#carriejonesauthor

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Gabby the Dog's Wednesday Inspiration

Gabby the Dog’s Wednesday Inspiration

Holding onto love is like hearing the universe sing.

Believing in yourself is adding the melody to the tune.

Open the sliding glass door. Let’s go love and sing today. No matter what happens. Let’s embrace the love, share it, make change with it.

Love,

Gabby the dog

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Finding Strength in Words: How to Write Strong Sentences

Finding Strength in Words: How to Write Strong Sentences

As we do this podcast, the United States is full of protests and pain, Covid-19 is still happening, people are being hurt, people are dying. So, it’s a lot to take in and a lot to process and worry about so for this podcast we’re going to focus on a simple writing tip. 

Ready?

Story is made up of sentences. You want your sentences to be strong. Strong sentences stem from their beginnings.…

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Writing Without Labels

I was just doing a visiting residency at a great school in Vermont and a seventh grader said to his teacher, “Okay, Boomer.”

Full disclosure: The teacher was thirty-six years old.

Second important detail: The teacher gasped and said, “How old do you think I am?”

The teacher gave me panicked eyes.

The next day the teacher told me that the principal had decided that “Okay, Boomer”…

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Why Manuscript Critiques are Like First Dates and What Exactly is an Editorial Letter

Why Manuscript Critiques are Like First Dates and What Exactly is an Editorial Letter

I am a firm believer that humans should help other humans. A couple of people have asked me about manuscript critiques.

So, I’m going to take a quick moment and explain about manuscript critiques and how it relates to dating.

BIG QUESTION NUMBER ONE: 

What tip can you give to best approach another writer’s manuscript in critique? Here’s the thing: Critiques are like mini-relationships. 

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How Not to Procrastinate And Go After Your Dreams.

How Not to Procrastinate And Go After Your Dreams.

Full confession here:

I’m not a person who procrastinates although a lot of my writing friends and writing students do. I started wondering about that. 

Why Don’t I Procrastinate?

Then I realized I don’t procrastinate because I’m really lucky and every day I remember just how lucky I am to get to be in a world of words, a world where I get to create story and help other people create…

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Am I the Butt Face? How to Make (and be) a Likeable Character

Am I the Butt Face? How to Make (and be) a Likeable Character

Why Do People Suck So Much?

One of the biggest things you hear in the world of writing is to make your character likeable, which is great and all but gives you two questions: 

How. How do you make your characters likable?

How do you make your characters likable when in real life people suck so much? There’s an entire Reddit thread called “Am I the A-Hole?” 

We talk about the second question…

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What I'm Up To - Art, Books, Editing, Coaching, Posting on Patreon and Medium and the Bar Harbor Story

So, here’s a quick summary of what I’m up to right now because I realized that I tend to fail to forget to do that. And if I don’t talk about it then you all won’t know about it.

The problem is that I was raised where you don’t talk about what you’re doing because that was considered gauche. Now we consider it marketing.

MEDIUM

I’ve started blogging once a week on MEDIUM because:

I…

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Passive Aggressive Much? And How to Become More Awesome in Just 30 Minutes a Day

Passive Aggressive Much? And How to Become More Awesome in Just 30 Minutes a Day

Over on the random thought part of the podcast, we hear about Carrie being passive-aggressive at the campground bathroom, Shaun sing, and random people at Smokey’s Barbecue and Lobster.

But here is the more intellectual stuff. Um. Slightly more intellectual stuff?

This guy Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book Outliersand in it he outlines his belief that if you practice something for 10,000…

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Imaginary Land and the Parallel Zone

Imaginary Land and the Parallel Zone

The awesome Megan Crew once posted about this imaginary world she created with her friend in fifth grade. It involved unicorns and stuff. It made me wonder how many of us do this?

Confession Time

When my best friend Jackie and I were in seventh and eighth and (a-hem) ninth grades, we created two entirely imaginary worlds and the very complicated love stories that went with them. We…

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I am a distinguished alumna! No... Seriously!

I am a distinguished alumna! No… Seriously!

A few years ago (in June) there was a Vermont College of Fine Arts party at American Library Association’s conference that I was completely stressed about? It was at Tami Lewis Brown’s House. Katherine Paterson was there and I had no idea what I was supposed to say if I actually met Katherine Paterson.

I mean, what do you say to someone who wrote THE BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA?

1. You made me…

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Facing Your Fears

I am afraid of showing my art, but I did it - finally - in such a public way. Facing your fears is scary, but cool and amazing things can happen when you do.

I make a big deal about being brave. That’s because I have a lot of anxiety about certain things:

LIST OF BIG THINGS I HAVE MAJOR ANXIETY ABOUT

My voice

Being in videos

Showing art

Dead clowns reanimating.

People I love dying.

Anyway, I’m pretty open about the things that make me nervous and over on Facebook, I’ve been having Be Brave Fridays where I do something that I am uncomfortable about…

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Random Things People Said to Me at My Dad's Funeral

Random Things People Said to Me at My Dad’s Funeral

My dad died a few years ago. He was an awesome hobbit dad. He lasted less than two weeks from his lung cancer diagnosis (which happened on the day of the Boston Marathon bombing).

My mom’s side of the family is known for having no chill, for being quick-tempered. My dad’s side is known for having absolutely no filters. That makes for an interesting funeral when you get all those people…

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Finding Hope Despite Everything

Finding Hope Despite Everything

The clunky sound of metal hitting metal makes all the customers at The Wilderness turn to look out the restaurant’s big front glass windows and onto the Main Street of Colebrook, New Hampshire.

The waitress sprints out the front door, runs to one of the vehicle, which had been backing out of a parking space and into the path of a big, black truck that resembles almost all the big, black…

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When You Don't Have to Say Anything - The Magic of Step Dads and Living From Love Not Fear

When You Don’t Have to Say Anything – The Magic of Step Dads and Living From Love Not Fear

There was blizzard on the same day as my 11thbirthday party. 

            My mom was packing back and forth across our cramped kitchen’s linoleum floors as one mother after another called to cancel because of the road conditions, the wind, the snow billowing down. The cabinets were old pine, so knotty that I’d use my fingers to draw faces in between the dark circles, connecting the blackness…

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How To Deal With Rejection

How To Deal With Rejection

I’ve been thinking a lot about rejection lately because I’m teaching some amazingly brilliant writers at the Writing Barn who haven’t been published yet. And they are talent. Their stories should be published.

And I found one of my earliest blog posts when I wrote about a story getting rejected. It’s below.

Well, the fat cat sits with her bum on my manuscript again, which can only mean…

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Seven funky ways to start your novel

Seven funky ways to start your novel

I’m super lucky to not only be writing my own stories, but I’m mentoring a high school student right now who is an awesome human. This week, we talked a lot about how we get blocked when we’re starting a story, which got me thinking.

Spoiler: Me thinking is not necessarily a good thing.

Darcy Pattisonhas some great tips on her blog, but because I am easily bored I like to take things and…