human brain.

But before we start, once again, exposition is just a literary device that according to Masterclass:

“Is meant to relay background information about a main character, setting, event or other element of the narrative. Exposition comes from the Latin word expositionem, which literally means “showing forth.”

And in a story, exposition often bores the reader or breaks up the forward motion of the plot.

So why does that suck?

There’s a thing called working memory. Most of our brains can only keep four or five things inside our memory at one time.

That’s not super good. JUST FOUR OR FIVE THINGS!

So, our brains adapted because our brains are awesome and they do this cool thing called “chunking.”

As Anne Hawley, writing for Story Grid explains,

“Chunking is when we group ideas so that together they occupy only one of the four or five available memory slots in our brain.”

Or the APA Dictionary of Psychology says chunking is

“the process by which the mind divides large pieces of information into smaller units (chunks) that are easier to retain in short-term memory … one item in memory can stand for multiple other items”.

She cites Steven Pinker who wrote The Sense of Style and gives this example:

M D P H D R S V P C E O I H O P

If we don’t chunk those sixteen letters together, we would have a much harder time remembering them.

But we can chunk them like this:

M D

P H D

R S V P

C E O

I H O P

And voila! You think about the doctor and the Ph.D. who rsvp’d to the ceo of Ihop.

Amazing, right?

So, exposition inserted into our stories as an info dump? It keeps us from chunking. It makes our brain work harder and that can take our brains out of the story.

SPOILER ALERT: Be kind to readers’ brains. Most of them don’t want to be taken out of the story, but immersed in it.

Hey, thanks for listening to Write Better Now. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in us, so thank you for your support. The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Mr.ruiz and the track is Arctic Air and the album is Winter Haze Summer Daze.

MAKE FRIENDS LIKE YOU ARE A DAMN FLAMINGO

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 05 Apr 2022 11:25:00 +0000

Here’s the thing: A lot of us are lonely. Really lonely.

And making friends? As an adult? It can feel kind of scary.

Why does this matter? Well, Sherri Gordon on Very Well Mind cuts right to the chase:

We want all that for you, so we’re here with some advice on how to make friends

Check out the people you work with

One great way to make friends according to Dr. Miriam Kiramyer, a clinical psychologist interviewed by Emily Burns for The Cut is:

“We all have workplace acquaintances that we know deep down could be something more. Dr. Kirmayer suggests taking the leap to growing those relationships. Find a common denominator you can bond over, like a shared hobby or interest! You don’t have to talk about work. “Making an effort to gradually open up about different parts of your life, that can help to deepen that sense of connection,” said Kirmayer. Talk about your life, what you like to do in your free time, etc. Perhaps set up a Zoom coffee chat with your fave colleague or schedule a hangout with the neighbor you always joke with in the hallway.

Very Well Mind has a slew of suggestions, but one that resonated with us is:

“Reach Out to Neighbors

“Many people don't realize they have a potential friend living right next door or across the street. They give the courtesy wave and immediately close their door, not even trying to start a conversation. But there may be some really great friendships waiting for you right next door. So the next time you are both out, do more than just wave.”

And then there is . . .

Be Brave

You have to be brave (especially if you have social anxiety or are an introvert) to put yourself out there and ask someone to go have coffee or take a walk. It’s like dating. You can feel rejected. But even if you are? And they say no? Be proud. You were brave and that poor bugger is missing out.

Friendship is hard and it takes work. Friendship isn’t about instant gratification. It’s about time and connection. It’s about sticking it out even when your friend is a twerp. And social media? It makes us feel connected and isolated all at once because it takes up a lot of time that we used to use for hobbies and hanging out in real time.

I think our favorite piece of advice is actually from Psychology Today where Andrea Brandt writes:

“Seek, and you will find

“You know how you won't meet new people? By living every day like it's identical to the previous one and not mixing up your routine at all. A strategy with a high-return rate is to go places or do things you enjoy and see who you meet there. If you like to read, join a book club. If you're more physically oriented, join a gym or take a class in a new sport: golf, tennis, tai chi. The more it involves interacting with other people, the better.”

So there you go. Be brave. Look for people. Reach out.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

We have a new puppy in the house. Sparty could chose to be friends or not. He's still deciding. Sometimes it's okay to be picky.

LINKS

https://www.foxnews.com/category/odd-news

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.

AND we are transitioning to a new writer podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! You'll be able to check it out here starting in 2022!

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook.

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Here’s the link.

Write Better Now - Writing Tips podcast for authors and writers loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird Carrie Does Poems

No One Wants to Admit

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Mon, 04 Apr 2022 14:10:00 +0000

Hi! This year (2022), I've decided to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:

My spoken voice
My raw poems.

Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!

No one wants to admit that the moment they are home alone, They start singing show tunes or childhood hits, Pretending the crowds are adoring as they slide in socks across a hard wood floor That isn’t actually a stage and there is no TikTok video being made. Only we, random humans with our ridiculous bodies, All gangling and bulbous, opposable thumbs a highlight Want to be famous in secret—so many dreams sung off-key Into the space of the kitchen, the only audience the dogs Since the cats wisely look away.

Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support. The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.

While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!

https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection

Unplug Yourself and Bark Back and Find Your Agency

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 29 Mar 2022 13:33:57 +0000

There’s an Anne Lamott quote that says, “Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes—including you.”

And that’s a lovely quote and quite true in so many instances, but also sometimes? Sometimes it can feel next to impossible to unplug.

Sometimes that unplugging has to be a dramatic event where you realize that you have to rescue yourself from the habits that are controlling your life, or the people controlling your life and you have to actually take your own control of your life.

I know! I know! Terrifying.

But the first question is: how do you actually take control over your life?

Over at the greatergood, there are some potential possibilities that we’re going to share here. It’s a great article written by Anthony Rao and Paul Napper back in 2019.

Controlling Stimuli

They write:

“Agency begins with what you let into your mind—meaning what comes in from your environment. If you are lacking agency, it’s likely your attention is being hijacked and you need to figure out how to restore it.”

A phone next to you when you’re reading? It’s probably going to distract you, they say. But walking outside? It lets your brain recharge.

Same thing with email notifications. 

Another thing they suggest is . . .

“Associate Selectively”

They write:

“It’s impossible not to be affected by those around us—it’s easy to “catch” their emotions, for example, and our brains tend to synch up when we associate with other people. That means you should set boundaries with difficult people, disentangle yourself from negative online interactions, and be more conscious of how you might be vulnerable to “groupthink”—pressures to behave or think in ways that are contrary to your values.”

How do you do that when that person is your kid? It’s a good question. But they suggest making sure you have a lot of interactions with people who want to help you cultivate your skills and talents, grow to your potential, and help you with your positive beliefs. Volunteering and just chatting can help.

Move Around

Get up. Off the couch. Off the chair. Stretch. Walk. Dance. As often as possible.

Learn

They write: “People with high levels of agency are continually learning more and expanding their capacity to learn by adopting a more open, collaborative approach to everything in life.”

There’s a whole lot more we’ll talk about next week too, but for this week, try this:

Put your phone in another room while you work.
Go outside and walk if you can.
Get up every 40 minutes and move around for five. Set a timer.
Chat with someone positive or sign up to volunteer somewhere.
Sign up for a free class or even listen to a podcast like this. Take some time to learn something.

And think about this:

“You can’t buy, achieve or date serenity and peace of mind,” Anne Lamott says in a TedTalk about being sixty-one. “It’s an inside job, and we can’t arrange peace or lasting improvement for the people we love most in the world. They have to find their own ways, their own answers.”

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Bark. Communicate your needs and sometimes the neighbor will bark back and you'll feel less lonely.

LINKS WE USE IN THE PODCAST

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/seven_ways_to_feel_more_in_control_of_your_life

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/wellness/help-i-found-a-weird-way-to-calm-the-dog-next-door-my-neighbor-is-furious-about-it/ar-AAVAHvE

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.

AND we are transitioning to a new writer podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! You'll be able to check it out here starting in 2022!

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook.

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Here’s the link.

Write Better Now - Writing Tips podcast for authors and writers loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird Carrie Does Poems

Is My Beer Okay and the Problems With People Pleasing

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 22 Mar 2022 11:56:00 +0000

When Carrie was growing up, she spent a lot of time trying to make sure her mom didn’t cry or get too mad or sad.

“One of my earliest memories is actually yelling at my poor dad, telling him that I hated him because he made ‘my mommy’ cry. I was younger than four and I had no idea what was going on with them, but to my little four-year-old brain, keeping my mom happy was my job and duty.”

But what that taught Carrie was that you have to please other people to keep things from erupting into chaos. Her mom didn’t consciously teach that to her at all, and her mom had a lot of people pleaser in her, too. And then a bad relationship with a man with alcohol issues and abusive tendencies made it even worse. How can you have a want when that want might mean you’ll get pushed up against a wall?

The problem with being a people pleaser is that you spend so much time thinking about how your actions impact others that you forget to make decisions on what you yourself want to do.

So now when she’s asked things like, “What’s your favorite food? Where do you want to go to dinner? Where would you like to go on vacation?” She freezes up.

She’s lost the ability to make decisions for herself because she’s afraid of the consequences and because she wants everyone else to be happy.

Tiny Buddha has an article about three questions that you can ask yourself if you’re a people pleaser to help you reorient to putting yourself first occasionally and not do the Carrie freeze.

Those questions are:

Is this my priority? Not other people’s?
What is important to me?
How will I feel after I make this decision?

When you know what your priority is, what kind of life you want, what is important, then you can make the decisions that make you happy, the ones that help you grow.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Be who you are and know what you want.

LINKS WE REFERENCED

https://www.ketk.com/news/weird-news/video-florida-man-struck-by-car-leaving-store-asks-if-his-beer-is-ok/

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.

AND we are transitioning to a new writer podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! You'll be able to check it out here starting in 2022!

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook.

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Here’s the link.

Write Better Now - Writing Tips podcast for authors and writers loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird Carrie Does Poems

Stuff a Crossbow Down Your Trousers and Be Your Own Guru

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 15:39:00 +0000

When we follow people—be the authors or internet gurus all about self-help or celebrities or influencers, we only see one side of who they are: the shiny side.

We see the end product of a book, a video, a photo, a blog post, a speech, but we don’t see the day-to-day humanity behind that. We consume the product, become devoted to the person, even sometimes think we’re friends with the person, and sometimes even think the things in their lives belong more to us than to them.

And that’s pretty interesting, right?

Last week our dog, Gabby, died and because Gabby is a big part of Carrie’s message and social media, she posted that Gabby had passed. So many people were lovely and kind and expressed so much sympathy because Gabby presented something good in their lives and because they were kind and had empathy because they’d been through loss, too.

But one person sent a message that said they were still really sad about Gabby and that Carrie may still be struggling. And that? That one little word ‘may,’ when combined with their statement about being really sad? It made us stop and think even though we know this person is absolutely lovely and only has the best of intentions.

Still, it was our dog that died, but we were the ones who may still be struggling?

We are no Tim Ferris or Kardashian or Tony Robbins or Anne Lamott, but our lives are real and not just consumption for others. We get joyous, desperately sad, grieve, make massive mistakes, and sometimes even do things incredibly right.

Sometimes when we follow others, we forget that those other people are people and sometimes we forget that we are people too.

We are all intrigued by the personality and human aspects behind the people we follow, be they entrepeneurs, philosophers, influencers, or Kardashians. But that doesn’t mean that we should forget that they are humans with whole teams sometimes helping them create a product.

You don't need to be a product.

And you don't need to feel bad about yourself if you aren't an influencer or don't have a massive following or don't have beautifully curated Instagram photos.

You aren’t a product and even those famous people aren’t products. We are all humans, figuring things out as we go. We don’t need to imitate a Kardashian to be happy or to channel our inner Tony Robbins or Oprah or Anne Lamott or Jayson Reynolds. We need to define what it is that we truly want in life. If you are overwhelmed by the death of someone else’s dog, you might want to find more love in your life. If you are angry about something your town council did, you might want to be elected to a position where you can change things. If you are sad that other people are getting books published, you might want to start spending some time writing your own book.

Success is not about not eating carbs, wearing the right make-up, putting on the booty enhancers, and drinking a certain kind of energy drink. Success is about defining who you are, what you believe in, how you want to live your life. That’s not something you can imitate. It’s something you have to be. You have to choose to be who you are, not who the gurus want to be. You have to choose to live your life, not live through others.

That takes work sometimes, deep thought, and the ability to look inside yourself at what you want to be and who you are right now. It means letting go of past mistakes and moving toward a human-focused and humanity-focused present and future. It takes love, damn it. And the first step is loving yourself. Oprah, Kardashians, Ferris, Robbins, Reynolds are all probably great humans, but they aren’t you. And you? You’re just as great or maybe even greater. You just have to believe in yourself enough to let that greatness out.

Dog Tip For Life

Follow your own nose. Be your own dog. - Sparty

RANDOM THOUGHTS LINKS

https://news.sky.com/story/florida-man-arrested-after-stealing-a-crossbow-by-stuffing-it-down-his-trousers-12550364

https://nypost.com/2022/03/01/im-in-love-with-a-couple-after-matching-with-both-on-dating-app/

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.

AND we are transitioning to a new writer podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! You'll be able to check it out here starting in 2022!

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook.

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Here’s the link.

Write Better Now - Writing Tips podcast for authors and writers loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird Carrie Does Poems

Let’s Get Fighting BECAUSE Conflict in Stories Is Good

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 09 Mar 2022 19:39:41 +0000

Hey, everyone! We're having a wee bit of drama in our lives, so we're taking this week off in the podcasts. Gasp! I know! We never do that.

But it means that we're going to bring back one of our podcasts for a lovely redo.

It's great! Here you go! And we hope you're all doing well!

In our random thoughts, we talk about:

Killer trees in Maine
FBI agents looking for gold
Chainsaws being a hot stolen item.

One of the big things that pretty much every traditional story in Western culture needs is conflict.

CHARACTER + WANT + OBSTACLE = CONFLICT

In your story or your life, you have wants? Sometimes there are obstacles in the way. They keep you from getting your want. Therein lies the conflict. The story becomes interesting because of how you or your character deals with that obstacle.

A lot of writers wait a long time to get that conflict into their stories.

Don’t do this. It is usually boring when you do this.

Nobody wants to be boring. There are two overall types of conflict – internal (inside the character) and external (outside the character), but they can be broken down even more.

AND THERE ARE TONS OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF CONFLICTS. CHOOSE ONE. MAKE THAT LITTLE JERK YOUR FRIEND.

First off, there are all sorts of lists about the types of conflict in novels. Sometimes you’ll see four. Sometimes you’ll see three. Whatever. Nothing is ever set in stone.

Character vs. character -Podcaster Carrie is trying desperately to not get an explicit rating, but her co-podcaster, Shaun, likes being explicit. How will Carrie make $5 a year off her podcast if it is banned?

Character vs. society – Podcaster Shaun must fight against an overly oppressive society that doesn’t like his explicit nature. How can Shaun survive in a society that crushes his inherent Shaunie-ness?

Character vs. nature – Nature or an aspect of it is about to kick your ass. Think Jaws. Think tidal waves. Think the moon messing up the Earth’s axis. How will there be a podcast if you are fighting off a Sharknado?

Character vs. technology – Your submarine breaks and you have only hours to fix the tech and live. Your mechanical love doll decides to kill you. Your downloads keep buffering. HOW WILL YOU PODCAST?

Character vs. supernatural – The ghosts have invaded the podcast studio and keep whispering, “WHO YOU GONNA CALL” over the audio. HOW WILL YOU PODCAST?

Character vs. self – The Reedsy blog states

Internal strife will stem from a debate that occurs within a character. It might originate from any combination of the character’s expectations, desire, duties, and fears.

Reedsy

Carrie has massive social anxiety, but also a hammy tendency. Every time she has to do a podcast, she panics and paces the house. Will she get it together enough to podcast? Can she get over her reluctance to speak aloud because her s’s are sloshy in order to finally have a voice?

Character vs. fate – Think Greek tragedy or boy wizards and prophecies. You are fated to die at the hands of a monster, in battle, via evil male wizards. You are stuck throwing an evil ring into a volcano. You are stuck becoming a podcaster in a prescribed fate sent from God. How do you deal with this once you know? How do you fight your fate?

WRITING TIP OF THE POD

Put lots of conflict in your story. Put it in early. You can use more than one kind.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Don’t create drama in your life when you’re bored or for attention. We all know people who try to create grievance and controversy out of random events. We all know people who go trolling on Facebook or Twitter or try to create drama and get that negative attention in their own post or life.

Spoiler: Negative attention isn’t the best kind of attention. Go for the positive.

RESOURCES

Articles mentioned in random thoughts are all linked here. And here.

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.

AND we are transitioning to a new writer podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! You’ll be able to check it out here starting in 2022!

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook.

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That’s a lot!

Here’s the link.

To Hell With Goals. Sort Of. How To Find The Best Habits

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 01 Mar 2022 12:59:42 +0000

A lot of people give up on things because they focus on goals.

Their goal is:

Write 50,000 words by April.
Lose 20 pounds before the wedding.
Have $100,000 in the bank by January.

Goals are lovely. Goals are sexy. Goals work brilliantly for some people, but for some of us goals are absolute bullshit.

I know this. Yet I still fall into the goal trap all the time. If I don’t lose twenty pounds and only 19.5, I feel like I’ve failed. If I only write 49,998 words, I feel like I’ve failed. And I’m not even going to talk about the bank thing.

That’s because goals are all or nothing. You get them or you don’t.

Habits though? Habits are an author's and a human's best friend. Habits are amazing and good ones? They create other good ones.

Charles Duhigg wrote,The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. And in it he talks about keystone habits and how if we understand habits, we can figure out how to kick ass, basically.

He wrote in an interview:

“Take, for instance, a bad habit I had of eating a cookie every afternoon. By learning how to analyze my habit, I figured out that the reason I walked to the cafeteria each day wasn't because I was craving a chocolate chip cookie. It was because I was craving socialization, the company of talking to my colleagues while munching. That was the habit's real reward. And the cue for my behavior - the trigger that caused me to automatically stand up and wander to the cafeteria, was a certain time of day.

“So, I reconstructed the habit: now, at about 3:30 each day, I absentmindedly stand up from my desk, look around for someone to talk with, and then gossip for about 10 minutes. I don't even think about it at this point. It's automatic. It's a habit. I haven't had a cookie in six months.”

Duhigg

As a writer, people always ask me how I’m so productive. It’s because I usually write every day. That’s my habit. I was a much better drawer when I drew every day. I was a much healthier human when I exercised every day. And so on. Some habits have great rates of return (like lifting weights, walking) and some don’t (binging Tiger King). The key is to find the habits that help you toward your goals.

They call these habits, keystone habits, which LifeHack defines as:

Working toward those goals in smaller increments (thirty-day habit forming cycles) is also pretty key because it seems doable and according to most research those thirty-day stints help us get the habit ingrained into our psyches.

Some Awesome Habits Cooking

Making your own food is way healthier and way more rewarding. Yes, it takes time, but if you can do it, do it. There are some great sites with 15-minute dinners. That’s less time than it takes to wait at McDonald’s lately.

Exercise

I know! I know! No brainer, right? Start slow. Do something easy every day for that first month. Build from there.

Reading

Seriously. Step away from the screen. Read something in long form. Build your brain.

Writing

Making your thoughts make sense? Giving yourself some time with them? It’s pretty golden.

Chilling with other people

Yep. We have to remember how to interact in real life. Form those bonds.

Meditating or praying

Spiritual connections and purpose really help people. I swear.

LINKS TO RANDOM THOUGHT SOURCES

https://www.wonkette.com/confused-gop-boomer-rep-pretty-sure-pesky-millennials-caused-russian-invasion

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.

AND we are transitioning to a new writer podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! You'll be able to check it out here starting in 2022!

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook.

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Here’s the link.

Write Better Now - Writing Tips podcast for authors and writers loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird Carrie Does Poems

Making Life Changing Moments and Booby Free Day

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 14:28:00 +0000

There is an article over on Medium that annoyed Carrie, which to be fair, Medium articles by self-professed self-help gurus often do.

Cough.

It's not because the guy has 250,000 followers, she swears. It's just because he's a bro-looking white guy regurgitating other people's stuff.

And here's the thing. To make impact, you don't want to vomit up other people's books or thoughts. You want to be your own person.

In New Hampshire literary circles of the 1970s and 1980s there was a dynamic poetry husband and wife duo of Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon. They were nothing alike in their poetry and Donald usually received a lot more kudos, but Jane? She made her moments.

I'll always remember my Aunt Maxine introducing me to Jane when I was eight or something and saying, "She is a spectacular poet." She pretty much gasped it all out because she was so enthralled.

I always wanted to be gasp worthy, honestly--in a good way, right?

So, there's a piece in the National Book Review by Mike Pride that talks a bit about Jane (who died at just 47) where it talks about how her husband dealt with people being stupid about the difference between their poems and styles.

"Hall reacted when anyone suggested that he was a poet of big ideas while his wife wrote sweet and simple poems. “Yeah,” he’d say, “her style is a glass of water – a 100-proof glass of water.”

There is a tendency for us all to look away from the moments, the truths of our lives and existence and instead go for those superlative, larger than life moments, stories, celebrities, all that b.s.

But here's the thing-- even Captain America has to go poo. Even bigger-than-life people whose stories are cultivated for our consumption also have those smaller moments.

It's not about the 250,000 followers. It's about you making each moment, each interaction count.

And sometimes to do that you have to look and see how those moments have happened to you before.

Have you ever had a moment where your understanding of the world changed? An epiphany?

When was the last time you felt at the top of your game?

When was the last time you tried something new?

When was the last time you risked your reputation for your beliefs?

A lot of those moments have big emotions with them, right? And sometimes we get scared of those big emotions and when that happens? We can't take risks because we're afraid of the emotions and change that might come with those risks. Even when that change is positive, it's something different, something new and that can be super scary for a lot of us.

But you've got to keep trying and dreaming and learning and being brave in order for cool things to happen.

How do you do this?

Think about what you really really want to happen in your life?
Make sure that this is something that you morally feel cool about. Don't want to be an assassin if you're against killing.
Make sure what you want feels like it gives you purpose.
Put in the time. Decisions don't mean crap if you don't actually put the action steps and time into that choice. Authors make our characters all the time. It isn't enough for Captain America to go save the world. He has to take a super serum, learn how to fight and throw a shield, locate the bad guy. That goes for us, too.

Jane Kenyon wrote in “Afternoon at MacDowell,” when Donald Hall had cancer (she was the actual one to die of it first),

After music and poetry we walk to the car. I believe in the miracles of art, but what prodigy will keep you safe beside me, fumbling with the radio while you drive to find late innings of a Red Sox game?

A poet becomes a poet by investing the time to see the things in life, the moments and twists and epiphanies and connections, that the rest of us not always see, but more than that. They take the moment and let it resonate.

That's what we all need to do. We need to become the poets of our lives, making our moments by choice and action.

LINKS WE REFER TO IN OUR RANDOM THOUGHTS

https://shepherdexpress.com/puzzles/news-of-the-weird/news-of-the-weird-week-of-feb-3-2022/

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.

AND we are transitioning to a new writer podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! You'll be able to check it out here starting in 2022!

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook.

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Here’s the link.

Write Better Now - Writing Tips podcast for authors and writers loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird Carrie Does Poems

The Apple

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Mon, 21 Feb 2022 19:54:00 +0000

Hi! This year (2022), I've decided to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It's all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I'm scared about still include:

My spoken voice
My raw poems.

Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!

The apple fell to the ground joining the others; rotting had already begun the way it does. We all fall and crack. On the wire a squirrel ran to the right, green apple in her mouth, prized obviously, bigger than her head. Another fell before a second squirrel appeared, apple in mouth, bounding on the wire to the left this time. I know I’m not the squirrels. I know I am not an apple (though I feel round lately), but I gather things too big to hold and drop so many, bringing them to the road where they’ll be carried off by others or maybe smooshed under wheels of cars or just left to rot. I know. I’m not the apple rolling aimlessly until I can’t move anymore. I know.

Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support. The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called A Feather and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.

While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!

https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection

Why Dogs Kick Dirt In The Air After Pooping And You Should Too

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 14:59:00 +0000

So, if you've ever had the pleasure of dog ownership, you know that dogs do their business and then kick dirt up in the air or grass or just nothing.

They stand there looking kind of silly and kick or scrape at the ground. Sometimes their paws don't even make contact with anything but they still do it and look like they are inventing some new TikTok dance that we're not coordinated enough to do.

They aren't.

They're just acting on instinct.

According to the AKC

Dogs have glands in their paws that release pheromones that trigger social interaction with other dogs. These pheromones from dogs’ feet last longer than the scent of urine or feces, making them more effective as a communication tool.

If you’ve ever sniffed your dogs’ paws, you’ll notice a specific smell that isn’t always a clear sign that they need a bath or grooming appointment — it’s likely that your pup has recently stimulated the pads on their paws to produce pheromones and spread their “scent.” While these chemical reactions aren’t visible to the human eye, they’re as powerful as putting a mailbox out in front of your house with your last name on it to claim property.

The behavior dates back thousands of years, when dogs lived in the wild and were responsible for fending off prey. In the presence of other dogs, the action was used as a protection method.

Your pup isn’t attempting to ruin the lawn, but simply letting other dogs know they’re in charge.

What can we learn from this? Well, we could say that we're learning that silly seeming behavior can have deeper roots, right?

Or we can say not to make assumptions about things that seem stupid because it's just not your species' way of doing things.

Or we could say, "Why the hell does everyone need to be in freaking charge all the damn time?"

Seriously, even our dogs need to be the top of the hierarchy? Maybe we all need to chill, spray something nice or burn a candle after we defecate, and call it good.

But wait. That's not always the case, even with dogs. The AKC says:

But it’s not always a warning to “back-off” — this form of communication also allows canines to alert other dogs that there isn’t a present threat in the area. If another dog comes near, they’ll immediately know that another animal of the same species is close by.

AKC

Phew. I feel so much better about things now. There's a goodness in knowing you aren't alone. That there is community out there, right? That's why people love Star Trek have conventions, that Danganronpa fans cluster together on Discord. It's nice to not be alone.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Leave your best smell behind. That's how others recognize and remember you.

LINKS WE REFER TO

https://shepherdexpress.com/puzzles/news-of-the-weird/news-of-the-weird-week-of-feb-3-2022/

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.

AND we are transitioning to a new writer podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! You'll be able to check it out here starting in 2022!

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook.

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Here’s the link.

Write Better Now - Writing Tips podcast for authors and writers loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird Carrie Does Poems

It's the Moments Not the Superlatives that Matter

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 14:28:00 +0000

Ashley Bryan died this week. He was 98 and a brilliant artist, writer, and human who lived on an island in Maine near us and was the keynote speaker at a book festival we had. In a 2017 Horn Book interview with Roger Sutton and Nikki Giovanni, he said,

If someone says they are taking my time — that's the one thing you never can take. I have to offer it. Time is of the moment, and the moment is all I have. If that moment isn't precious to me, then I'm not living. Nothing is more important or precious to me right now than both of us talking

Ashley Bryan

Ashley also said in that same interview

I love poetry. It's at the heart of everything I do. Poetry transforms what we call language, and uses language as the stuff to become something else. I get spun around by what happens in words. When that occurs, it inspires images that seem so original to me as an artist, even though I'm following what the poem has offered.

So, I, Carrie was a bit heartbroken by this, not just because Ashley Bryan like me goes out in public with paint on his sweater (as you see in a photo on our blog taken when he was at the book festival), but because Ashley was such a light in this world. He seemed to get it--to not just rejoice in the moment, but to also rejoice in the twists to the moments.

In a New York Times article from 2020 entitled "Why Mundane Moments Matter," Simran Sethi writes

Although we, as a culture, typically favor the superlative, research shows that moonlight, and everything that is revealed in ordinary moments of our life, matters. Valuing the routine enriches our lives in ways we do not expect, because “how we spend our days,” the author Annie Dillard reminds us, “is how we spend our lives.”

Sethi

You can hold onto the past and get bitter or sorrowful. You can project into the future and fill it with worry, but the moment you are in right now. That is your moment. You want to try to actually experience it fully, breathe it in. Be freaking alive in it, be present.

And Ashley got that. He expressed that in his love for community, for moments, for twists, for poetry, and in his art. In another interview with the Horn Book, he said to Sutton.

It is an urgency that is fundamental, and the essence is the same. It's the urgency to discover something about ourselves in every work we make. I make no distinction between doing a block print, a collage, a watercolor, a tempera painting. To me it's an effort to discover something of myself that I do not know and have not done. So each effort is like that of the child going out in the morning, making discoveries and having adventures.

Ashley Bryan

We hope you find that too--that discovery--that fundamental essence in your moments and in your self.

When you allow yourself to lean into the moments rather than always bemoaning the lack of celebrity-endorsed superlatives, you get to enjoy those twists, those bits, those things you might not normally see. How cool is that, really?

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Live in the moment.

Link we mention in our Random Thoughts

https://shepherdexpress.com/puzzles/news-of-the-weird/news-of-the-weird-week-of-feb-3-2022/

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.

AND we are transitioning to a new writer podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! You'll be able to check it out here starting in 2022!

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook.

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Here’s the link.

Write Better Now - Writing Tips podcast for authors and writers loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird Carrie Does Poems

Feeling Worthy is Complete B.S.

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 17:32:00 +0000

Improving yourself is a really great goal. If you can quantify your progress and you’re into that? It’s even better, but what actually matters is what’s going on inside of you and that’s hard to quantify.

Emotions are a little bit subjective. Then can change and cascade and they aren’t easy to describe, let alone quantify sometimes. But what we think it’s really about–this whole self-improvement/self-discover thing is about not feeling like poop all the time inside your brain and emotions.

Feeling comfortable with who you are is important. Reconnecting with who you are means that you are so much more free, so much more capable, so much more courageous.

And feeling comfortable with yourself and your weirdness and your moods and the thoughts that filter in and out of your brain is really the thing.

It’s kind of THE big thing.

It’s sort of what we all want. But when we want that comfort, it’s as if any internal suffering we have becomes a failure to the goal of self-improvement and that’s not super helpful. We’re allowed to f-up. We’re allowed to not feel constantly comfortable and not be ashamed or feel unworthy. It’s part of being alive and human, and it’s okay.

But most of us don’t want to feel like poop all the time. That’s definitely okay, too.

What matters is living with your whole heart, living with purpose and living with compassion for yourself and others. We have stories in our lives. We have patterns. And when we’re aware of them and where they come from? That helps us understand that we are okay, that we’re worthy, that we can be the good guy in our own damn story.

Tara Brach talks in her book Radical Acceptance about people feeling unworthy. That feeling of unworthiness tends to lead to feelings of shame and so you start looking for ways to be worthy.

But the thing is that worthy? It’s bullshit.

Brach writes, “Feeling compassion for ourselves in no way releases us from responsibility for our actions. Rather, it releases us from the self-hatred that prevents us from responding to our life with clarity and balance.”

We are who we are. And worthy as a concept and a word makes a couple of assumptions:

That there’s one way to be worthy and unworthy.
That the feelings of society or our culture get to dictate that across multiple situations and personality types and scenarios.
That there is and should be a hierarchy of worth.

That means that we are letting other influences determine our worth. Outside influences. And we are accepting those outside metrics as determining factors about how we feel about ourselves. We write a book and it gets published but if it gets a bad review? We feel unworthy. We write a book and it hits the NYT bestseller list but not #1? We feel unworthy. We get cranky at someone in the grocery store line. We feel unworthy.

And then we try to self-medicate or other illegally medicate or compete or be even more productive or better at marketing or kind or whatever to make that feeling go away.

Growing and enjoying life requires taking chances and you know what? With chance comes a risk and that worry of failure, of unworthiness, and it holds so many of us back.

What Helps Us Be Comfortable In Our Own Skins Then?

It’s purpose.

With purpose (no matter what purpose) comes that forward motion, that acceptance, that worthiness that we get to feel ourselves, not from some bullshit outside metric.

Actor Chadwick Boseman said,

“Purpose crosses disciplines. Purpose is an essential element of you. It is the reason you are on the planet at this particular time in history. Your very existence is wrapped up in the things you are here to fulfill. Whatever you choose for a career path, remember, the struggles along the way are only meant to shape you for your purpose.”

People who feel as if they have a purpose tend to deal with stress better, they tend to be more active, they become braver. And to have that purpose you have to believe in yourself, not the outside metrics of success, not the shame, but in your own journey, in your own movement forward.

Kim Kardashian isn’t any more worthy than your auntie; Bill Gates isn’t any more worthy than Shaun Farrar; Oprah isn’t any more worthy than the lady at the register at your local grocery store. Those metrics of looks and money? They’ve got nothing on heart, on skill, on kindness.

And once we all realize that? We’re all going to feel a lot better, a lot more comfortable, and the worthy that we are? We’re going to embrace it, love ourselves by our own metrics, not by what society tells us.

DOG TIP OF THE POD

Feel good about whatever you do.

LINKS WE TALK ABOUT

https://www.facebook.com/chrisrosssongs

Chris Ross’s website:

https://www.chrisrossandthenorth.com/?fbclid=IwAR2gip9F8PsagKLnM0IkirX1gUGWS2wivU3B6w3wDIlkpRt0RGVXkwZykGo

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.

AND we are transitioning to a new writer podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! You’ll be able to check it out here starting in 2022!

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook.

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That’s a lot!

Here’s the link.

Write Better Now – Writing Tips podcast for authors and writers loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird Carrie Does Poems

Hiding Your Boobs Is Your Body Language Your Own Worst Friend Six Hot Tips About Better NonVerbal Communication

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 25 Jan 2022 16:38:00 +0000

Friends, sometimes your body is putting out a message that you might not want out there.

What am I talking about?

Well, here we go.

Shaun is a big, tall, broad-shouldered, thin-lipped man with large eyes and a large presence. When he crosses those strong forearms across his trunk and stands against a wall at a party, he is definitely sending a message to everyone glancing his way.

And what’s that message?

Go away.

Carrie is a short, buxom woman who tends to hug her purse to her chest whenever she’s sitting down at a restaurant or at a poker table. She’s definitely sending a message too.

And what’s that message?

Carrie is super insecure about everything and she’s clutching her purse like a baby blanket.

Neither of these are really the messages we intend to send. Shaun is just trying (usually) not to take up too much room. Carrie’s trying to hide her chest because that’s what she’s mostly insecure about. It’s hard when people stare at your breasts all the time.

But the point here is that we aren’t always cognizant of the messages that our bodies are putting out.

It has been suggested that body language may account for between 60 to 65% of all communication.
Verywellmind citing Foley GN, Gentile JP. Nonverbal communication in psychotherapy. Psychiatry (Edgmont). 2010;7(6):38-44.

And sometimes we can’t control what we’re putting out.

That same article cites a study by Kleisner, Chvátalová, and Flegr which says,

One study found that individuals who had narrower faces and more prominent noses were more likely to be perceived as intelligent. People with smiling, joyful expression were also judged as being more intelligent than those with angry expressions
Verywellmind

So, some things we can’t control unless we have a lot of money for cosmetic surgery, but some things we can, right?

We can all remember that a closed body language often means that we’re telling people nonverbally that we’re hostile or anxious. An open body language often means that we’re telling people we’re open and friendly.

Knowing how you move in space, how you take up space (or don’t), is really helpful in understanding the impressions you give to people and the impressions others give to you, too.

So you want to improve those skills, right?

Verywellmind has another article all about tips to improve your nonverbal communication and they suggest doing the following:

QUICK TIPS TO IMPROVE YOUR NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION SKILLS

One.

Actually pay attention to other people’s gestures and expressions.

Two

Notice when the words and the body don’t match.

Three

Think about your tone of voice and other people’s tones.

Four

Make eye contact like a boss.

Five

Ask questions to help you figure things out. They suggest

“So what you are saying is that…”
“Do you mean that we should…”
“What I’m hearing is that you think…”
verywellmind

Six

“Look at Signals as a Whole”

A person might be smiling and clenching their fist, you know? That doesn’t usually mean they want to go belly dance with you.

Hot Tip For Body Language

If you are standing at a party and don’t want to do a Shaun or Carrie, do this:

Let your purse hang down. Don’t clutch.
Pull your shoulders back.
Stand with your feet a bit apart and planted on the floor. Pretend you’re a female country singer, they are always standing like that.
Don’t wiggle around. Stand in one place

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.

AND we are transitioning to a new writer podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! You’ll be able to check it out here starting in 2022!

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That’s a lot!

Here’s the link.

Write Better Now – Writing Tips podcast for authors and writers loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird Carrie Does Poems

RANDOM THOUGHT LINKS

https://news.sky.com/story/prince-charming-mannequin-mistaken-for-body-rolled-up-in-carpet-on-motorway-12518465

https://news.sky.com/story/mafia-fugitive-arrested-after-being-spotted-on-google-street-view-in-spain-12509812

https://news.sky.com/story/police-officers-fired-for-ignoring-la-robbery-in-progress-to-play-pokemon-go-12513520

Pot Brownies in Senior Centers and Be The Rock and Live with Intention

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 18 Jan 2022 16:06:00 +0000

Lately, a lot of Carrie’s writers have been talking about how they want to write with intention and that always makes Carrie’s brain hitch a bit, which is why we’re doing this podcast, a slightly deep dive into intention.

According to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, intention means

the thing that you plan to do or achieve : an aim or purpose

And over at a site all about spiritual wellbeing appropriately called Blissful Light,

Intention is probably one of the most essential parts of healing, abundance, manifestation, personal and spiritual development.

Whoa, right? That’s a lot to put on one word or one state of being. Healing. Abundance. Manifestation. Personal AND spiritual development. It almost makes you tired to just think about it.

And it’s also a lot of . . . words. Abstract words. And over here on Dogs are Smarter Than People, we’re not really big on abstractions. So, we’re going to break it down a bit for you in real world terms.

You want a hot dog. You find money. You go to a store. You buy a hot dog.

You make a decision: buy a hot dog.

You do the actions: find money, go to store, buy dog.

Intention works the same way. You have to decide what you want and then you have to take the steps to get what you want.

Sometimes the deciding is the hardest part. It’s like when you go to the grocery store in the U.S. before COVID and there is an entire aisle full of cereal choices. Your brain balks. So much cereal! Too much choice. Wheatabix or Captain Crunch? Co-co-puffs or corn flakes? You can get stuck.

Back in 2004 Barry Schwartz wrote a book about people being overwhelmed by too many choices. A lot of other scientists and researchers dispute his theory. But, we know Carrie has a hard time with it.

Sublime Steampunk. Author Interview with Tony Quintana

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 19:56:00 +0000

I was lucky enough to interview the brilliant, young, amazing and talented Tony Quintana, writer of wonder.

Tony!

Tony talks about how he uses his perfectionism to motivate him, how his background in theater and art helped create Dashiel’s world, and how he began his debut novel in Spanish, only to decide to translate it all by himself into English. It’s a magical story and a magical book that began when he was just fifteen!

I hope you’ll check out the podcast and Tony’s amazing book! I mean seriously, just check out the art that it’s inspired.

The Characters of PHANTASM CREED

WHAT IT IS ABOUT

When bloodthirsty metal soldiers from the empire of Zaphyrelia infiltrate the divine barrier protecting the magically-infused oasis of Azahar, an unlikely hero is found in Dashiel Ermitage, a simple librarian’s apprentice with a longing for adventure.

But with the metallic menace finally defeated after a valiant battle, Azahar faces a greater problem: the barrier that protects the land is weakening, leaving them vulnerable to their enemy. Dashiel’s wish for excitement becomes a reality when he is recruited to join the Cobalt Phantasms, an elite order that hopes to provide relief to the Zaphyrolean people suffering under a tyrannical rule. His journey takes him through a wonderful but dangerous nineteenth-century world of flourishing machines and dwindling magic.

Dashiel’s new life, however, is threatened by a long-held secret that will put an end to his adventuring days if it ever comes to light. Will he prove to be the hero Azahar needs to overcome their enemies, or will Dashiel’s past destroy his chance to save everything he holds dear?

WHERE YOU CAN FIND TONY’S FIRST BOOK

Where to Find More About Tony and his Books

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tonymquintana/?hl=en

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100074737030172

Author page: https://www.crystalcarriagepublishing.com/tony-m-quintana/

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.

AND we are transitioning to a new writer podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! You’ll be able to check it out here starting in 2022!

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That’s a lot!

Here’s the link.

Write Better Now – Writing Tips podcast for authors and writers loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird Carrie Does Poems

Man, Are You Toxic? How to Start to Get Over It

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 11 Jan 2022 20:02:49 +0000

So, this week in our attempt to make your life a little bit better, we’re talking about being toxic and we are specifically talking about men being toxic.

And to do that we first have to define what toxic masculinity is.

Maya Salem in a 2019 NYT article writes that it’s:

Hiding your emotions, pretending you aren’t upset
Making sure everyone thinks you’re hard. (not your muscles, but your brain/soul/emotions)
Violence=toughness=powerful

“In other words: Toxic masculinity is what can come of teaching boys that they can’t express emotion openly; that they have to be “tough all the time”; that anything other than that makes them “feminine” or weak. (No, it doesn’t mean that all men are inherently toxic.)”
Salem

But toxic masculinity is more than that. It’s a set of beliefs that a lot of men believe about themselves and that a lot of women believe about them, too.

What are those damn, stupid beliefs. According to Dr. Axe, they are things like (all the italicized below is a direct quote, but the format in the notes is hitching:

Manhood is defined by violence, sex, status and aggression.
Men should not be interested in “feminine things” because this makes them appear weak
Men shouldn’t display “feminine” traits such as emotional vulnerability.
Men and women can never truly understand each other or just be friends, for reasons like men are always interested in sex.
Real men are strong and don’t show emotional signs of shame or weakness.
Anger and violence are useful ways of solving conflicts.
Men are not suited to be single parents/the dominant parent in a family.

So, you might recognize some of those beliefs in yourselves or in others, rights? And it’s kind of a lot of bullshit.

You can be male; you can be a man and be nuanced. And there isn’t some dichotomy of man strong/woman weak. We’re not even going to begin to talk about how tough female sex organs and birthing organs are, right?

Sigh.

That is a rant for another time.

Moving on, masculinity theory has its origins in gender theories and has been expanded by the work of Raewyn Connell (Australian sociologist), Dr. Ronald Levant (researcher) and others who speak of the patriarchal dividend. And according to Dr. Axe, it’s about:

“A set of values, established by men in power, that functions to include and exclude, and to organize society in gender unequal ways. It combines several features: a hierarchy of masculinities, differential access among men to power (over women and other men) and the interplay between men’s identity, men’s ideals, interactions, power and patriarchy.”

So, what are those values? We talked about some of them, but those aren’t all. Let’s go at it from another angle.

Over on Tiny Buddha, Charles Razook writes:

“Toxic masculinity has bred men to be the life of the party. Drink hard. Smoke cigarettes. Do drugs. Be indomitable. This behavior always necessitates sleeping in to recover afterward and lower productivity.

“For women, on the other hand, there is more of an emphasis on looks, composure, and output. Essentially, on being perfect.

“This may sound misogynistic, backward, and antiquated, but unfortunately, these expectations still affect our society, though they are slowly changing. And the result is not very positive for men or women.”

How does this hold us all back? That’s kind of the question, right?

According to Scientific American,

“But this scramble for dominance and denial of emotion comes at great cost. It blunts men’s awareness of other people’s needs and emotions, drives domestic and sexual violence, makes aggression look like a reasonable way to solve conflict, forbids seeking health care (and even thinking about seeking mental health care), and pours fuel on the fire of drug and alcohol abuse.

“Toxic masculinity even invades life’s small pleasures. To paraphrase the comedian Bill Burr, the man box means you can’t admit a baby is cute, hug a puppy, say you want a cookie, order banana pancakes, or carry an umbrella in the rain (“Get those shoulders up!”).”

And how do we fight it?

Allow your kids and your men to have emotions and express them, damn it.
Call out people for being nasty trolling idiots.
Look at your kids’ role models. Are they toxic?
Remember toxic people can change. Your mistakes don’t have to destroy you. Just thinking they do is toxic.
Admit that culture and society has helped shape you and your personality and belief systems.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Don’t be afraid to explore who you are and why you are that way.

Links

Toxic Masculinity and the Harmful Standards We’re All Expected to Meet

What Is Toxic Masculinity? Warning Signs + 5 Ways to Stop It

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-fight-toxic-masculinity/

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/what-the-wild-things-are/201810/toxic-masculinity-what-is-it-and-how-do-we-change-it

https://www.ladbible.com/news/weird-man-who-called-womens-swimsuits-pornography-loses-his-job-20210909

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.

AND we are transitioning to a new writer podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! You’ll be able to check it out here starting in 2022!

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That’s a lot!

Here’s the link.

Write Better Now – Writing Tips podcast for authors and writers loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird Carrie Does Poems

Porn is Taking Over Your Life. How to be Successful in 2022

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 04 Jan 2022 18:25:00 +0000

Hey!

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.

LINKS WE MENTION

https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2021/12/26/strange-news-stories-from-2021/

https://timdenning.substack.com/p/your-life-is-full-of-porn-stop-getting

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.

AND we are transitioning to a new writer podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! You’ll be able to check it out here starting in 2022!

Carrie is reading one of her poems every week on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That’s a lot!

Here’s the link.

Write Better Now – Writing Tips podcast for authors and writers loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird Carrie Does Poems

New Year's Weirdness

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Sat, 01 Jan 2022 14:30:08 +0000

It’s supposed to be all about the weird that is the tradition of New Year, celebrations, superstitions, and resolutions. It ended up being about Shaun’s naughty New Years at Benigans in Florida because what happens in Florida doesn’t stay in Florida.

LINKS WE MENTION

https://www.thepossumdrop.com/about-the-possum-drop-our-history.html

https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/new-years

https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/parenting/g25360543/new-year-traditions/

How We TOTALLY Screwed Up Our Branding

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 28 Dec 2021 20:55:49 +0000

So, here at the podcast we’re going to be making a big change this year and DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE isn’t going to be quite so much about writing tips and more about life tips.

Wait! What? Yep. We’re shifting.

First, we have fantastic content about writing, but um, we don’t have the word “WRITING” in our podcast.

If there is anything we’ve learned from our dogs is that you’ve got to be clear about communicating who you are.

Sparty communicates that he is a dog who is all about food and snuggles.

Gabby communicates that she is a dog who is all about keeping a watchful eye over her family and long hugs.

And “Dogs are Smarter Than People” while it’s gathered over 263,000 downloads (thank you all), is definitely not communicating anything about writing.

So, we’re shifting and adapting. We’re going to start another podcast called more appropriately “Write Better Now,” and we’re keeping this one and it’s going to be much more dedicated towards helping us all be as smart and wise as our dogs.

I hope you’ll chill out with us and join us in our journey. Maybe even like and subscribe.

Here’s our quote where we try to be wise:

“Our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world as being able to remake ourselves.” ~Mahatma Gandhi

And here’s our writing tip of the pod:

Write the story you long to write, not the story you think everyone else wants to hear. Yes, you can make more money self-publishing if you blow off your own wishes/desires and write to market, and money is good, but you have to listen to your muse, too, take chances, and grow.

Dog Tip for Life

Life is about more than money as long as you have food, shelter, clean water, safety and heath care. Go after the life you want!

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.

AND we are transitioning to a new writer podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! You’ll be able to check it out here starting in 2022!

Here’s the link.

Send your Be Brave Friday stories to us here! Just hit the contact form or message us at carriejonesbooks@gmail.com loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird

Kissing Under the Dung Twig and The Glaring Woman at the Grocery Store

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 21 Dec 2021 15:47:00 +0000

This week in honor of the holiday season, we’re going to talk about a time Carrie did a very Carrie thing at a grocery store in Ellsworth, Maine. It will eventually relate to books, we promise.

One day in the grocery store line a lady behind me dropped her bag of Cheetos. I picked them up.
She dropped her box of Wheat Thins.
I picked them up.
She dropped her onion. It rolled over to me, shed some purple skin, and hit my foot.
I smiled. I picked it up. I gave it to her.
“I must be missing the belt,” she said.
So, then, it was my turn with the clerk. I opened my bag and my wallet was not there. My check book? Check. But the wallet? MIA.
I told the cashier, terrified.
She said “If you’ve written a check here before, you don’t need an ID.”
???
So, I said, “I don’t know if I have.”
I spent the next three minutes alternately explaining that I had visions of my red cloth wallet hanging out by the 12-grain organic bread in the bread aisle, or in the post office where I’d just used it, or in the middle of the parking lot, or, gulp, in some evil wallet-snatcher’s hands. I looked for sympathetic glances from the food dropper behind me, but she no longer liked me.
I wrote out the check. The machine beeped. The cashier looked at me, apologetically. “You’ve never written a check here before.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll run out and check in the car.”
So, I raced outside despite the fact I was not wearing a sports bra, and unlocked the car, and… no wallet. I gasped. Really. I stepped back and there, beneath the tire, was a flash of red. I snatched it, clutched it to my chest (still without the sports bra) and raced back to the store.
“That was fast,” said the clerk.
“You found it!” said the nice guy who came to finish bagging.
Glare, said the dropping stuff lady who was behind me in line. Glare. Glare. Glare.
It’s like what I imagine happens to my books. I start off really well, everyone likes what I’m doing, and then — bang — I screw up. Drop the voice or something, make a character do something nobody wants her to do.
And then what?
Glares from one. Sympathy from others.
The Carrie Story

WRITING TIP OF THE POD

Everything can help inform your story and make a scene to use later on.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Be kind when other people are struggling, not just when you are struggling.

LINKS WE MENTION

Pucker Up Under The Parasitic Mistletoe

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.

And we have a new podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook.

Here’s the link.

Send your Be Brave Friday stories to us here! Just hit the contact form or message us at carriejonesbooks@gmail.com loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird

Bonus Author Interview with Debut Author Taylor Ann Wright

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Thu, 16 Dec 2021 06:56:00 +0000

Taylor Ann Wright!

I was lucky enough to read Taylor’s book in development and I’m so glad it’s out there in the world.

During the podcast, we talk about Taylor’s first stories, her love of lions and even have a cameo from her amazing cat.

It’s pretty hard not to fall in love with someone as great and enthusiastic about writing as Taylor is. Her charm is infectious and her book is amazing! I hope you’ll check it out.

About Her Book

The king of Hollow is dead. When the news of his murder is spread to his kingdom, no one knows why he was killed. For decades King Dravin ruled with wisdom, kindness and peace. A death this brutal was seemingly unprovoked. Queen Seraphina, his wife, now sits on the throne. With someone so sinister and evil ruling the kingdom, the only chance of finding the truth is in the hands of their 22 year-old daughter, Princess Adelaide.

Facing anything it takes to find the truth, Adelaide must overcome torture, betrayal, and the potential demise of those she loves most. When it seems as if she has finally found an answer, she loses all of her memories. Leo, a strange man that found her in the forest, is her only hope of discovering not only who she is, but what her mission was in the first place.

Will Adelaide find the truth? Or will she die trying?

Where to find her:

Socials:

INSTAGRAM: Instagram.com/authortaylorannwright

FACEBOOK: Facebook.com/authortaylorannwright

YOUTUBE: https://youtube.com/c/TaylorAnnWright

Get the book!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09HPFMRKG/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_imm_WE4GYQP8YBGQBYH5RKP8

Atomic Wedgies, Power, Noogies and Does Your Character Need to Be In Your Novel

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 14 Dec 2021 11:16:00 +0000

Yesterday on Carrie’s blog she talked about a writer worry that happens a lot, which is figuring out when your novel has too many characters.

You should check that out at carriejonesbooks.blog if it’s one of your worries, but here’s a bit more information about making that deadly decision (deadly for your character, not you).

ANOTHER WAY TO DETERMINE IF THE CHARACTER NEEDS TO BE THERE IS TO THINK ABOUT YOUR CHARACTERS’ ROLES IN THE STORY.

Protagonist – The main character. It’s the character that the reader likes, loves, roots for, worries about, the character that moves the plot forward and has emotional development.

Antagonist – The naughty one who keeps our protagonist from quickly achieving their goals.

Sidekick – The bestie. The support system for the protagonist.

Orbital – They tend to get the protagonist in trouble even if that’s not their intent. Think Hermione in Harry Potter. She’s the coolest, but her insistence on doing the right thing and being heroic sometimes pulls Harry into a path of uh-oh. The orbital is basically an instigator.

Love Interest – I don’t have to explain this one, right?

Confidante – This is the person the protagonist tells their secrets to. It can be a trusted friend, a mentor.

Foil – They aren’t the villain, but they are the protagonist’s opposite. Think Draco Malfoy in Harry Potter.

Red Shirts – These are the extras. They are hanging out in the background and encountered, but not super important. The Patils in Harry Potter

If you have a ton of one type of character, you can probably delete or combine one.

WRITING TIP OF THE POD

Diversify your characters’ roles and consolidate. Don’t have too many characters doing the same thing/serving the same role.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Keep your crew tight. Don’t think the red shirts are the sidekicks.

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.

Here’s the link.

Send your Be Brave Friday stories to us here! Just hit the contact form or message us at carriejonesbooks@gmail.com loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird

LINKS WE MENTION

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/142716/where-does-noogie-come-from

https://www.gotoquiz.com/what_killier_wedgie_do_you_deserve_girls_only

Bomb in Your Bum and How to Punctuate Dialogue Part Three

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 14:53:00 +0000

This is it! Our final installment in how to punctuate dialogue like a boss

And we’re talking about questions and quotations in dialogue because why not fry our brains a little more. Are you ready? And as a reminder, our last two podcasts also talk about this, so you should check them out.

Let’s start with . . .

Questions and Exclamations in Dialogue and there is not dialogue tag or beat.

They are just standing out there all by their lonesome.

When this happens, you just put the question mark or the exclamation point inside the last end quotation marks.

“Carrie is obsessed with manatees?”
“Carrie is obsessed with manatees!”

So the formula for that is:

BEGINNING QUOTATION MARKS + QUESTION OR EXCLAMATION + QUESTION MARK OR EXCLAMATION POINT + END QUOTES

Questions and Exclamations With a Dialogue Tag

Now let’s add a dialogue tag for those questions and exclamations.

So here again, the exclamation point or question marks are right there inside the second set of quotation marks. DO NOT USE A COMMA, TOO! BANISH IT!

And do not capitalize the dialogue tag. LOWER CASE THAT BABY! It’s all the same sentence even with the exclamation point/question mark in there.

“Carrie is into manatees?” they asked, pretty much scowling because that was weird.

“Carrie is into manatees!” he said, gesticulating at the manatee. The manatee winked.

BEGINNING QUOTATION MARKS + QUESTION OR EXCLAMATION + QUESTION MARK OR EXCLAMATION POINT + END QUOTES + lowercase dialogue tag and the rest of the sentence + PERIOD.

Okay. Moving on to this dangerous territory.

Quote Inside Your Dialogue

Sometimes, you’ll have a character who is telling you a direct quote from someone else or a book or a song lyric within their dialogue, right? So, we have to tell the reader that this quote is a quote they are quoting (look at all those quote words) and not something they themselves are making up.

How do you do that?

You use the magical punctuation!

So, you put those double quotation marks around everything the speaker is saying AND THEN you put single quotation marks around what they are quoting.

“Carrie said, and I quote, ‘I am so into manatees.’ ”

“Carrie said, ‘I am so into manatees.’ Sometimes it’s hard to be married to her.”

Amazing, right?

WRITING TIP OF THE POD

Knowing how to punctuate helps make agents, editors, and readers love you.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

If you’re quoting someone else, you want to show it. If you don’t? You’re plagiarizing. That’s naughty.

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.

Here’s the link.

Send your Be Brave Friday stories to us here! Just hit the contact form or message us at carriejonesbooks@gmail.com loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird

LINKS WE REFER TO IN THE PODCAST

https://www.foxnews.com/us/colorado-man-sets-moms-home-ablaze-trying-clear-cobwebs-blowtorch-police

https://nypost.com/2021/12/05/bomb-squad-rushes-to-hospital-after-wwii-era-shell-found-in-mans-rectum/

Werewolves and the Yule Long and Weird Christmas Stuff That's Pretty Creepy, Honestly

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Sat, 04 Dec 2021 14:26:00 +0000

This week we talk about the horror aspects of Christmas. Werewolves. Cryptids. Santa’s elves kidnapping naughty kids? It’s all here.

http://www.americas-most-haunted.com/2015/12/10/weird-christmas-the-yule-log/

http://www.americas-most-haunted.com/2015/12/17/weird-christmas-werewolves-of-yule/

https://www.thetravel.com/weird-christmas-traditions-around-the-world-done-in-america/

https://popculture.com/trending/news/dogman-cryptid-haunts-man-for-years-with-multiple-alleged-sightings/

Werewolves and Christmas

Weird Hitchhiking Stories and How to Punctuate Dialogue

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 30 Nov 2021 14:29:00 +0000

In last week’s podcast we started to talk about how to punctuate dialogue because we’re sexy like that. And we’re continuing that discussion this week.

A great source of how to to punctuate dialogue is from theeditorsblog.net

They are calm and lovely and explain things really well.

And for a reminder: A dialogue tag is just the bits like “they said,” “she whispered,” “he yelled.”

Single line of dialogue with dialogue tag and action

So, for this, you’ve got quotation marks around your dialogue with the dialogue tag following what was said. But before that, right before the end quotation mark, you have a comma. There’s no capital letter for that dialogue tag. Why? Because it’s the same damn sentence, that’s why, and you can’t just randomly capitalize things in there. A period goes at the very end of the action or beat.

“Shaunie is a cutie face,” she said, hoping Shaunie would look her way and smile.

Quotation Marks + Capitalized First Word + Comma + End Quotation Marks + Lowercase First Word in the Dialogue Tag + Comma (usually) + Action/Beat + Period.

You can switch that around and start off with the action/beat and the dialogue tag.

Hoping Shaunie would look her way and smile, she said, “Shaunie is a cutie face.”

Action/Beat + Comma + Dialogue Tag + Quotation Marks + Capitalized First Word + Period + End Quote

So, then you have the interrupting dialogue stuff that writers love.

This is when the dialogue is all the same sentence, but it’s interrupted by the dialogue tag. When that happens, you want a comma before the last quotation marks in the first part of the sentence and then again after the dialogue tag.

“Shaunie is a cutie face,” she said, hoping Shaunie would look her way and smile, “but he doesn’t ever notice me.”

“Shaunie is a cutie face,” she said, “but he doesn’t ever notice me.”

Quotation Marks + Capitalized First Word + Comma + End Quotation Marks + Lowercase First Word in the Dialogue Tag + Comma + Action/Beat + Comma + Quotation Marks + Lowercased first word + End Punctuation (not a comma) + End Quotation Marks.

Two sentences interrupted

Or you can get all emphatic and make it two sentences because it’s dialogue. Then the first sentence has a period before the end quotes and dialogue tag. The dialogue tag ends with a period. The second quote section starts with a capital letter. Whew. That’s a lot. Ready?

“Shaunie is a cutie face,” she said, hoping Shaunie would look her way and smile. “But he doesn’t ever notice me.”

Quotation Marks + Capitalized First Word + Comma + End Quote Marks + Lowercase First Word in the Dialogue Tag + Comma + Action/Beat + Period + Quotation Marks + Capitalized First Word + End Punctuation (not a comma) + End Quotation Marks.

Whew, that was a lot. Our brains are fried? Your brains okay?

Writing Tip of the Pod

Be sexy. Know your punctuation.

Dog Tip for Life

Don’t just bark at people. It’s easy, but it doesn’t get you what you want.

LINKS WE REFERENCE IN THE RANDOM THOUGHTS PART OF THE PODCAST

https://omaha.com/news/national/roadrunner-going-faster-ends-up-in-maine-after-hitchhike/article_4ce788b0-ef17-50ea-b260-36325130663c.html

https://www.ranker.com/list/creepy-hitchhiker-stories/isadora-teich

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.

Here’s the link.

Send your Be Brave Friday stories to us here! Just hit the contact form or message us at carriejonesbooks@gmail.com loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird

How to Punctuate Dialogue and Astronauts in Diapers

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 23 Nov 2021 14:55:00 +0000

A great source of how to to punctuate dialogue is from theeditorsblog.net

They are calm and lovely and explain things really well.

But if you’re a little weird, you’re in the right place.

Let’s get started for this two-part podcast that we’ll finish next week.

And for a reminder: A dialogue tag is just the bits like “they said,” “she whispered,” “he yelled.”

Single line of dialogue, no dialogue tag.

You put the whole sentence inside those quotation marks.

“Shaunie is a cutie face.”

Quotation Marks + Capitalized First Word + Period/Question Mark/Exclamation Point+ End Quote

Single line with dialogue tag (attribution) coming after it.

This time you put the dialogue inside the quotation marks and also a COMMA of MAGIC right before the last quotation marks. Then after the dialogue tag you put a period like this:

“Shaunie is a cutie face,” she said.

Why is this?

It’s pretty simple, the whole thing is a sentence, but it’s a sentence in two parts. Part one is the stuff someone is saying aloud. Part two is telling the reader who is saying it. It’s all one big thing and that’s why you don’t have a period inside the last quotation marks before the dialogue tag.

Whoa. Mind blow, right?

And that’s the same reason we don’t capitalize SHE in the dialogue tag of SHE SAID.

Quotation Marks + Capitalized First Word + Comma + End Quote + Lowercase First Word in the Dialogue Tag + Period.

We’re going to do just one more and continue on next week.

Single line, but you’re putting the dialogue tag first

So, it’s totally the same concept. It’s all one sentence, but this time the capitalization gets a bit wonky. You want to capitalize the first spoken word inside the first quotation marks and put a COMMA OF MAGIC right before it to separate the spoken words from the tag. Ready?

She said, “Shaunie, you are such a cutie-cutie face, my little coco-puff.”

So, you have a capitalized SHE at the beginning of the sentence, a comma at the end of the tag, quotation marks, then a capitalized first word.

Tag + Comma + Quotation marks + Ending punctuation (period, exclamation point, question mark) + End Quotation marks.

WRITING TIP OF THE POD

Know your dialogue punctuation because it gets super confusing if you don’t.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

When you know the rules, when you know how to communicate your wants, you should be able to get your people to understand you AND you can understand your people.

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.

Here’s the link.

Send your Be Brave Friday stories to us here! Just hit the contact form or message us at carriejonesbooks@gmail.com loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird

Links We Mention In Random Thoughts

https://time.com/6115335/spacex-astronauts-200-days/

https://www.npr.org/2021/11/20/1057698279/cash-spill-san-diego–california-freeway

DO NOT HISS "I LOVE YOU" - How to deal with dialogue tags

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 14:34:00 +0000

These next few podcasts, we thought we should get all nitty-gritty with some quick grammar tips or style tips for people writing fiction.

It can help you nonfiction writers, too, we swear.

When you’re writing dialogue (people talking to each other), you’re going to want to follow these punctuation rules.

Use quotes.

Have the dialogue tag (who the speaker is, the he said/she asked) in the actual same paragraph as the dialogue.

Punctuate it all correctly. (That’s a lot of knowledge right there.)

But here’s the big one:

Don’t go screwing around with those dialogue tags, also known as speaker tags.

You want to keep it simple when it’s a dialogue tag.

“I love you,” she said reads a lot differently than “I love you,” she murmured and bellowed and hissed.

That can be your intention, but you don’t want to keep doing it all the time.

Here look at it.

“I love you,” she murmured.

“I love you,” he cat-called.

“I know,” she bellowed.

He screamed, “Of course you do.”

“And what do you mean by that?” she enthused.

“I love you,” she said. – Requires a comma after the word ‘you,’ and a lower-case S for ‘she.’

“I love you.” She sighed. – Requires a period after the word ‘you,’ and an upper-case S for ‘she.’

Oh, and romance and horror writers, we all love to make our characters hiss especially when our lovers are shapeshifters, but you can’t hiss out a bunch of words if there are no s-sounds.

WRITING TIPS OF THE POD

Make sure your reader knows who is speaking by putting the dialogue tag next to the dialogue.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Only call attention to the things you want to call attention to.

In the Mood to Randomly Buy Us Coffee or the dogs some treats? Click here AND SEND US A $1. Earn a Shout-out on the podcast, too!

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.

Here’s the link.

Send your Be Brave Friday stories to us here! Just hit the contact form or message us at carriejonesbooks@gmail.com loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird

LINKS WE TALK ABOUT

https://shepherdexpress.com/puzzles/news-of-the-weird/news-of-the-weird-nov-11-2021/

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/new-words-in-the-dictionary

Our New Names are Cocoa Puff and Snack Train, Plus Swearing Ducks and Raising Stakes

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 09 Nov 2021 16:12:00 +0000

Everyone tells you to raise the stakes in your writing.

And that’s a lovely, easy thing to say when you are the editor and not the writer. But what does it actually mean?

You hear this and think, “Yeah. Yeah. High stakes equal important. Cool. Cool.”

But then you start thinking about dinner or something.

But it’s important. Carrie’s first breakout novel was NEED and it was a series about pixies trying to cause an apocalypse. Those are high stakes, right?

Agent Donald Maas says it pretty well, “High stakes yield high success.”

He suggests knowing exactly where the stakes increase. What page does this happen? Can those stakes be higher? Do those stakes make it harder for your main character to get what he/she/they want to get?

A really, beautiful way he puts this stakes question out there is by asking authors to ask themselves, “So what?”

What’s the so what question?

It’s this: IF YOUR MAIN CHARACTER DOESN’T GET THEIR GOAL THEN SO WHAT? Does it matter? How much does it matter?

And that brings me to what I think of I think is Maas’s most important point about stakes:

The stakes in your story don’t matter unless you’ve built in human worth about your main character. If your character’s life doesn’t matter to the reader, than the stakes don’t matter, and this is even true for life-and-death stakes.
Maas

HUMAN WORTH

So, that brings us to the question of what is human worth and how do you make it happen in your story. That’s obviously a big cultural question, right? And this isn’t meant to be about philosophy, but about writing, and yes it’s all intertwined.

You have to ask questions about your character.

Who is she?

Why do we need to care about her?

What are the stakes that make it necessary for us to care that she gets her goal. There needs to be an extra burst of value in why us readers care about your character. Are they super moral? Are their morals and ethics at risk?

High human worth tends to focus on certain qualities of behavior such as:

Honesty

Bravery

Kindness

Empathy

Love

Goodness

Truth

Honor

Friendship

So many books that are break-out books and movies are about friendships. Think about Harry Potter and Tolkein and Star Wars and even Marvel movies. There is a link that happens between the characters that show their worth through their caring for others. This isn’t just true for fantasy. But even in the specificity of contemporary realistic novels.

In realistic novels, we don’t necessarily deal with those blatant and beautiful archetypes that happen in science fiction and fantasy, but if there is anything that the Covid-19 pandemic teaches us is that there can be the heroic in the mundane. Hand washing and mask wearing can be an act of kindness and of power. But no matter how big our landscape needs to be then we have to make sure that our characters worth snags our reader into caring.

Some characters are unsympathetic and there is a tiny bit of redeemabilitiy in them. They have to somehow be likable. There’s got to be an element about them to latch onto. This varies in different cultures, but in ours currently, we can deal with a jerk of a character if they are funny or brave or super smart or charismatic. I mean, seriously, think about some popular celebrities that we latch onto. Charisma is a big deal thing and it lets you get a way with a lot.

Every reader has a slightly different threshold for the poopy behaviour they’ll put up with from a character.

WRITING TIP OF THE POD

Make your characters matter. Make them redeemable. Make them have human worth.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Choose the people who see your good, not just your bad.

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.

Here’s the link.

Send your Be Brave Friday stories to us here! Just hit the contact form or message us at carriejonesbooks@gmail.com loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird

LINKS WE REFERENCE IN THE PODCAST

Police admit officer did mistake paddling pool of goldfish for sharks

Talking duck learns to say ‘you bloody fool’ after mimicking caretaker

Pooping in Public. Don’t Be A Static Character, Baby.

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 02 Nov 2021 13:54:00 +0000

Carrie’s teaching a class at the Writing Barn for the next six weeks about . . . character!

That means we’re talking a lot about character in our house.

Of course, we’re also being characters because being characters is more fun than talking about them. It’s like the difference between telling in your writing and showing.

And in the writing world one of the big annoying things writers hear about their characters is that the character is “too static, man.”

What’s it mean to be too static? It means that the character isn’t growing or changing.

The opposite of a static character is a dynamic character. That’s a character that grows and evolves.

In most stories (but not all) our protagonists grow and change and are dynamic dynamos. They are characters we root for or follow, right? The evil miser who hates Christmas becomes a generous benefactor. A little boy wizard who hides under the stairs becomes a wizard leader in the fight against darkness.

But if you think about the James Patterson series’s protagonists, most of them are like Sherlock Holmes and they don’t really grow and change. They are pretty consistent a lot of times.

And then there is the bad guy/antagonist.

Some editors will want your bad guy to grow and be dynamic too, but a lot of times those baddies and a lot of your side/secondary characters will be pretty consistent and static. Think Hannibal Lecter. Think Gaston in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.

What can you use static characters for?

To be foils to the main character.

To make fun of tropes and stereotypes or shallow people in society.

To get pulled along in the main character’s fun.

To sometimes have contradictory goals that create obstructions for that main dynamic character’s quest.

WRITING TIP OF THE POD

There is a place for dynamic and static characters in stories, but you know, you should know what the words mean.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Don’t be static, dude. Grow. Become.

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.

Here’s the link.

Send your Be Brave Friday stories to us here! Just hit the contact form or message us at carriejonesbooks@gmail.com loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird

LINKS TO THINGS WE’VE MENTIONED THIS PODCAST

https://www.today.com/parents/toddler-brings-his-new-best-friend-skeleton-everywhere-t192612

https://www.fox44news.com/news/weird-news/police-warn-woman-not-to-wear-halloween-costume-as-protest/

BE SEXY IN THE BEGINNING

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 26 Oct 2021 22:44:00 +0000

You’re writing a book. And that book has to start somewhere. Where it starts? That’s called the opening scene and this little baby has a lot of work that it has to do.

It’s like the first moments of a blind date, but instead of a blind date between two people, it’s a blind date between the book and the reader.

Will they like each other?

Will they want to spend time together?

Are they meant for each other?

Only … it’s really will the reader like the book. Nobody cares if the book likes the reader. The reader has all the power.

According to Les Edgerton, who wrote the craft book, HOOKED, that opener has ten important components to grab that reader’s attention and make them want to chill on the couch with your book.

Those are:

The Inciting Incident – Les believes that this needs to happen in the first scene. Other people do not agree with this.

The Story-Worthy Problem – That incident makes a problem that is going to propel the plot of the whole damn book.

The Initial Shallow Problem – This problem happens because of the inciting incident and makes the protagonist do something (take action), but it’s not the real problem of the story.

The Set-Up – Kind of makes the reader know what’s going to happen next and also helps the reader know what the heck is going on.

Backstory – You do not want a lot of this, which is the events that have happened before the story starts.

Opening Lines – Because duh. The story has to start, but you want them to be snazzy and make an impression.

Language – Because again, duh. Books are made of words. The words you choose and how you group them together make an impression.

Setting – Because the story has to take place somewhere. Let the reader have a sense of the physical space, the time, the culture.

Foreshadowing – This is the magic, my friends, because this is part of the hook that keeps the reader with you—the knowledge and hint that something is coming up next.

And that opening scene? It has goals:

You have to hook the reader.
You have to have a story-worthy problem.
You have to let the reader know what kind of story this is.
And tease that ending out a tiny bit.

WRITING TIP OF THE POD

That beginning of your story is super important. Spend some time on it.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Set the scene. Establish your goals. Show them your character and do it right 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 “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.

Here’s the link.

Send your Be Brave Friday stories to us here! Just hit the contact form or message us at carriejonesbooks@gmail.com loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird

LINKS

Is That Gum I Swallowed 7 Years Ago Still In My Stomach?

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/why-couples-are-having-less-sex-during-pandemic-214715201.html

Man, That's a Beautiful Mullet and How To Pace Your Novel

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 19 Oct 2021 11:13:00 +0000

Just like hanging out with a friend, or listening to an instructor drone on and on about the beauty of a mullet, the keys to controlling your novel’s pacing are language and conflict and scene sequence and stakes. We’re going to talk about those today.

What’s pacing?

It’s how fast or slow the story goes for the reader.

LANGUAGE IS A BIG WAY TO IMPACT PACE

Let’s start with word choice. The words you choose can speed up the reader or slow them down. The way the words are grouped on the page? Same thing.

Dialogue.
Short paragraphs.
Short sentences.
Action.

Those four things speed things up.

And these things below? They slow that story down.

Descriptive passages.
Long paragraphs.
Long sentences.
Abstract language.
A lot of talk about feelings.
Flashbacks.
Information dumps.

Special Help: If all your sentences are the same length and are constantly parallel in construction, you lull the reader to sleep. No sleeping readers, okay? You fall asleep, you run the risk of getting a mullet.

CONFLICT AND STAKES IS ANOTHER WAY TO IMPACT PACING

In the scenes you choose, there needs to be some stakes and some conflict.

Stakes happen when your reader cares about the character and is worried about what might happen to them if they don’t reach their goals. In every scene that stays in your book, there needs to be a stake and a goal.

You can’t just have your character chilling with her bestie if there’s no point in that chillin. You need obstacles and tension and the reader needs to think, “Yikes! What happens if they fail?”

It’s really one of the biggest things about pacing. Because not having conflict and stakes and tension? It makes the reader stop reading.

Scene Sequence Also Impacts Pace

And here it is. The big one. In your story, just like in your life, there will be action moments and turning points and then moments where you think about those big action moments.

Dwight Swain called these moments in a book scenes (the action moments) and sequels (the reflective moments).

Or as I like to call them, LOUD scenes and QUIET scenes. And you want these scenes to be balanced so that the reader doesn’t get bored or the opposite, scream “THIS IS TOO MUCH!!! AH! ANXIETY!”

Randy Ingermanson of the Snowflake method gives three components to each:

Active Loud Scene

Goal
Conflict
Disaster

Quieter Sequel Scene

Reaction
Dilemma
Decision

Pretty cool, right?

So, how do you put all this together?

You want to look at the structure of your story and break it down. Make scenes and chapter cards or just a list.
Look at where the story ramps up and slows down.
Use those sentences and paragraphs and chapters and scene lengths to manipulate that pace.
Think about if your characters are too introspective.
Think about if your writing lacks any detail or does it have too much? Do you wax poetic about the mullet on your main character for 12 pages?
Think about each of your scenes. Do they show character or plot development? Are there obstacles going on? Does your main character want something in the scene?
Have people read it and ask if the story felt rushed or too slow and where?
Remember we need slow paced scenes, too! Not just fast ones!

WRITING TIP OF THE POD

Control your pacing; control your story.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Humans are always go-go-go. Life is too fast paced. Slow your roll so you can enjoy your belly rubs, walks, and treats.

LINKS MENTIONED

https://www.baynews9.com/fl/tampa/news/2021/10/10/pasco-4th-grader-in-the-running-for-america-s-best-mullet?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axioslocal_tampa&stream=top

https://mulletchamp.com/

https://www.kiro7.com/news/trending/kid-mullet-champion-named-meet-allan-baltz-2021s-winner/I47UA62EZJAINHKCMEW2PJEN3Y/

https://www.dazeddigital.com/beauty/head/article/44884/1/mullet-subculture-hair-history

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.

Here’s the link.

Send your Be Brave Friday stories to us here! Just hit the contact form or message us at carriejonesbooks@gmail.com loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird

Invisible Disability Requires A Different Kind of Bravery for One Author

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Fri, 15 Oct 2021 09:59:41 +0000

IT’S BE BRAVE FRIDAY WHERE SHAUN OR I (FROM DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE AND LOVING THE STRANGE AND JUST BEING AN AUTHOR IN MAINE) SHARE PEOPLE’S UNEDITED, UNFILTERED STORIES, SO WE CAN ALL CELEBRATE THE BIG AND LITTLE BRAVE THINGS WE DO ALL THE TIME.

SOMETIMES WE DON’T EVEN REALIZE WE’RE BEING BRAVE.

This Be Brave Friday story is from the wonderful and brave and cool and talented Lenka Vodicka who writes the Forest Fairy Craft books, which you should check out!

Here’s Lenka’s story.

I was a mellow baby that slept a lot. Then I was a clumsy child that fell a lot. Then I was diagnosed with a genetic disease called Charcot (pronounced shar-co) Marie Tooth (CMT) which has nothing to do with teeth. It’s named after the three doctors that discovered it. CMT is also called hereditary neuropathy. CMT is a glitch in the genetic code that causes nerve damage, muscle weakness, balance issues, and fatigue. It’s degenerative, meaning it worsens over time. There is no treatment, other than bracing and corrective surgery that may or may not work. And there is no cure. I have CMT for life.

CMT symptoms can vary widely, even within a family. Some people have mild symptoms that are barely noticeable into their 80s, while others have multiple surgeries and use wheelchairs as children. My case was in the mild category for a long time. I couldn’t wear flip-flops, or scramble up rock climbing walls, but most people had no idea that I dealt with any disease at all. I could be normal. My challenges were usually invisible. Situations like mine, where challenges are not easily seen, may be called invisible disabilities.

Then, one day, that changed too. My feet hurt. Every day. Every hour of the day. Every minute of the hour. They ached like someone dropped a book on them. And they didn’t stop hurting. Fingers went numb. I never considered myself disabled before. The word was serious and full of baggage from sad movies. Facing the reality of my situation required a leap of bravery in itself. I wanted to run towards “normal” as fast as possible. Slowing down, facing my limits, and then asking, “How can I help myself? How can I make my life easier in this moment?” was big work.

I changed jobs and got a disabled placard for my car. Then the real bravery began. Because having an invisible disability means that every single time I ask for accommodations, I have to call on my inner brave self. Because my bravery is the opposite of heroes that step up to a moment of decisive action. It’s the opposite of heroines volunteering for a mighty quest. It’s the opposite of saying, “I think I can, I think I can. I believe in myself.”

My bravery is “No.” My bravery is approaching random staff person at a concert or event to ask if there is an alternative line or somewhere to sit that doesn’t involve steep stairs. Sometimes the information is online, but that doesn’t always translate to the location. And I’ve even had staff say, “I don’t know why the website says that.”

And because my disability is invisible, not apparent on first glance, I never know how they will react. Some staff say they have no idea. They need to radio another person that’s not answering the walkie-talkie. Or I give a museum feedback that more benches would be great, to hear, “Well, we want people to keep moving.” Trust me, I’d love to keep moving. I’ve heard many times that, “if we accommodate you, then everyone would want that too.” Again, trust me, they don’t want CMT. I’ve had a few meltdowns when a staff member insists that everyone must follow the same rules. I’ve missed events and left venues because the walk or the line wasn’t worth the pain that I would manage for days afterwards.

So why be brave? Why bother standing up to the hassle of disrupting the day for my friends, and the potentially embarrassing conversation, for nothing? Because, other times, bravery makes all the difference. Amusement parks became fun again. My niece said, “We need to come with auntie every time,” because we could stand to the side and enter though the exit instead of standing in winding lines for hours. I got to sit at concerts on a balcony where I could actually see the show instead of sitting in a sea of dancers. I’ve been able to drive to locations accessible only by trail unless you required disabled access. We avoid crowds and steep stairs. We park closer to the entrances or exits.

Asking for support makes adventures attainable again.

Bravery can be saying, “not today, thank you.” Bravery can be found in little moments. In the decision to tell your friends that the hike is too steep. In researching accessibility options before booking a room or campsite. In holding your deep truth. And asking for what you need. Bravery is accepting your limits, then finding ways to help yourself thrive. Now, I am a unique mom that loves adventures. And I look forward to many, many more.

BE A PART OF OUR MISSION!

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?

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!

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

TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.

Submit a form.

Simple Story Structure, Pokemon Oreos and Do You Always Feel Like Somebody's Watching You?

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 12 Oct 2021 11:53:00 +0000

There are lots of fancy and complicated ways to figure out story structure.

There’s Save the Cat, the Snowflake Method, the Five-Act, the Four-Act, the Six-Act.

But sometimes all of those complicated methods bog some of our writer brains down.

So today we’re going to give you a super quick guide to story structure for your novel. You ready?

Step One:

Name it. This does not have to be its forever name, just a way for you to find the computer file. It can be THE EVIL NOVEL THAT HAS NO NAME RIGHT NOW. That’s fine.

Step Two:

Find a hero. Name them. Put them in a jam or a bad place. Maybe they suck at making commitments? Maybe they need a promotion. Maybe they live under the stairs. Give them a problem.

Step Three:

Think about what has to occur in order for them to ovary up enough to try to deal with that problem.

Step Four:

Now decide what is going to change once that hero gets proactive and tries to deal with that problem or once they take action.

Step Five:

Are things different for our little hero now? How?

Step Six

Okay. Something else needs to happen so that the story takes a turn or a veer to the right or left. What makes it go in another direction?

Step Seven

Make things worse for our poor hero. How are they worse?

Step Eight

Okay. If this is a positive change arc where the hero ends up in a better place, what is it that inspires them to make a big effort and go for that win?

Step Nine

What is the big win (positive change arc) or the big loss (negative change arc)

There you go, how to figure out your novel’s basic structure in nine easy steps? Do you feel heroic, writer? You should.

Writing Tip of the Pod

It’s okay to make it simple when it comes to story structure. It really is.

Dog Tip for Life

When your people turn your head and look at you and you realize you’ve been caught, it’s time to stop because then they just think you’re a creeper.

Resources

https://www.npr.org/2021/09/26/1040779728/pokemon-oreo-cookies-ebay-pikachu-mew

The Staring Studies: You Really are Being Watched from Behind

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.

Here’s the link.

Send your Be Brave Friday stories to us here! Just hit the contact form or message us at carriejonesbooks@gmail.com loving the stran...

What Does It Mean to Be Brave

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 16:19:18 +0000

No video today! Sorry!

This week things got a bit hectic. Apologies. But we wanted to quickly talk about what it means to be brave and of course, ask you to send in your Be Brave stories. Because we are still on a mission to share these stories and sing your praises with the world.

The Oxford Dictionary defines bravery as:

Ready to face and endure danger or pain; showing courage.

And that’s pretty interesting because there are three components going on there:

You’re ready.

You’re going to endure something.

You’re showing courage.

The ability to endure is really about the ability to persevere, to face our fears and/or our circumstances and still be ready.

Ready for what?

Ready for whatever is heading towards us, the good, the terrifying, the empowering, all of it.

A lot of us spend a lot of our lives worried about worst case scenarios, rejections, falling down, and all of that energy we spend worrying? We can spend it actively moving towards our own moral and/or creative evolution and our goals.

Imagine: How cool would it be if you spent all the time you currently spend worrying about failing and instead use that time towards actively going after the things you want, the life you want to have, the person you want to be.

That’s what enduring is about. It’s about overcoming. And sometimes it’s about persisting. And almost all the time it’s about dealing with the fear that’s holding us back.

So much of the time the fear that’s holding us back? It comes from us.

Being brave means living in the moment, speaking with compassion.

Being brave means standing up for what you believe is right even when nobody else thinks the same thing.

Sometimes being brave is something as simple as responding to a Facebook post, or being compassionate, or reacting with empathy instead of anger.

Sometimes being brave is reaching out to someone else and saying, “This guy is a creep.”

Sometimes being brave is looking at yourself and know when you’re holding yourself back.

Being brave is truly defined by you and what you think it takes to persevere, to endure, to be ready and to shine.

BE A PART OF OUR MISSION!

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?

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!

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

TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.

Submit a form.

WORD! AWARD-WINNING ELLEN BOORAEM TALKS WRITING TIPS AND HOW SHAME KEEPS HER FROM GIVING IN TO PROCRASTINATION

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Thu, 07 Oct 2021 11:28:14 +0000

The amazing writer and human, Ellen Booraem, spent nineteen years as a small-town journalist before quitting her day job to write four award-winning fantasies for readers ten and older (The Unnameables, Small Persons with Wings, Texting the Underworld and River Magic.

In this bonus podcast, we talked about Ellen’s writing tips to deal with writing blocks, the big leaps she took to start a fiction career at 52, and the incredibly cool WORD festival (the annual Blue Hill Maine literary arts festival) that’s coming up this October (which you should all check out).

We also touch on how working at a newspaper made us visual writers and trained us for fiction.

Ellen volunteers as a writing coach for students in her local middle school and is a founding organizer for Word, the annual Blue Hill (Maine) literary arts festival. Having ventured from her early time as Alton Hall Blackington’s next door neighbor in coastal Massachusetts, she now lives in coastal Maine with her partner, painter Robert Shillady.

Publisher’s Weekly called Ellen’s latest novel, “A dense emotional core, resonant voice, and themes of grief, shifting friendships, and family enliven Booraem’s contemporary fantasy, reminding readers that ‘hope is everywhere.’”

To find out more about Ellen and her books, check out Ellen’s website:

https://www.ellenbooraem.com/

To find out more about WORD (which is online this year), check out its website:

https://www.wordfestival.org/

And Word’s full schedule including workshops, art, and readings is here:

https://www.wordfestival.org/word-2021-full-schedule

Big Foot Fights and Trailer Sauce and No Flat Writing

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 05 Oct 2021 10:20:00 +0000

A lot of writers will worry that their stories seem flat. There’s a reason that they are worrying about that and it’s one of the core elements of good writing.

Ready?

You want to vary your sentence structure.

Take a bit of writing that you’ve done that feels flat—or maybe even one that doesn’t. Count the words in your sentences for two or three paragraphs.

Are they all five words? Twelve? Twenty-seven?

That robotic sameness in sentence length is one of the main reasons that writing can feel flat.

It’s like those ancient Dick and Jane books.

See Dick run.

See Jane skip.

See Dick wave.

The other big bugger is when all of your sentences are simple and declarative.

I walk to the forest. The trees are gracious, tall. I inhale the pine scent.

There is actually a whole, entire world of different sentence styles that writers can use and when you use them? That’s when you make your writing shiny and sexy and all the good things.

The names for these structures are pretty boring, honestly, but we’ll try to look beyond that, right?

Simple – You have one main clause.

Carrie is the best wife.

Compound – You have more than one independent clause. You probably use a conjunction.

Carrie wants to get another dog, but Shaun keeps saying no.

Complex – Oh, the sentence that probably has to pay for a therapist or is reading Foucault obviously in the park. This sentence has an independent clause and a subordinate clause. It’st the BDSM of sentences.

When hell freezes over, we will allegedly get another dog.

Compound-Complex – It sounds like a place with a cult, right? But it’s just a sentence with at least two independent clauses and one subordinate clause.

Carrie really needs a new dog to love, so Shaun said that they would get one when hell freezes over, so Carrie immediately got some dry ice and sent some down to Lucifer.

Refresher moments:

What’s an independent clause? It is a bunch of words that has a subject and a predicate. It is grammatically complete all by itself and doesn’t need anyone. Not any other words to stand alone! Darn it.

WRITING TIP OF THE POD

Vary your sentence structures and don’t be flat.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Variety is good. Don’t eat the same Milkbones all the time. Mix it up.

Be fluffy.

Resources Mentioned in the podcast:

https://nypost.com/2021/09/17/teen-gets-usb-cable-stuck-in-penis-in-attempt-to-measure-length/

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/weird/article251950768.html#storylink=mainstage_card

Hunters In Michigan Claim To Have Seen Two Bigfoot Creatures Fighting In The Woods

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.

Here’s the link.

You Should Start Your Own Publishing Company - Be Brave Friday

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Fri, 01 Oct 2021 03:27:00 +0000

IT’S BE BRAVE FRIDAY WHERE SHAUN OR I (FROM DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE AND LOVING THE STRANGE AND JUST BEING AN AUTHOR IN MAINE) SHARE PEOPLE’S UNEDITED, UNFILTERED STORIES, SO WE CAN ALL CELEBRATE THE BIG AND LITTLE BRAVE THINGS WE DO ALL THE TIME.

SOMETIMES WE DON’T EVEN REALIZE WE’RE BEING BRAVE.

I’ve been reading your stuff on Patreon and Medium and loving it, as always. I keep having this crazy idea pop up in my head, so I’m finally going to go out on a limb–it’s Be Brave Friday, right?–and ask you about it.

You’ve likely already thought about doing this. Also, it’s probably not realistic. Then again, maybe it would be amazing!

So here goes: what if you started your own publishing imprint? You’ve already got a great platform, a well-developed brand and access to a ton of talented writers, many of whom, like me, are struggling to launch their stories into the world.

I’m so tired of reading excellent work by wonderful humans, but knowing it has little chance of reaching readers. Most authors barely have time to write, much less launch their own platforms, etc., even if they choose to self-publish. An imprint like yours could lend legitimacy to a whole swath of quirky life-affirming stories and help those stories reach the readers who need to hear them.

I know that you’re already working 24/7 to create your own content and run your own business. And I imagine the benefits to you would be quite small, though ultimately something like this would likely give you some marginal financial returns and increase your visibility, too.

That being said, I’m looking for a cause to devote myself to, so I’d be more than willing to write up a mission statement/business proposal and contribute my time, talents and even some limited financial resources on an ongoing basis. I’m guessing a whole lot of gifted writers, editors and designers would be willing to do the same. I know, I know: this is a giant, wild and probably foolish idea, but it wouldn’t stop nagging me.

I love and admire you. I want your stories and stories like yours to reach everyone. I want good humans to flourish. And now I feel scared and silly for saying all of this aloud. But I said it anyway, and that’s a win, right?

Sending you all kinds of love,

BE A PART OF OUR MISSION!

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?

JUST CLICK ON THIS LINK AND FIND OUT HOW WE CAN INTERACT MORE.

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 261,000 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!

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

TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.

Submit a form.

He Built a Guitar Out of His Uncle's Skeleton And Over-explaining Makes Bad Writing

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 10:37:00 +0000

Authors, let’s just admit it. We’re insecure.

Writing is communication and we want to make sure that our readers are getting what we’re putting down (Translation: Understanding what we’re saying).

So, what do we do?

We over-explain.

And that over-explaining slows down our pacing and makes our reader not want to read anymore.

There are lots of bigger ways of overexplaining.

And what is overexplaining? It’s when you just keep adding things on to make your reader get what you’re saying.

Like this:

Shaun punched the wall. He was so angry he could spit. His hands clenched into tight fists. “What kind of butthead are you?” he roared.

So, all four of those sentences tell us the same thing.

Shaun is angry.

You can cut down that to one or two and the reader is still going to get it. Trust the reader’s brains. Trust yourself.

Here’s a rewrite.

Shaun punched the wall. “What kind of butthead are you?”

But it’s not just in long passages that us writer people do this. We do it in short bits too.

Here are some big ones.

She shrugged her shoulders. (She shrugged)

He nodded his head in agreement. (He nodded) or (He agreed)

They shook their head no. (They shook their head)

He looked at his watch to check the time. (He checked the time)

Other things we do is

Tell something that we just showed. (Shaun punched the wall. He was so angry.)

Add in a dialogue tag that we don’t need, (the she said/they asked) when we don’t need it.

Add in silly adverbs that we don’t need.

Add in a bunch of statements all saying the same thing. (See that original example).

Acting like the reader is stupid. (Of course we know the person is nodding their head. We don’t think they are nodding their butt.)

Info dumps

When you do this over-explaining thing you:

Slow down the pace
Ruin the subtext.
Break my heart.
Make the scenes dull. Over-explaining takes out the pizzazz.
It takes away the immediacy and the forward motion of the plot and scene.

WRITING TIP OF THE POD

Be all one and done, people. Trust the reader to get it. Trust your skills to communicate well.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE.

If you want a treat, sit in front of the pantry and drool on the floor.

LINKS WE TALK ABOUT IN THE PODCAST

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article254523322.html

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Ripley's Believe It or Not! (@ripleysbelieveitornot)

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.

Here’s the link.

Helping Toxic People Even When They Didn't Help You - Be Brave Friday

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Fri, 24 Sep 2021 10:23:35 +0000

It’s Be Brave Friday where Shaun or I (from Dogs are Smarter than People and Loving the Strange and just being an author in Maine) share people’s unedited, unfiltered stories, so we can all celebrate the big and little brave things we do all the time.

Sometimes we don’t even realize we’re being brave.

Here’s Jordan’s brave story and we are so grateful, Jordan, for you trusting us and sending it in. So much love to you.

So I don’t know how long this is going to take me to put this together. I’ve really thought a lot, back and forth, about whether or not to even reply with this, but I think I’m going to, just for a sense of talking to someone outside of my normal circle.

I know this isn’t probably what you were looking for when you mentioned a story, but this is something that’s just been weighing on my mind for a little while now.

Back in 2014, when I was still a freshman in college, I made the decision to start coming out to my family. My mom had been estranged for reasons that is a whole other story. She’s not the same person she was when I was growing up, so it’s hard to really gauge who she is as a person at any given day.

When I wanted to open myself up a bit and come out to her, she responded in a way I assumed she would, being married to a southern church-going bible-thumper–she told me “I don’t agree with that” and to not bring it around my sister (who was 10 at the time).

I was very disappointed and went on with my life. I kept my mom at a distance because if she didn’t want part of my life to be highlighted, I wasn’t going to filter that. She just wasn’t going to get any of it.

I went through my college career. Struggled, thrived. Made friendships and experiences that have changed my life completely. I reluctantly invited her to my graduation, not even knowing for sure if she’d come–simply because that meant that she would actually have to make the trip.

Cut to 2020, where it’s the hell year for everyone. I’ve moved back to where I grew up to be closer to a few family members of mine. My mom begins communicating with me to inform me that her marriage has fallen apart due to infidelity and other personal things going on.

My concern only lied with my sister. She’s a young adult now but she still has no skills of being able to navigate the craziness that will surely come about with my mom. My mom never knew how to do anything for herself, and she always burned any bridges she made with people, so no one was ever at the ready to help her if she needed it. I knew that if I didn’t step in, my sister was really going to have an even worse time than she was already.

I took time off of work to get my aunt (her sister) to help me find a place where my mom could live. Having no income and no job experience in the last 18 years was going to be extremely tough, but time was of the essence. I managed to find a place and help her get moved in.

Honestly, I wanted either two things to happen. I wanted her to just leave it at that, and not communicate with me any more, or I wanted her to change back to who I knew she was when she was someone I looked up to.

I find it hard to find that kindness inside myself and have to go out of my way to constantly help her when she chooses to not help herself. I don’t know if its actual “trauma” but there are so many hurtful things and happenings that she doesn’t acknowledge or anything.

In her mind, she may believe that it never did, but the things she said, she still said. My mom has never accepted any kind of responsibility for herself and that just takes a toll after a while.

My mom has shoulder surgery next week and I’m dreading it more than anything because I know she’s going to need help and the only one who can offer it or is even remotely even willing to, is going to be me. It’s hard enough working in the public during an ongoing pandemic, in a southern state where the government could care less about the constituents dropping like flies.

Now I have to find a balance of keeping my income at a steady rate while also babysitting my impossible mother.

The past year and a half or so, I made a vow to myself to try and keep a positive outlook and not to lurk so much in negativity. This situation kind of makes me feel like I can’t do this without kindness but it’s so hard for me to feel like I can put kindness forward in this. I know this isn’t your problem, and this may be heavier than what you expected in any kind of responses to this?

I’m not even 100% sure that this message is a solid, coherent thought. At times in this scenario, I feel like I’m a bad person, but at the same time, I don’t care if it does. Even growing up, I always felt like the kingpin of my family. Like, if I wasn’t there to hold everyone together, it would all just fall apart and the damage couldn’t be undone.

To the point where, now, I would rather be isolated and alone than have to worry about it. I guess my question through all of this is how can you put forth kindness in a situation that just constantly drains you? I know it’s not really a comprehensible question but a part of me just wanted to type these thoughts out because I feel like if I mentioned it to anyone close to me here, it would make me seem (for lack of a better word, this really isn’t the right one) like a sociopath.

I think you’re a wonderful person, Carrie, and I’m very sorry if this was exhausting to read or just too impersonal in any way, but thank you for even just presenting me with the idea of being able to just send a thought out to another person, whom I weirdly I feel I can trust with that thought. I hope life is treating you properly, and I am wishing you all of the peace and joy that I can.

– All the love,

Jordan

BE A PART OF OUR MISSION!

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?

JUST CLICK ON THIS LINK AND FIND OUT HOW WE CAN INTERACT MORE.

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 261,000 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!

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

TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.

Submit a form.

Full-time Writer and Thinker - Martin Vidal QuarterLife Crises Led to Full-time Writing Career

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Thu, 23 Sep 2021 09:00:00 +0000

I was lucky enough to interview author and writer, Martin Vidal, and pick his brain. I hope you’ll check out the video or podcast and give this man some props.

I hope you’ll listen to one of my favorite interviews yet with one of my new favorite people.

Here are some highlights to entice you to listen.

On Martin’s website he says that he loves to write and figure things out, which really struck a chord with me because that’s what I do, too.

Martin’s Ambition Handbook is all about self-examination and self-transformation. And it’s a bit more of a holistic look at how to find success rather than a listicle.

Decision making, the choices we each take, that seems to really matter to Martin and he speaks a bit to that and so much little

On our own podcast, we have a thing we do on Fridays called BE BRAVE FRIDAYS where we try to share other people’s bravery stories, stories where they stepped out of their comfort zone or the box they’d been put in. It can be little. It can be small. It can be huge.

Martin talks about one of the events in his life that he looks back on and thinks, “Whoa. I was really brave there.”

Spoiler: It’s that quarter-life existential crisis.

Martin’s other book, THE FLOWER GARDEN, is releasing soon and I got a bit of a peek and it’s just this lovely sauntering through the moments of humanity. He touches on narcissism, grief, love, so many things that matter. And in the podcast he tells us about how he moved from THE AMBITION HANDBOOK to THE FLOWER GARDEN?

We also talk about a great memory in his piece “Social Anxiety Made Me Who I Am” that I think a lot of us writers can relate to.

I remember at 9 years old when I did my first creative writing assignment. The teacher told us to write a paragraph or two starting with “I found an egg in the yard…” We had 30 minutes, if I recall correctly. I wrote three pages and would’ve gladly continued writing more. Whereas my anxiety had muzzled me, the written word flowed out in a torrent. The teacher loved my writing so much she insisted on reading it aloud. Once again, I went to hide in the bathroom while she did.

He wrote in that same piece:

But there’s something malfunctioning inside of me. I’m not afraid of people, but my body is. It tightens up; I lose my ability to focus, to be still — to be me. I can’t think of anything but to get away.

Maybe one of the big reasons I adore Martin is that he really embodies the Nelson Mandela quote

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”

Where to find Martin:

Why Your Writing Might Be Too Good to Be Popular

https://martinvidal.co/social-anxiety

Website:

www.martinvidal.co

Books:

The Ambition Handbook

Flower Garden

On Medium:

https://martinvidal.medium.com/

BE A PART OF OUR MISSION!

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?

JUST CLICK ON THIS LINK AND FIND OUT HOW WE CAN INTERACT MORE.

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 261,000 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!

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

TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.

Submit a form.

Alligator Romance with Darth Gator and the grammar behind the words in to vs into

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 21 Sep 2021 08:00:00 +0000

So, now that we’re into the helpful part of the podcast and no longer talking about women in love with the alligators that attacked them or dogs and cats breaking records together, we thought we’d take a quick look at a big grammar mistake.

And that’s when INTO is one word or two.

Is it . . .

Dude, I am so into you.

Or is it . . .

Dude, I am so in to you.

Here’s how it works.

INTO all as one word is a preposition, which means it’s showing MOVEMENT of one thing to another thing.

But IN TO (two words) has two grammatical bits going on right there. The IN is an adverb and the TO is the preposition. And they aren’t like snuggled up in bed like a cohabitating couple, they just tend to show up in the sentence next to each other.

Here are some examples:

INTO as one word:

Baby, I made it into the office today, but only just barely because… cough… you know.

Lordie, look what Santa put into your stocking.

That alligator went into that woman’s head, man, like took total control.

INTO usually tells you WHERE something is happening.

IN TO as two words

Look, I am standing in to make a statement to our senator.

Santa came in to say a hearty hello.

The dog and cat rode in to break that record on that damn scooter.

IN TO usually can be substituted with IN ORDER TO.

Easy, right? Consider yourself grammatical.

WRITING TIP OF THE POD

Two words are different than one.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Sometimes taking chances pays off (like when you jump on a scooter with a cat) and sometimes it doesn’t (like when you bite your handler’s hand). Choose your risks wisely. And that goes for copyediting too. Unless you’re super sure you know all the grammar, don’t copyedit your own story.

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.

Here’s the link.

LINKS WE MENTION IN THE RANDOM THOUGHTS PORTION OF THE PODCAST

https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2021/09/16/canada-Guinness-World-Records-dog-cat-scooter-Lollipop-Sashimi-Melissa-Millett/5691631809102/

https://news.sky.com/story/woman-attacked-by-alligator-says-i-love-him-and-it-shouldnt-face-any-consequences-12385890

Oh, That Florida Man

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Sat, 18 Sep 2021 08:32:06 +0000

Hey, Welcome to LOVING THE STRANGE, where we celebrate the weird and embrace the heck out of it.

This week, in honor of Shaun Farrar, our own Florida man, we are talking about Florida men.

In ancient times, so back in 2013, Florida man became a meme because there were just so many weird and bizarre news articles (mostly police beats) about Florida men doing weird and criminal and often dumb things.

Both CNN and the Miami News Times claim that Florida men aren’t that naughty or bizarre compared to their equivalents in other states, but it’s just because the freedom of information laws in that state make it pretty easy to peruse police beat.

The Columbia Journalism Review says that Florida Man is “one of journalism’s darkest and most lucrative cottage industries”, because “stories tend to stand as exemplars of the mythical hyper-weirdness of the Sunshine State, but more often simply document the travails of the drug-addicted, mentally ill, and homeless.”

Here are the links we reference during our talk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Man

https://www.vice.com/en/article/7bmp8a/weird-florida-news-america-florida-man

https://nypost.com/article/crazy-florida-man-headlines-that-made-the-meme/

https://www.boredpanda.com/hilarious-florida-man-headings/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic

It Isn't Too Late to Be There For Your Kids Our Most Personal Be Brave Friday Ever

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Fri, 17 Sep 2021 10:20:07 +0000

It’s Be Brave Friday where Shaun or I (from Dogs are Smarter than People and Loving the Strange and just being an author in Maine) share people’s stories, but this week, I’m sharing ours. It’s the first time I’ve talked publicly about this and it’s kind of hard.

Trigger Warning for parent issues (not us).

We have an adorable kid who has autism and ODD and ADD. And here’s the thing. They are funny and creative and have big emotions about their world.

That isn’t the easiest thing to handle for some people.

And we get judged about them all the time. Their ADD manifests in wanting to do a project all night long when they’re really into it. Their ODD manifests in not dealing well when we tell them they need some sleep. Their psychiatrist has said on multiple occasions, “This is not the bridge worth dying on.”

They’re right.

But people don’t get that.

And they judge. A lot.

And whatever. I’m fine with that because though I’m self-deprecating to the point that I tend to drive other feminists crazy, I’m confident that I’m a parent who is full of love and appreciation for her kids. The judging doesn’t matter because what matters is the human who is growing and learning and becoming.

That’s not what this post is about though. This post is about our kid’s other mother. The one who gave up on them two years ago. The one who has to get texts from the kid in order to even think to visit with them. The one who is trained as a teacher but didn’t even send a text to their own child to ask them how their first day of school in a new school system went. And two weeks later, still hasn’t.

This post is about anger, honestly, because I am so angry on behalf of our kid. And I not usually brave enough to talk about this or my anger. I’m a pretty conflict averse human except when it’s about things that hurt others.

But this post is also about hope. We all have moments every single day to do the right thing. To reverse the path that we’re on and actually be responsible and good, to reach out with kindness and with love.

That’s hard sometimes when you’ve sucked for two years. But it’s going to be a lot harder after you’ve sucked for twenty.

So all of us need to reach up, reach out, be responsible. Inaction is often just as horrible as bad actions, but we can always climb our way out of the hole we’ve dug by making those good choices, those kind choices (even when they are so damn hard).

We can all do this. Every single one of us. In order to make our families, our communities, our nation and our world better? We have to.

Here’s the video where I don’t stick entirely on script because I suck at that, honestly.

BE A PART OF OUR MISSION!

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?

JUST CLICK ON THIS LINK AND FIND OUT HOW WE CAN INTERACT MORE.

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 261,000 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!

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

TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.

Submit a form.

Throwing Poop on Your Landlord, Demon Texts, and Making Happy Endings

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 14 Sep 2021 08:56:00 +0000

Carrie reads a lot of novels in progress and helps writers make those novels better and one of the big things that happen that keep a book from being super star status is an unsatisfying ending.

Yes. Yes, that is about books, not sex, Shaun. But some of the same principles apply to both.

You want your ending to be satisfying even if it’s an unhappy ending.

So, how do you make your ending satisfying?

Ah, just like the copulation, it’s all about fulfilling your promises to the reader in the lead-up to that ending, right?

Your reader has been hanging out with you for 50,000 words at least (usually) and that means that you owe them what you’ve promised them–a complete story with a damn fine ending.

Here are the things to know:

The character at the end of the book should have changed enough to react to the events in a way that they wouldn’t have reacted on page 10.

Most books that are satisfying have a main character that changes. They evolve (positive change arc) or devolve (negative change arc). Their situation is different at the end of the book and you, the author, want to recognize that and show us readers — WOW! Look at how Sparty the Dog is so much stronger now. He’s dealing with that squirrel in a way he never would have on page 10.

All the events that have happened prior to the climax and the ending have made Sparty the dog that’s able to handle his arch nemesis like a boss.

There needs to be emotional growth (or regression) in your main character at the end of this story.

And this growth at the ending has to be shown in the gorgeous story in between the beginning and the ending.

If we imagine the story as three acts, then the ending is where we see how Act One (the set-up, who the character used to be, their original want) and Act Two (where the character’s world changes and they proactively go after their wants, messing up, succeeding, learning and evolving) makes the character who they are now.

Do they get the girl? Save the world? Defeat the evil demon? Throw poop on their landlord?

Do they come to terms with grief?

The ending matters because of everything in the story that the hero has gone through to get there.

They have to earn that ending and when they do? Oh, boy, is it satisfying.

The Ending Doesn’t Matter Much if You Don’t Make It Matter

You want to give your readers the answers to the questions that exist in your story. No loose ends. No mysteries that just end with a ‘to be continued’ because you’ve hit 70,000 words.

It is all about satisfying the reader. If you promise the reader a sexy romance and there’s no sex and the significant other slinks off on the last page to go wrestle guinea pigs in Ireland with someone else? You’re breaking that promise to the reader and totally not satisfying. You are being a bad lover. I mean writer.

Nobody wants that.

WRITING TIP OF THE POD

Think about what your reader wants. Aim to please your lover/reader.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Sparty says it’s more satisfying to earn your treat rather than just be given the treat. The journey makes the ending more satisfying.

LINKS MENTIONED

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/priest-demons-figured-text-messages-24898111

https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2020/12/28/23-of-the-strangest-things-that-happened-in-florida-in-2020/

‘Completely nude’ Boston woman charged after allegedly driving golf cart through armed police standoff in Florida

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.

Here’s the link.

Interplanetary Love, Massive Bathtub Ducks, and Sexy Subtext

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 08:43:00 +0000

Let’s talk about subtext. And to talk about it, we’ve got to define that baby. So here goes.

Masterclass defines subtext as:

“In day-to-day life, there are often wide gaps between what people say and what they are thinking. These gaps can collectively be referred to as subtext—and they are valuable territory for fiction writers. Ernest Hemingway, who relied on subtext in his minimalistic approach to writing, even coined a term for it: the Iceberg Theory. He believed deeper meanings of character and plot should live below the surface of the text, just as the bulk of an iceberg floats beneath the surface of the water.”

And Merriam-Webster says:

A literary text often has more than one meaning: the literal meaning of the words on the page, and their hidden meaning, what exists “between the lines”—the subtext. Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, for example, is about the Salem witchcraft trials of the 17th century, but its subtext is the comparison of those trials with the “witch hunts” of the 1950s, when many people were unfairly accused of being communists. Even a social conversation between a man and a woman may have a subtext, but you may have to listen very closely to figure out what it is. Don’t confuse subtext with subplot, a less important plot that moves along in parallel with the main plot.

And there are different types as defined by literary.net

Privilege Subtext

Privilege subtext is subtext in which the audience has certain privileges over the characters in a narrative. In other words, the audience is aware of something the characters are not aware of. For example, imagine a character who has three missed calls from her mother. We as readers cringe as we know she is about to find out her sister has been in a car crash which we have seen but she is not yet aware of.

Revelation Subtext

Revelation subtext is subtext that reveals a certain truth over time throughout a story, leading up to a revelation. For example, imagine a boy who has been trying to figure out what he wants to do when he grows up. He considers firefighting, being a policeman, or even being an actor. Throughout his childhood, though, he enjoys drawing, painting, and sculpting for fun. The revelation subtext here is that his hobby has been his calling all along: he will become an artist.

Subtext through Promise

Subtext through Promise is subtext in which an audience expects certain promises to be kept by the author. In other words, the audience expects the story to run as stories usually do: the audience expects a plot that makes sense and is weaved together, characters who have revelations and change meaningfully, and symbols and motifs which make sense and suit the story. When an author fails to please the audience in this way, the story is considered poorly written or disappointing due to the subtext.

Subtext through Questions

Subtext through Questions is subtext created when readers and audiences have questions about a story, such as how a plot is developing or what a character will do. Naturally, such questions arise in a well-written story as a form of unwritten subtext.

Wow. Right? And of course, we do this all the time in real life too. We argue with our spouses about the proper way to put dishes in the dishwasher, but what we’re rally arguing about is how one of us called the other one a dork or something. In a lot of our lives, we have to infer the meaning of things underneath the words that people say or the actions that they do.

Why do we want subtext in our stories?

It’s a bit like showing versus telling. Subtext allows the reader to make connections and learn about the characters and their yearnings and motivations and wants without yelling, “HEY! MY NAME IS SHAUN AND WHAT I WANT IS THE SEX.”

Cough.

Subtext is actually very sexy. It’s the driving force behind some parts of your story, the blank space where readers get to have an a-ha moment! It’s the epiphany your reader gets to have rather than you saying, “DOH! READER, HE IS LONGING HERE!”

It’s almost like a continuum.

Show is better than tell.

And subtext might be greater than showing.

Subtext is invisible, but real, kind of like the air. You need it to survive. Why? Because it makes the reader participate in the scene rather than just read it. Their brains are turned on. How cool is that? They get to interpret things.

You can build it into your story by:

Understanding their characters and what they really want and are motivated by.
Thinking about ways that characters can talk around what it is they want. If Shaun wants sex and says, “I want sex,” then there is no subtext. If he never mentions sex while trying to get it? Then you’ve got subtext.
Show the characters’ wants and the subtext through emotion rather than explicit dialogue. If Shaun stares longingly at two people canoodling in a car? That shows his want in the subtext.
Double meanings and evasions. When people are talking and there’s more one way to interpret something? That can be subtext. When they refuse to talk about something? Or when they turn away every time a certain someone comes in a room? That can be subtext.

In order to have subtext you need to:

Give your characters things they want. They might not even realize they want whatever it is they want, but you, the all-knowing writer, do.

Thinking about that means that:

Give your character something they don’t want other people to know right then (if they know themselves that they have a want).

WRITING TIP OF THE POD

Subtext is sexy

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

It’s okay to be subtle sometimes.

LINKS

https://allthatsinteresting.com/abbie-bela

Mysterious Giant Rubber Duck in Maine Harbor Flies the Coop Ahead of Hunting Season

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.

Here’s the link.

Writers, Don’t be basic. Run-on sentences are a turn-off just like your parents throwing away your porn

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 31 Aug 2021 09:21:00 +0000

We’ve all met them. The human at a party, in a line, or god-forbid sitting next to you in an airplane and they talk and talk and talk and don’t pause to breathe.

Do you enjoy those people?

Not usually.

Do you want them to shut the heck up for a half second?

Usually.

Well, writers, we hate to tell you all this, but we are guilty of doing this to our reader. Yes, you, writer, might be the annoying person on the plane talking about Aunt Sally’s hemorrhoids and all the fish you saw in Roatan during your five-day-long scuba adventure.

Don’t be those people. Periods are your friend. We can’t convince our thirteen year old this, but maybe we can convince you.

Periods are the enemy of your enemy: the run-on sentence.

What’s a run-on sentence?

It’s basically a sentence that connects two independent clauses without any punctuation or a nice sexy conjunction.

What’s an independent clause?

It’s basically this … an independent clause is so strong, so mighty, so full of awesome that it can be a sentence all by itself. It doesn’t need any help.

What’s a conjunction?

It’s basically the cruise director of your sentence connecting clauses or words or phrases and getting them all to chill out and hang together.

And then we have a comma splice.

The comma splice is a run on sentence with a comma stuck in there between those two independent clauses.

You want an example. Here you go.

Oh my god, I went to Starbucks, I got a pumpkin spice latte, they put the wrong name on my cup, they were calling out “Rachel,” I had no idea, right, I just stood there and stood there and stood there, I was the only one left, the guy at the counter looks at me and says, “Rachel?” I said I am “Raquel,” it was totally cold.

So how do you fix this?

Make those clauses into separate sentences.

Oh my god, I went to Starbucks. I got a pumpkin spice latte. They put the wrong name on my cup. They were calling out “Rachel.” I had no idea, right? I just stood there and stood there and stood there. I was the only one left. The guy at the counter looks at me and says, “Rachel?” I said I am “Raquel.” It was totally cold.

Use the magical semicolon sometimes instead of a comma.

Oh my god, I went to Starbucks; I got a pumpkin spice latte. They put the wrong name on my cup. They were calling out “Rachel;” I had no idea, right? I just stood there and stood there and stood there. I was the only one left. The guy at the counter looks at me and says, “Rachel?” I said I am “Raquel.” It was totally cold.

Use a sexy conjunction. We call these beautiful mistresses coordinating conjunctions or FANBOYS (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so).

Oh my god, I went to Starbucks and I got a pumpkin spice latte. They put the wrong name on my cup so they were calling out “Rachel.”

Use another kind of sexy conjunction called the subordinating conjunction. These show a little-cause-and-effect or relationships.

Oh my god, I went to Starbucks where I got a pumpkin spice latte. They put the wrong name on my cup because they were calling out “Rachel.”

WRITING TIP OF THE POD

Don’t run-on, don’t splice.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Don’t run-in bark. The humans yell at 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 “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.

Here’s the link.

LINKS MENTIONED IN RANDOM THOUGHTS SECTION

About the cow at McDonald’s

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Spotted-Cow-at-a-McDonald-s-drive-through-in-16417355.php

About dogs in the U.S.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/08/10/1025596981/how-the-pet-revolution-unleashed-a-new-top-dog-in-america

About parents throwing away your porn

https://www.10tv.com/article/news/nation-world/parents-must-pay-son-for-throwing-away-his-porn-collection/530-36a06067-d27a-48a7-95ec-4646253e072d

https://people.com/human-interest/parents-ordered-to-pay-son-30k-after-getting-rid-of-his-pornography-collection/

Throw Your Wife Around Strange Hobbies People Actually Do

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Sat, 28 Aug 2021 07:45:11 +0000

Tonight we’re talking about weird hobbies. And on the podcast itself we talk a lot more about this than we do in these notes. We even talk about WHY people have hobbies.

What I like is when people who don’t even realize that their hobbies are weird or maybe just embarrassing.

Coburg Banks has a list of weird hobbies people actually put on their resume, and while they aren’t weird? It is a bit strange to put them down for a potential employer. We’re talking about things like.

“I like sex.”

“Drinking.”

“Hacking.”

“Farmville.”

“Talking.”

“Honestly, I like doing nothing.”

“Escapology.”

“Time travel.”

“Snake skin collecting.”

“Arguing with people online.”

“Ferret racing.”

“Stalking celebrities.”

“Being awesome.”

“I have 14 cats.”

“Netflix n’ chill.”

“Crash dieting.”

And out in the regular world, there is the hobby of mooing. There is actually a moo-la-palooza in Wisconsin where people try to sound like a cow.

People also collect in-flight sickness bags, navel fluff, and ecstasy pills. A guy has done this for two decades.

And they throw their wives around.

There’s even the pretty cool hobby of Toy Voyaging, as explained by Stupid Hobby is “ToyVoyagers are traveling toys that are passed from person to person. To continue its journey, toys can be released into the wild for somebody to find. Their travels are tracked on a website. Each toy carries a unique identification number on a tag. A message on the tag encourages anyone who comes into contact with it to go to the website and update its Travelog with photographs.”

But our fave? It’s got to be guerrilla gardening. Listen to the podcast and find out why.

BE BRAVE FRIDAY - NO MORE TOXIC FRIENDS

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Fri, 27 Aug 2021 15:10:47 +0000

Here on Be Brave Friday we share Be Brave stories from our home in Maine because we want us all to ban together and be stronger, braver humans.

This week, we found a few Be Brave moments on a Reddit thread (link in the notes) about “what improved your quality of life so much, you wish you did it sooner.”

That might not seem like a place where being brave stories would be, but the truth is that sometimes we hold ourselves back and have to make some brave moves to have a better life.

Like Alternative Rip4728 did.

They said,

“Cutting out toxic “friends”. After years of knowing someone it can be hard to see that they are no longer the person they were when the relationship started. My childhood best friend grew into a manipulative selfish prick. For years I hung out with him almost every day after work and always felt miserable afterwards. Everyone around me questioned why I still spent time with him. I always made excuses that seem ridiculous in hindsight. I should have cut ties 10 years ago.”

That’s not easy. As said mcnugsss:

“I am struggling with making this transition. One of my best friends growing up is honestly an immensely selfish person today. It pains me knowing that when I make this next change there is a real possibility that they will pretty much stop existing in my life. I know it has to happen because it would be best for me, but the fear of losing an old “friend” is crippling. The reality is they are already lost and I need to move on for my own well being.”

This whole thread really hit a nerve with thousands of responses and Bengoris gave some advice, having done this themself.

“There were a thousand little things and overstepped boundaries that added up over time and just made me resent the hell out of that friend group. Once we got into an argument, I honestly said what I thought and we stopped talking after that. For a long time, I kept asking myself if I did the right thing. If I was a shitty friend too. But I feel like I was there for them when they were not there for me. Like I listened to them, but they didn’t want to listen to me. I know I always tried my best given the circumstances. And that brings me peace. If you feel like you’ve done right by your friends and they haven’t done right by you, it’s okay to part ways. You only have one life, you should be careful in deciding who gets to be a part of it.”

What improved your quality of life so much, you wish you did it sooner? from AskReddit

BE A PART OF OUR MISSION!

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?

JUST CLICK ON THIS LINK AND FIND OUT HOW WE CAN INTERACT MORE.

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 261,000 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!

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

TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.

Submit a form.

Sea Snakes Humping and Three Principles of Good Writing

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 24 Aug 2021 09:14:00 +0000

When I started being a reporter, one of my editors took me aside and gave me some candy and two books. One was the AP Style Guide, which is the manual for all the punctuation rules our newspaper followed.

The other was a book by E.B. White and William Strunk Jr., called The Elements of Style. My editor had met E.B. White who had a farm on the same peninsula that he did.

“This,” he told me, “is all you need to know.”

In that small book was a section called “The Elementary Principles of Composition,” and I’m not sure if it was all I needed to know as a writer, but I am positive that it was a pretty big deal.

So we thought we’d share three of those principles during this podcast. The first one is:

“Make the paragraph the unit of composition: one paragraph to each topic.”

Writers blow this off all the time, but we shouldn’t. We especially blow it off with dialogue and that’s a big no-no.

Why is it a no-no?

Our brains are wired to think of paragraphs as a single idea or an action or a bit of dialogue. You don’t want to clump it all together because it gets confusing.

Sally smiled. “I love her,” Jane said. They each took a bite of calzone and gazed upon the manatee. Sally said, “Dogs are fun.”

You’ve got no idea what’s going on here really.

Sally smiled.
“I love her,” Jane said.
They each took a bite of calzone and gazed upon the manatee.
Sally said, “Dogs are fun.”

Now you do. Each new speaker always gets a new paragraph for dialogue.

Here’s another principle.

“As a rule, begin each paragraph with a topic sentence; end it in conformity with the beginning.”

They go a bit on and on about this actually.

And our third one for today is once again back to the passive voice.

“Use the active voice. The active voice is usually more direct and vigorous than the passive:”

They then give these examples.

“I shall always remember my first visit to Boston.”
This is much better than
“My first visit to Boston will always be remembered by me.
The latter sentence is less direct, less bold, and less concise. If the writer tries to make it more concise by omitting “by me,”
“My first visit to Boston will always be remembered,”
it becomes indefinite: is it the writer, or some person undisclosed, or the world at large, that will always remember this visit?”
S and W

We talk about passive and active voice a lot in another podcast episode. And we’ll be sharing more of these tips in our three week series, Strunk and Whiting It. No, that’s not really the name.  We have no name for it.

WRITING TIP OF THE POD

Allow yourself to take advice from the masters.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE.

Don’t be a schmuck.

RESOURCES AND ARTICLES MENTIONED

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/sexually-frustrated-sea-snakes-mistaking-24811140

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/man-claims-hotel-needs-ghost-24809705

Click to access StrunkWhite.pdf

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.

Here’s the link. This week’s podcast is all about strange things people do for luck.

Be Brave Friday - Three Ways To Help You Be Brave.

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Fri, 20 Aug 2021 12:03:31 +0000

Because our daughter is home for the week, we’re taking the week off in posting BE BRAVE FRIDAY video and podcast and also our LOVING THE STRANGE podcast because we want to make family time a priority for this one week.

I know! We never miss a week.

And sometimes I have a tiny bit of anxiety over that, but it’s worth it. Family is worth it.

So instead, I thought I might quickly talk about what it means to be brave. Ready?

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A BRAVE PERSON?

It’s pretty simple really. Being brave means being tough enough to face your fears.

Being brave means knowing something scares you but wanting to defeat that wall of fear, climb over it, chip away at it, knock it down brick by terrifying brick.

Your fear may be about failure, about self-doubt, about spiders. Your fear might be about ridicule or judgement. Fears come in all forms.

Mine mostly come about sharing my art, speaking in public, good, old public ridicule, being poor again, and making the world a worse place.

Being brave means that you go after what you want, you evolve into the person you want to become and you don’t let those fears stop you.

SOMETIMES FACING YOUR FEARS HAS TO HAPPEN OVER AND OVER AGAIN.

As a lot of you know, I’m terrified of showing people my art, but I’ve always secretly wanted to be an artist even though my family laughed at this idea or rolled their eyes or scoffed. I never took an art class until right before COVID and that was an hour-long session about felting. Oh. Wait. That’s a lie. I took a class about drawing at the Y but quit after a session because I was too scared.

Still, I had these wants, you know? I wanted to paint. I wanted to get the images in my head onto canvas or wood or napkins or whatever, and I wanted to share them. Or at least–I didn’t want to be afraid to share them anymore.

So, BE BRAVE FRIDAYS was born and I would show people my paintings-in-progress every Friday and my PATREON was born where I would show people chapters in progress every Friday and our podcasts were born where my voice would be out there to be ridiculed every week (now three times a week, wow).

Someone told me on Facebook last year, “Carrie, people on here are so supportive of your paintings. How can this be a brave act for you?”

That’s the thing. It’s still hard. Every damn week, it’s hard. But it’s getting slightly less harder most of the time. It’s a chipping away at it moment.

WHAT IS IT THAT BRAVE PEOPLE DO DIFFERENTLY?

They do the thing they are afraid of even though they are scared, even though they might fail.

You can’t achieve if you don’t take a risk.

They are honest about who they are and their fears.

I’ve gotten a lot of feedback over the years, usually by well-meaning, well educated, white women who are a decade or two older than I am who tell me not to be so open about my insecurities.

Spoiler alert: Judging me for being insecure or telling me how to ‘be’ is a sure-fire way to NOT make me more secure.

But it’s also a sure-fire way to make me a bit angry. I am okay that I’m not perfect. I know I’m a work in progress and I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit that. Why would I want to not admit that?

Once you start pretending to be someone you aren’t, you get so wrapped up in that lie that it becomes exceptionally hard to be who you are.

It becomes exceptionally hard to be brave.

Authenticity and being open about your flaws and weaknesses? It’s a brave thing.

THEY DON’T ONLY THINK ABOUT FEAR

Brave people think about the potential amazing outcomes that can happen if they succeed not just the potential horrible outcomes if they fail.

Spending all your time thinking about what could go wrong, means that you aren’t spending anywhere enough time thinking (and taking the steps) to do what you want to go right.

So, I hope you’ll be brave with me and share your stories. Here are my paintings this week. You’ve got this, okay? You really do. Be brave with me.

BE A PART OF OUR MISSION!

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?

JUST CLICK ON THIS LINK AND FIND OUT HOW WE CAN INTERACT MORE.

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 261,000 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 a new book out! Yay!

You can order now! It’s an adult mystery/thriller that takes place in Bar Harbor, Maine. Read an excerpt here!

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

TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.

Submit a form.

The Lactating Armpit and How To Make Your Characters Have Different Voices

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 17 Aug 2021 12:49:00 +0000

Voice is such a big deal for making memorable and believable characters in your story, but it’s one of the harder things to understand sometimes.

As writer Rita Mae Brown said,

“People are funny. No doubt you’ve noticed that others are not nearly as reasonable as yourself. Shocking, isn’t it? This difference between you and other people comes out in speech. Obviously, difference displays itself in the subject matter people speak about, but on a deeper, more subtle level, it displays itself in the way in which they frame those very ideas.”

The voice of your character is truly the heart and mind of your character and their background expressed on the page.

Or as Brown says, “Speech is a literary biopsy.”

There are a lot of different ways to think about the voice of your characters, that thing that makes them believable and sets them apart from the other characters even when they all have similar demographics (college sophomores, white women, middle class background, from Missouri).

But first we have to think about the two different ways voice is represented for characters.

There is

Internal voice

What they think. (Use only in first and limited-third person POVs)

External voice

Word choice

Dialect

To make that character’s voice stand out, writers tend to do one of three things or a combination:

Write your way through it until your characters sound different.
Listen to people who are like your character and copy their cadence and word choice, sentence length, etc.
Watch a tv show/movie with people who remind you of your character.

There are other factors that come into play too. How we talk is often influenced by

Where we’re from.
Socio-economic demographics.
Education.
Age. Gender. Ethnicity. Race. The cultural norms for any group we belong to.
Our emotions at that moment – I don’t sound the same now as I do when I’m yelling or terrified or when I’m trying to take command of a volatile situation.
What we’re really into – If you’re into dogs, you’ll probably use words like “alpha.” If you’re into military culture, you might sprinkle in words like “got your six” or “command.” If you’re into poetry, you might use words like “cadence,” “litany.” And you might use those words even when you aren’t talking about those things.

How we put words together makes a big difference, too. I’m sure in Shaun’s times in the military or the police force he heard choppy sentence people.

Get here. Now.

And managerial types.

I’d like you to come here immediately.

And those afraid of conflict.

If you have a moment, would you mind coming over here as soon as you possibly can?

Some people love the drama of speech. Some people don’t like to talk at all. It’s all a bit of info that you can use to show their character, too.

WRITING TIP OF THE POD

Think beyond your experience, write beyond it too.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Not everyone sounds the same. Listen for the nuance.

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.

Here’s the link. This week’s podcast is all about strange things people do for luck.

Resources Mentioned

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/dad-catches-son-sneaking-out-24763972

NEW BOOK ALERT!

What would you do to make a difference?

After his best friend Norah was almost abducted, Cole Nicholaus has spent most of his childhood homeschooled, lonely and pining for Norah to move from best friend to girl friend status. When birds follow him around or he levitates the dishes, he thinks nothing of it—until a reporter appears and pushes him into making a choice: stay safe at home or help save a kidnapped kid.

Cole and Norah quickly end up trying to not just save a kid, but an entire town from a curse that has devastating roots and implications for how exactly Cole came to be the saint that he is.

Can Cole stop evil from hurting him and Norah again? And maybe even get together? Only the saints know.

From the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of the NEED series, Saint is a book about dealing with the consequences that make us who we are and being brave enough to admit who we love and what we need.

BUY NOW!

MOUSETRAP PISTOLS AND SELFIE TOASTERS - WEIRD INVENTIONS - LOVING THE STRANGE

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Sat, 14 Aug 2021 07:42:52 +0000

Shaun is one of those guys who likes learning about inventions and always dreams of making an idea into a reality.

Carrie? Not so much.

From mousetrap pistols to selfie toasters, we’ll be exploring LIVE, the weirdness of this world.

Resources We Mention in the Podcast

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/642634/weirdest-inventions-2000s

https://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/20-weirdest-inventions-ever

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2241075/Proof-old-fashioned-vibrating-belt-machines-actually-good–dont-lose-weight.html

https://www.pocket-lint.com/gadgets/news/137775-20-crazy-inventions-you-won-t-believe-what-you-re-about-to-see

BE BRAVE FRIDAY - CARRYING THE BABY DESPITE HEALTH ISSUES

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Fri, 13 Aug 2021 18:01:02 +0000

On BE BRAVE FRIDAYS, we share other people’s stories (unedited) and sometimes our own to build a community of bravery and inspiration.

Please let us know if you want to share your story with us and we’ll read it here and post it on our social media and website.

We don’t edit these because we want people’s stories to be heard as they tell them. We want it to be their voices not ours.

This life is too short to not be brave. We can do this together.

For me, I personally think my biggest “Be Brave” moment was when I stood up to multiple doctors, that told me I could never carry a baby due my ongoing health issues. Me, being raised by a very strong woman, and also being ridiculously stubborn myself, I kind of told them where they could go with their opinions, and carried on my own path…..

I went off the pill September 28^th, 2006 – I remember because we were in Amsterdam at the time – and found out I was pregnant November 4^th, 2006. In between those dates I’d had another surgery, under anesthesia, not knowing I was pregnant.

I had a relatively uneventful pregnancy, after finding an amazing doctor that didn’t see any reason why I wouldn’t be able to carry a baby – a doctor that to this day, I still go to. He said there was a chance I wouldn’t carry full term, which I didn’t because I’d had multiple surgeries on my cervix, which resulted in having sections of it removed, weakening it and making it not as “stable” as it should be.

Fred and I continued on with life as if nothing was wrong. We finished off our entire basement, I carried sheets of drywall, shot nails into the cement floor for metal stud walls, did flooring, and just lived life as I would have any other day

We are TOO Angry to Podcast Plus So Many Ways to Plot Your Story

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 18:36:00 +0000

I (Carrie) was at a conference one time and hanging out with a bunch of celebrity young adult authors. One author said he wrote everything down in an outline form first.

Another author said that she wrote expressly to the Save the Cat beatsheet.

And I said, “I just kind of write.”

They gasped. I ordered a drink with actual alcohol in it and another writer saved me by saying, “I, like Carrie, just write after doing decades of research in a dark and lonely hole in my basement drinking only Post-um mixed with grape Fanta and crying the tears of salty mirth while trying to contact Dickens on my Ouija board.”

I kid! I kid! Nobody tried to save me. They just gasped.

So, here’s the thing: some writers just write. They don’t plot first. They just write and hope for the best.

I, Carrie, am oft. en one of those writers. We vomit it all out on the page and watch the structure form. And sometimes? Sometimes we have to revise a lot because of this.

And some writers can’t start until they’ve got the whole story nicely plotted out in intricate details.

And some writers are somewhere in between.

You might not even write the same way every time. Some books you might plot out completely. Some books you might not plot at all. Some books you might get to 40,000 words and scream and yank out the beat sheet from Save the Cat and drink whiskey straight and roll around on your floor amongst the tumbleweeds of dog fur and cry.

Cough.

No personal experience there or anything. But when you do get stuck, it’s good think of how to work out your plot. Here are a couple ways.

OLD SCHOOL BABY.

You make an outline. You use Roman numerals. You write it all down. Act 1, 2, 3. Chapters. Scenes. You feel proud that you remember things from when you were in grade school. You are proud of your beautiful ability to be linear.

OLD SCHOOL BACKWARDS

You do the outline but you do it backwards because you know the ending but you just don’t know how to get there.

THE GENERALIST

You write the beginning, the middle, the end. Maybe you write down the big horrifying moment where everything sucks for your character. There. You’re good.

BEATING IT

This is intricate man. This is the way you tell each beat in each scene. It’s going to be a lot of pages. You’re basically writing the book without the dialogue or a lot of setting.

CHARACTER ARCING IT

You’re just writing about your characters and what happens to them. How do they evolve and transform.

IT IS ALL IN THE MIND.

You make adorable bubbles and connect words to ideas. It’s adorable like you.

IT IS ALL TALK

You say to your character, “Hey, tell me what happens.” Then you write the dialogue of the characters telling you what happens.

PINTEREST IT

Some of us like images and pictures to help us plot. We might cut things out of magazines if we actually still have magazines or we might use Pinterest.

WHITE BOARDS AND INDEX CARDS AND SPREADSHEETS

These sexy beast are like binders. They organize your thoughts and then allow you to reorganize your thoughts again and again.

I HAVE A TEMPLATE AND I KNOW HOW TO USE IT!

Some writers find these super restrictive and some writers want to give them a massive smooch and cuddle with them on the couch in front of a warm fire. Save the Cat, Joseph Campell, the Six-Act Structure are all adorable and sexy templates you can use when you want to get your story to work.

WRITING TIP OF THE POD

Usually we plot so that we have a way to go, a roadmap. Some of us just like to drive. It doesn’t matter. There’s no one damn way to write your novel.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

You get to live your life according to your rules, your wants and thoughts and needs.

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.

Here’s the link. This week’s podcast is all about strange things people do for luck.

NEW BOOK ALERT!

What would you do to make a difference?

Cole and Norah quickly end up trying to not just save a kid, but an entire town from a curse that has devastating roots and implications for how exactly Cole came to be the saint that he is.

Can Cole stop evil from hurting him and Norah again? And maybe even get together? Only the saints know.

BUY NOW!

BE BRAVE FRIDAY PUBLIC SPEAKING AND UNEVEN SURFACES

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Sat, 07 Aug 2021 09:41:34 +0000

On BE BRAVE FRIDAYS, we share other people’s stories (unedited) and sometimes our own to build a community of bravery and inspiration.

Please let us know if you want to share your story with us and we’ll read it here and post it on our social media and website.

We don’t edit these because we want people’s stories to be heard as they tell them.

This life is too short to not be brave. We can do this together.

This week, Shaun’s sharing one of his stories.

Also, sorry this is a day late! Shaun’s computer died last night during our live podcast and things have been a bit — tech scary.

BE A PART OF OUR MISSION!

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?

JUST CLICK ON THIS LINK AND FIND OUT HOW WE CAN INTERACT MORE.

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 261,000 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 a new book out! Yay!

You can order now! It’s an adult mystery/thriller that takes place in Bar Harbor, Maine. Read an excerpt here!

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

TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.

Submit a form.

There Is Nothing Better than a Sexy Setting

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 03 Aug 2021 13:19:00 +0000

Lately, Carrie has been talking to a lot of writers that she coaches and edits about settings.

That’s because a lot of writers are blowing them off. So, she’ll read a lot of passages like this:

“Hey,” I sit at my desk, “you coming over later?”
“Yep,” Shaun says.
“Cool.”
“I thought maybe we could have some hanky-panky.”
“Okay?”

So, we know that Shaun wants to have some hanky-panky and the “I” of the story is sitting at their desk. But we don’t know what kind of desk, where that desk is, if there are other people around, or even how she or he or they are reacting to Shaun’s request for hanky-panky, right?

Setting is obviously the place where things happen, but it’s more than that, right?

Setting makes your characters real. It grounds them. It shows the reader what’s going on without saying, “Yo, reader. This is what’s going on.”

What do we mean? Well, here, let’s play with the setting of that excerpt above.

“Hey,” I sit at my desk, flipping through some tentacle porn, “you coming over later?”
The dirt-streaked wall of my cubby gives a bit with the pressure of his hand, holding him up as he leans over my shoulder. “Yep.”
Betty is just on the other side of that cubby wall and beyond her is my boss, the other workers, everyone typing on their computers, pretending to be busy reading emails, analyzing data, reading contract clauses. Liars all. The air smells of old coffee and pot, broken things, broken people.
It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.
“Cool.” That’s all I say.
Shaun clears his throat, moves lower, closer to me, my hard metal desk, standard issue. His giant elbow brushing against the wall again. His voice is a low whisper. “I thought maybe we could have some hanky-panky.”
Someone coughs. That someone is Betty. I flip the page. A tentacle is exploring places on an elf that should probably not be explored. Shaun doesn’t smell like old coffee. He smells of sandalwood and pine, like man.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Okay.”

Totally different, right?

Now we have a lot more context even if we don’t know all the details of her office, the chair, the desk. The characters aren’t floating in a void.

Here, one more example before we move on. Same dialogue again. But different setting and different feelings.

“Hey.” Holding my phone in my hand, I sit at my broad, metal work desk, give up and stand on it, pushing the papers and books about writing and being a freelance human off with my heel. They flutter to the floor. From up here, I can see everyone. Janice with the pink hair. Bob with the coffee stained shirt and no hair. Countless nameless coworkers. I raise my voice into a yell that echoes across the vast space of the office. “You coming over later?”
Bob stares up at me. His mouth gaping open. I can see his fillings. He puts a finger over his lips. I give him a finger of my own. Lights flicker overhead.
“Yep,” Shaun says.
Janice gives me a thumbs up. Beyond her, other coworkers are watching and/or pretending not to watch. The fans above them, hanging from the drop ceiling, spin around and around. My manager opens the door from his office, starts angry striding towards me.
I say, “Cool.”
Across the office, all the way in a prestigious cubby by the dirt-grimed windows, Shaun stands on his own desk and shouts, “I thought maybe we could have some hanky-panky.”
Someone giggles. The world smells of promise, lemon bleach those cleaners use. The manager stops, his bald head turning from Shaun to me to Shaun.
I hang up the phone and yell across everyone. “Okay?”

Setting can reinforce what we’re doing, add context and even tension, right? It can transform an exchange into a story. You don’t want to blow it off. You really want to make it as sexy as possible.

Tips About Setting

Don’t glob it all down in paragraph after paragraph.

Sprinkle it into the dialogue and action like salt.

Let us reiterate: Don’t overdo it.

Seriously. See that first tip up there. It’s like art in your house. You don’t put all the paintings in one room. Spread it out.

Make sure that the details you add are the ones that are important to the reader.

Use setting to add subtext.

You can say “there is a fan in the office” or you can say, “The fans above them, hanging from the drop ceiling, spin around and around.”

Boom! Now you know that they feel trapped and like they are going in circles. Cool, right?

Be weird. Be quirky. Don’t be normal.

Our readers are aware of what a desk is, right? What an office is? But it’s the weird and different things that make a scene and setting matter. Let them see the escaped gerbil running across the floor. Let them hear the sound of a coworker sucking air through their teeth nonstop. Show them the broken blind, twisted and lopsided on the window.

Show the setting as your main character sees it. The readers shouldn’t see the office until the point-of-view character sees the office. Let the setting be discovered by them simultaneously.

WRITING TIP OF THE POD

Settings make a book real. They add dimension and character. Layers. Don’t blow them off.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

A sexy setting is so important in your life. Surround yourself with dog toys and cozy blankets, twirl around around before flopping down so that you feel perfect.

NEW BOOK ALERT!

What would you do to make a difference?

Cole and Norah quickly end up trying to not just save a kid, but an entire town from a curse that has devastating roots and implications for how exactly Cole came to be the saint that he is.

Can Cole stop evil from hurting him and Norah again? And maybe even get together? Only the saints know.

BUY NOW!

Life is About More Than How To and How To Be.

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Fri, 30 Jul 2021 11:13:26 +0000

On BE BRAVE FRIDAYS, we share other people’s stories (unedited) to build a community of bravery and inspiration.

Please let us know if you want to share your story with us and we’ll read it here and post it on our social media and website.

We don’t edit these because we want people’s stories to be heard as they tell them.

This life is too short to not be brave. We can do this together.

This week, I’m telling one of my stories.

“How do I become an artist?” I used to ask my mom this all the time when I was little.

“Nobody in our family has an artistic bone in their body,” my mother said every time I asked. She’d light a cigarette. She’d take a drag. She’d offer me a Pepsi, cold from the fridge, always poured over ice and never in a can because we weren’t that kind of people either. “Not one bone.”

“Our family” only meant her family. One of my grandmothers painted all the time, hiding away her canvasses, horrified by how bad they were. None were ever bad, but they were dark, dripping with sadness, a sadness that also came out in her poems. One of my father’s sisters did batik, made jewelry. Another aunt did ceramics.

That wasn’t about me though. My only genes, according to my mom, came from her. And so I was left wondering, “How do I be an artist if there isn’t an artistic bone in my body?”

And I gave up even though I was a kid who didn’t think with words, a kid who was haunted by images and color, the smash-up of form and hope always twirling around in my head.

And then my mother was dead. And my father was dead. And a brother and aunts and uncles were dead and grandparents and two best friends.

The grief grew in my fingers and writing stopped being enough. But I was lost because I still didn’t know how to be an artist.

I googled it. Google did not help.

And then I just started. I’d paint out the images in my head, disappearing women, angel-women (never men) watching landscapes, cruelty hidden as trees, shapes in the water that nobody would ever see but me.

A local artist that I love asked me about my oil technique and I said, “Oh, I’m too cheap for oil. I use acrylics.”

She gasped. I figured I was doing something wrong and didn’t post a photo of my art for a long, long time. I assumed that gasp meant that I was breaking the artist guidelines, the rules somehow.

Where could I find the rules? I wondered.

We all tend to look for the rules, the how-to-do-things when we first start out in our careers, our relationships, our lives.

“How to be a . . . ” is a pretty hot topic, right?

And it makes sense that we do this. We go to school. We learn that there are rules to abide by, ways to think, certain methods we should follow to solve math problems, right essays, grammar rules, behavior rules, etiquette rules.

Do well with the rules and you might get As, high marks, praise from the teacher.

But there is a certain joy that happens when you don’t know the rules, when you aren’t typing away every day on your masterpiece even though you don’t know about three-act structure, painting skies that look like envelopes drawn by three-year-olds, and singing songs that are completely, unintentionally offkey.

Art is like that.

Being brave is like that, too.

Art is when you see/read/hear/feel something and your emotions become bigger or even better? They become something you’ve never felt before. Art is something that pushes you beyond your own self. It can make you remember. It can make you think. It can make you forget to remember all over again. It can make you brave.

Because yes, there is a certain bravery to put yourself out there in your art. But there’s also just a bravery in putting yourself out there and living—living a whole, big, amazing life—a life where you’ll mess up massively and succeed hugely and fail and love and lust and fall down and sometimes not want to get back up again.

Being brave is determining for yourself who you are and not caring if you don’t fit the genes, if there aren’t artistic bones in your body. Being brave is doing things despite the rules. Being brave is being you. The real you. You can do that. I’m positive of it.

BE A PART OF OUR MISSION!

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?

JUST CLICK ON THIS LINK AND FIND OUT HOW WE CAN INTERACT MORE.

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 261,000 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 a new book out! Yay!

You can order now! It’s an adult mystery/thriller that takes place in Bar Harbor, Maine. Read an excerpt here!

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

TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.

Submit a form.

Elusive or Scared? When a Bird Lands on Your Shoulder.

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 28 Jul 2021 11:56:00 +0000

Our house is styled a bit like a farmhouse even though it’s in the middle of Bar Harbor, across the street from the YMCA’s back, dirt, and (until recently) unused parking lot, secure behind a row of tall ,cedar bushes that hide our porch, our windows, our selves.

There is a deep urge in me sometimes to just hermit myself and just do the work, to write, to cook, to paint, to help others make stories, and I’ll occasionally freeze in terror when someone knocks on the door or calls on the phone, or whenever anyone shocks me out of the realization that I am not alone.

“You are a bit elusive,” one of my friends told me when we were walking through town together, past the storefronts full of t-shirts and mugs, the ice cream shops and restaurants, the big mailbox full of free masks.

I said, “Oh. I don’t mean to be elusive. I’m just scared.”

The day was scented with salty ocean air and all the houses and stores that we passed had lights on and the hum of music and videos and laughter.

“Scared of what?” she asked.

I didn’t know.

But I did know that I didn’t want to be controlled by those fears, that I wanted to sit out on the front porch and talk to people as they passed by rather than hunkering in my backyard.

In our backyard, we have a couple of bird feeders that Shaun (my husband) put up and is in charge of. My parents divorced when I was three or so, and my mom was horribly afraid of birds—all birds, even cartoon birds. So, we never had bird feeders. And the crows cawing in the trees, the jays making the feeders rock with their weight, the graceful hovering of hummingbirds, and the tiny steps of finches thrill me like they are magic, forbidden magic.

My mother would not be able to go in our backyard.

All my life, I’ve wanted to have a bird land on my hand. I’m not sure where that urge came from. A passing romanticism? A proof that my soul was good enough for a bird to trust? A way to convince myself that I was linked to something bigger and more profound than I was?

Sometimes when I go out into our backyard, the birds startle and rush into flight and I coo to them, “No. I’m not a threat. I’m not a threat. I’m just here. . . . Um, we gave you the food in the bird feeders. Friendsies?”

The pigeons are usually the boldest and they’ll just watch me from the eaves of our house and sometimes they’ll coo back. A tiny trickle of adrenaline will rush through me and I’ll whisper, “Yes.”

Sometimes, I think that the backyard birds are elusive, but they probably just want to be safe like I do. But sometimes in that urge for safety we miss opportunities. We are stuck wondering: What is it to be whole?

It’s so much easier to answer: What is it to be broken?

When I was little, after my stepfather died, I would go out into the woods and flop in the tall ferns, smell the New Hampshire soil above the hard granite and stay absolutely still.

Waiting.

If I was still enough, I hoped, a bird would think I was just part of nature, that my cords were dirt and my K-Mart shirts were flowers or stones. If I was still enough, I was sure, a bird would come and land on me. We’d be—connected.

The world would go on all around me. Squirrels would hop from pine tree to spruce to oak to maple. Chipmunks would scurry along the ground. Birds would alight and gather. Deer would tiptoe by.

And I’d be waiting. Hoping a bird would come along, land in my small, upturned palm and claim me as part of it all—connected.

But I already was. I just didn’t realize it. A deer smelled my hair. A chipmunk scurried across my stomach. A squirrel would drop acorns near my feet. My spine rested against the ferns, the moss, the soil and for hours would feel the rustlings of a world beneath me, rooting. Connected.

Sometimes, my mom would come and find me and yell, “What are you doing out here? You’re going to make yourself sick.” She’d hurry me back home, complaining of the dirt on my legs, the flicks of moss, the ferns that had somehow twined themselves into my hair. “Look at your fingernails, Carrie! What am I going to do with you?”

I’d be ordered into the bath or shower, to clean my nails, wash my hair, and be just myself again.

To be whole is to be afraid, to long for safety, but also to stretch beyond it. To be an artist or a writer or even a person is to remember that we are not just individuals, scared all by ourselves, acting all elusive even when our hearts pine for connections. Mortality is terrifying sometimes. Pain? Not so fun. Fear and rejection and ridicule sucks.

Like the birds often fear us for our predatory natures, we can really fear each other, fear exposure to trolls, to negative-nellies, to grumpy people in restaurants, shops, or even our own Facebook, Twitter or TikTok pages and of bigger villains who do unspeakable things.

When we try to connect, we can be admonished by people who love us and look after us, people like my sweet, fearful mom who worried about the dirt I was collecting, the potential bugs, ants, ticks, predators.

But we’re bigger than those fears. We’re more than our resentments, our pain. We’re more than our flaws and egos. We are part of something huge and connected and divine, connections so massive that it’s hard to comprehend sometimes.

A bird can’t land on our hands unless we show them our palms.

We can’t heal or help or love other people unless they step outside.

This weekend, I went on the hammock in the backyard to read a book for work and less than a minute after I flopped down there, a sparrow alighted on my shoulder. She was barely on me for five seconds and her wings fluttered and beat the whole time.

But she was there.

It’s okay to be elusive sometimes, even fearful sometimes; it can help protect us, but we don’t want our fear to become our prison. We are bigger than that, our whole nature is bigger than that. We just have to reach out our hand and let the bird land in it and settle for and rejoice in a shoulder, and we have to be the bird and not always fly off or hide away, building our nests bigger and bigger until we can’t find the way out.

There is a way out if we want. We have to want it.

BE A PART OF OUR MISSION!

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?

JUST CLICK ON THIS LINK AND FIND OUT HOW WE CAN INTERACT MORE.

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 261,000 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 a new book out! Yay!

You can order now! It’s an adult mystery/thriller that takes place in Bar Harbor, Maine. Read an excerpt here!

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

TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.

Submit a form.

Naughty Transitions are A Writer's Best Friend

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 27 Jul 2021 14:18:00 +0000

There are certain traps us writers fall into.

We generalize.
We are too abstract.
We summarize.
We fail at transitions.

And a lot of those negative tendencies can quite easily be fixed when you think about them a bit more and learn to recognize them.

Scenes are a bit like connected shots in a movie. I think everyone from Blake Snyder to Robert Olen Butler has said this, but they’re right.

The scene is the basic element of your story. You want to stay in one point of view. Think of it like the camera lens zooming in.

In film, the shot is similar, right? You stay in one uninterrupted image for a shot. Right? Then you hook those shots together. A lot of filmmakers, like novelists, use transitions. They move us from one place to the other.

Butler defines a scene as “unified actions occurring in a single time or place.” Shots becomes scenes become sequences. There is a beginning, middle, and end to all of these. And then you can have long-shots, close-ups, super close-ups, etc.

What we want to do as writers is to use those tools as well (even in first person). We want the extreme close-up of deep POV, but then also to pull back sometimes and see the world and big-picture setting, and then to see that middle distance scene where the character is interacting.

When I write YA and adult genre, my first drafts are almost all deep POV and I have to go back in and add those wider shots, sensory details, setting.

When I write middle grade, my first drafts are almost all middle shots and long shots, and I have to go back and do those extreme close-ups and close ups and that’s okay.

What you want to do as a writer is to know where you tend to lean. Are you a big-picture, abstract, distancer? Are you she-who-is-only-into-close-ups? He who does no transitions and only black-out cuts?

And you want to layer in those elements that you don’t have for effect.

When you don’t do this, you risk one of two things. If you’re a big picture writer with that long-distance point of view, you risk never showing intimacy or immediacy.

If you’re an extreme close-up writer, you risk never showing the reader that bigger world or big picture and sometimes your story can lack setting so it’s all just talking heads and interior monologue.

Don’t be afraid to mix it up.

And don’t be afraid to mix up those transitions, those movements between scenes. Sometimes they can be big cuts and scene breaks and chapter breaks, but sometimes they can be softer and gentler transitional words like –

A week later (or whenever)
At the same time
Afterwards
For two weeks/days/minutes
Meanwhile
At night
The next day
The next night
For a month, I cried into the phone
In the morning
When the sun rose
When the sun set
The following Monday/night/morning
Months passed
Weeks passed
When we got back to the office
When they got back home
As the neared the date site

Then there are the phrases that show us a change in location:

They boarded the train
Down the street
Up on the third floor of the office
Over by the water cooler
Back in my living room
The motorcycle was situated
She ran fast through the dark alley
In the hall of the hospital
Outside on my front lawn

And so on.

Sometimes though, us writers tell our readers TOO much and it ends up sounding like script or stage directions. Those are things that slow the narrative down and just read a bit awkward or stilted.

It would be a sentence like:

When I arrived at the elevator to go up to the office on the fourth floor, I pushed the button to close the door and rode it to the floor.

Or:

They drove to the restaurant and waited in line for their table and she hummed a little bit.

Instead you just want the transition to get us there into the juicy part of the scene:

Twenty minutes later, they were sitting at their table, playing footsie under the fancy white linen tablecloth when the giant hedgehog with a man bun stormed through the wooden doors.

Places like the bad examples are not really needed because:

It doesn’t really add to the story.
It doesn’t really add to the character.
It’s unnecessary information.

You really only want things in your story that:

Show your character’s inner state/characterization/choices
Move the plot forward.
Set the reader in the moment

The key here is this: Don’t use the same transition every time. Don’t even use the same transition technique every time.

WRITING TIP OF THE POD

Mix it up. Good story is about variety. Do long shots. Close-ups. Location transitions, big cuts, fade-outs, scene transitions.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Don’t be boring in life either.

Carrie had the epiphany that she’s tried to fit in with other writers for far too long, clinging to the idea that she can’t be as weird and dorky as she is. No more, my friends. Her witch cackle is coming out.

LINKS WE MENTION IN OUR RANDOM THOUGHTS

Angel shots.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/bartender-explains-what-angel-shot-24605557

Nudist cruise.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/couples-anniversary-dinner-interrupted-nudist-24612029

Weird image on the CCTV.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/mum-calls-priest-bless-home-24611677

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.

Here’s the link. This week’s podcast is all about strange things people do for luck.

Drug your readers. Five ways to get readers to want to lick your character like they're the Bowling Ball Guy

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Wed, 21 Jul 2021 07:06:00 +0000

You’re writing a book. Yay! You send it out to people to read. That’s so brave! Look at you, you rockstar.

It feels awesome, right?

And then you hear from those readers: I don’t like your character. I don’t—I don’t know—connect with them?

When this happens, you are not allowed to:

Yell at those readers.
Threaten those readers.
Give up on that story.

Well, you could but you might go to jail and all your work on that novel will be for nothing.

So, it’s totally okay to:

Whine/cry for a second.
Be a little depressed about it.
Not give up on that story.

And what you want to do is figure out how to make readers like and connect with your main character super quickly.

So here goes. Five quick ways.

Gossip – Your readers want to know what makes your character tick, what makes them vulnerable. They want the deets, the gossip, right? They want to know something about your character that nobody else knows.
Goodness – Even if your character sucks a bit, you want to show the reader that they are someone that the reader wants to spend time with. Show that human worth, the fundamental goodness that’s somewhere in there. Make them actively do something good even if they are the devil.
Going all Angsty – The reason stories work is that the characters want something but they are conflicted about things inside. There’s got to be a bit of inner struggle. There has to be an outer struggle too. That struggle creates tension. Will they be okay? Will they get what they are searching for? What is holding them back?
Going into the Reasons – You don’t want to flood your stories with flashbacks. You don’t want to be Captain Info-dump, but you do want the reader to know that there is something that has made your character the angsty mess that they are and that something haunting stems from the past. The time before the story.
Goal!!! – I’ve already hinted at this, but your poor little character needs a goal, something they are striving for. The push towards that goal creates the tension.

Writer Chuck Wendig has said,

“You are the dealer; the character is the drug. The audience will do anything to spend time with a great character. We’re junkies for it. We’ll gnaw our own arms off to read just one more page with a killer character. It’s why sequels and series are so popular—we want to see where the character’s going. If you give us a great character, it becomes our only desire to lick him like he’s a hallucinogenic toad and take a crazy trip-ass ride where he has to go.”

Writing Tip of the Pod

Make your characters irresistible any way possible. Memorable characters are addictive.

Dog Tip for Life

Vulnerability is okay. It connects us. If nobody was vulnerable then nobody could be brave.

Links We Talk About In Random Thoughts

https://www.npr.org/2021/07/15/1016300636/new-jersey-man-mistakenly-cleans-the-wrong-house

https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/man-finds-160-bowling-balls-under-michigan-home

https://www.facebook.com/groups/242562694098557/

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.

Here’s the link. This week’s podcast is all about strange things people do for luck.

BE BRAVE FRIDAY - Blind Faith: Lessons from a Scruffy Ball of Fur

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Fri, 16 Jul 2021 14:06:59 +0000

On BE BRAVE FRIDAYS, we share other people’s stories (unedited) to build a community of bravery and inspiration.

Please let us know if you want to share your story with us and we’ll read it here and post it on our social media and website.

This life is too short to not be brave. We can do this together.

I wanted to share my be brave moment too! I have spent my whole life bouncing around jobs and never finding one that stuck. I thought teaching would be it but after this year, I already hate it. So I sat down and asked myself what I actually want in life. I want to write. I want to make money through my love of words. I want to create artwork, make cosplays, talk about books, basically anything that means I can work my own schedule and my own rules while fuelling my love of creation.
So that’s my be brave moment. I’ve allowed myself to finally voice my dreams and start to plan how to make them a reality instead of forcing myself to grind through whatever job I’m currently working because I’m so scared of what people will think of me being a failure again.
I’m absolutely terrified. But I’m also excited for the first time in what feels like forever. I may fail, but I may also soar. I won’t know until I take the leap. And that leap is happening in 8 days
Kirsty Elizabeth

Blind Faith: Lessons from a Scruffy Ball of Fur
Just after our family moved to Europe, our sweet cat Muffy passed away. We were all devastated, especially her sister Squeakers. That’s how we found ourselves at a local home for wayward animals, adopting a kitten. “To keep Squeakers company,” we said, fooling no one.

We arrived with my multi-lingual mother-in-law Denise in tow to help interpret, and we met four adorable, orphaned kittens clearly meant for us. Unable to pick just one, we brought them all home, to Squeaker’s abject horror. Within hours everyone had cozied in, save Squeakers, protesting adamantly from her hiding spot under the couch.

Intent on helping further, we donated cases of food to the overwhelmed center and, in the process, met the center’s latest arrivals. Lots of frisky animals ran up asking for our attention.

Denise was focused on something else, but we were too distracted to notice.
I should mention here that Denise is legally blind. One eye is barely usable since a botched cataract operation, while the other blacked out after a stroke. All of which has left her depressed. Tilting her head this way and that, she manages some meager vision. And as we made the food delivery, she was intently focused on the grubby, orange ball of fur huddling in the corner.

Asking what it was she was seeing, Denise learned it was a new arrival, a gravely ill kitten with wounds in both eyes. The director explained the kitten was an injured sibling of the same litter we had taken home found cowering nearby. We couldn’t believe what we were hearing. Our gang of four had another sister — and one who needed immediate care. Needless to say, we grabbed the blind, sick kitten and raced her to a veterinary clinic.

There we learned that her injuries were grave and her life was in danger. If she managed to live through the trauma, said the vet, the kitten might retain some vision. They cautioned us because the kitten seemed to have already given up. And so we began a series of treatments and operations we hoped would regenerate the health and sight of a very sick kitty.

Months passed . . .

We call her 3P. Piccola Peste Preziosa in Italian, which translates to Petite Precious Pest. She is a scamp and has more guts than the rest of her siblings combined. She adores Squeakers, who loves her dearly, all the while pretending not to. She is healthy and happy, recovering total vision in one eye and partial in the other. Her once grubby, malnourished self is now a blaze of beautiful, dappled cinnamon. And, what’s more, she has given Denise a reason to live, and shown Squeakers how to love again, teaching by example how to dance with courage and dignity despite the odds.

What Psychology Tells US

Learned Helplessness is a powerful psychological concept first observed in animals and later applied to human behavior. Experiments have shown that when repeatedly subjected to situations beyond their control, animals fairly quickly adapted to the adverse conditions and subsequently failed to even attempt to escape the negative situations.

In a nutshell, it explains how we get stuck, how we fall into defining ourselves by our least common denominator, how we let temporary limitations become permanent handicaps, how we fail to believe in ourselves above all. It explains why we don’t try, try again when at first we don’t succeed. Just as its name implies, we learn that we are helpless to control our fate and thus we stop acting in our own best interests, becoming victims of our own self-limiting thoughts. That is, until we find a way out of that dark tunnel. Until we find hope.

Viktor Frankl, an Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist and concentration camp survivor, authored Man’s Search for Meaning, which, in its original form translates more exactly to Nevertheless, Say Yes to Life. In these memoirs, he explored the importance of finding meaning in life despite external circumstances, no matter how brutal. Frankl insists, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

This lesson came to us in the form of a scruffy ball of fur, who said yes to life and in turn enriched all of ours.
Donna Roberts

BE A PART OF OUR MISSION!

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?

JUST CLICK ON THIS LINK AND FIND OUT HOW WE CAN INTERACT MORE.

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 261,000 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 a new book out! Yay!

You can order now! It’s an adult mystery/thriller that takes place in Bar Harbor, Maine. Read an excerpt here!

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

TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.

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Writers are Like Dust Mites Five Important Things Writers Need To Know

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Tue, 13 Jul 2021 10:37:00 +0000

So, here on the podcast we try to be helpful sometimes.

I know! I know! It’s hard to believe, but we thought this week, we’d give you a little insight about the writing life and writers. And lay down some truths.

WE WRITERS ARE EVERYWHERE LIKE DUST MITES

There are a butt ton of posts on what writers need to know. And you know why that is? Because there are a lot of us.

Chuck Wendig wrote, “The internet is 55 percent porn and 45 percent writers.”

And that means we aren’t alone.

But it also means that we should freaking support each other. Don’t have your whole Twitter feed be “buy my book, buy my book, sweet mother of all things holy buy my book.” Writing is communication that’s actually two-way. We write. Others read. Sometimes they write back.

It’s good to remember that writing isn’t a solo gig.

NO TWO WRITERS MAKE IT THE SAME WAY

Well, they might. But everyone’s journey is different.

I got a publishing contract one year after entering my MFA program at Vermont College and 18 months after quitting my newspaper editor job. I was lucky. But I was also working on my skills.

I have clients and friends who worked for ten years before breaking into traditional publishing. They are great authors. It just took them a bit longer to get there. But they might stay publishing longer than I do. Or not. Who knows?

That’s the thing. We all take different times and routes to get our books out there and get readers.

Similarly, in the world of independent publishing, there are people whose books are absolutely awful making $10,000 a month and some whose amazing and brilliant books are making $5 a month if that.

The takeaway here? The writing world is weird as hell.

PEOPLE CAN BE MEAN TO YOU

Writers (much like superstars like Chris Evans or Beyonce) have lovers and haters. Sadly, we don’t have quite the support team to boost up our egos after someone has trashed us or our book or rejected it before we’re published.

You’ve got to believe in yourself enough to put on your own Band-aids. You don’t want to be a hardened butt face and lose the beautiful empathy that makes you a good writer and person, but you do want to be able to survive.

IT’S A FREE-RANGE LIFE

As a full-time writer, you often don’t get a steady paycheck.

If you self-publish, your earnings depend on finding readers. In a traditionally published world, you get paid an advance on your royalties and then after, you get checks (usually twice a year) if you earn out that advance.

That’s a little harrowing for some of us who grow up thinking that steady paychecks and 401k investment plans are the thing.

YOU HONESTLY SHOULD LOVE WHAT YOU DO

I see so many writers complaining about writing and I want to hug them up and give them some ramen or maybe an ice cream sundae. Look. If you hate writing, don’t write. Your life is too short to shove yourself in front of a computer and pound keys. You want your life to be happy. Do things that make you happy. And it’s okay if writing isn’t one of those things right now, you know? You can find a different way to connect, to tell stories, and influence the world, okay?

WRITING TIP OF THE POD

All combined, what we’re saying is this: Support the other dust mites, don’t be a dust mite unless you love it and be okay with being in charge of your life despite the harrowing finances of being a dust mite and that insecurity. Do what you love.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Your journey is your own. You might be a dog who walks a straight line or you might be a dog who meanders around telephone poles and trees. Don’t worry about how the other dogs live. Just 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 “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.

Here’s the link. This week’s podcast is all about strange things people do for luck.

Resources From This Episode

https://news.sky.com/story/fathers-day-thousands-of-funny-fathers-submitted-their-best-dad-joke-this-was-the-winner-12336765

https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2021/07/08/serval-captured-Atlanta-Georgia-Kristine-Frank/5981625770896/

BE BRAVE FRIDAY - Confronting Anxiety and Riding Bikes

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar — Fri, 09 Jul 2021 13:45:10 +0000

On BE BRAVE FRIDAYS, we share other people’s stories (unedited) to build a community of bravery and inspiration.

Please let us know if you want to share your story with us and we’ll read it here and post it on our social media and website.

This life is too short to not be brave. We can do this together.

Also, a super shout-out to Chantal for being brave and doing the thing that I, Carrie, probably really need to do. You’ve got this, my brilliant and amazing and shiny friend. I’m so proud of you.

I started with a therapist to finally get help with my severe illness anxiety disorder. We had our second session yesterday and I’m feeling really hopeful I can finally get control of it.

Chantal Watts

I’ve mastered three traditional set dances this year, learning them mostly over zoom! White Blanket, The Three Sea Captains, and King of the Fairies. These are the really traditional dances, and they are HARD.
I’m 44 years old and have what is probably rheumatoid arthritis in my legs, but tomorrow and Saturday I’ll be performing with my Irish Dance school for the eighth year! I never did dance as a kid for more than a few lessons, because I was so bad at it, but at age 36 I decided to take a class for fun when my kids did, and now I put my introverted self into a variety of spangly costumes and Riverdance my lil heart out! I’m not great. It hurts like a BITCH the next morning because of the arthritis, but I DO IT ANYWAY.

Jessica Day George

I’ll turn 45 years old next week, and I just learned how to drive a motorcycle (and got my license) in May!

Teresa Cole

I put my first completed book out there and I’m waiting on 4 beta readers to get back to me…

Melissa Lyn Sawmiller

And finally, Fiona!

BE A PART OF OUR MISSION!

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?

JUST CLICK ON THIS LINK AND FIND OUT HOW WE CAN INTERACT MORE.

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 261,000 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 a new book out! Yay!

You can order now! It’s an adult mystery/thriller that takes place in Bar Harbor, Maine. Read an excerpt here!

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

TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.

Submit a form.