Hate Hard, the Beer Poems, and Building the Life You Want

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

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.

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!

Subscribe