A few years ago, Carnegie Mellon’s Stacy Kish wrote a piece about the politics of synonyms.

I remember something coming out about this when Obama first ran for president and how word choice and style resonated in different parties. I can’t find that now, which is so sad, but I’ll keep looking.

For writers—no matter what your political party—I think this is really helpful when we’re creating our stories because the words we choose, what our characters focus on and how they talk about those things can really reflect their:

• character

• upbringing

• focus

• finances

• location

• job

• and so much more, honestly.

When we look at the word choices of different parties, we can also take a deeper dive

It’s easy to get into the weeds with this.

For instance, Kish writes, “A team of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found people are more successful at identifying language associated with Republican speech than Democratic speech patterns. The results are available in the February 11 issue of the journal PLOS One.”

She quotes one of the studies contributors, Danny Oppenheimer as saying, “"[Political] ideology is a hidden variable, you can't tell by looking at someone what party they identify with, but many of these invisible categories are still detectable based on linguistic cues."

They found people could pick political party participation by the words chosen. They looked at things such as:

"financial versus monetary,"

"colleague versus friend"

"folks versus people."

Cool, right?

For us writers, though, it’s the study’s conclusion that is helpful and shows us the power of the words we put in our characters’ mouths.

"The language we use is predictive, and humans are amazing at picking up on the subtle social cues of language," said Oppenheimer. "In a world where we are trying to create inclusion, if there are simple linguistic cues that we can [use] to make people feel less ostracized then that could be generally helpful to move toward these social goals."

For politicians (and us writers), language is a way to win over people’s hearts and their minds.

For Obama (I finally found some links) that was done via word choice a lot.

As Linton Weeks of NPR writes:

The informal language, Obama used, was a choice. It was a choice to connect. He tweaked it (see first link) to connect with different demographics, too.

I see these sort of choices all the time. And they reflect things.

Let’s look at just two different newspaper ledes about the same topic:

One:

And two:

Or this one:

Or two

Just by reading the stories and comparing them we can see slight variations in both confidence and also focus, right? But there’s also a difference in word choice and sentence/paragraph lengths.

Interesting, right?

I’ve written a lot about this, but here’s an excerpt from an old post.

A long time ago (think the late 1980s), there was a mystery writer, Rita Mae Brown who wrote a writing craft book Starting from Scratch.

Some of it is still very 1980s mindset and might make you shudder and some of it is pretty brilliant.

One of her chapters is all about how words are “separate units of consciousness.”

Brown writes, “Language is the road map of culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going. A study of the English language reveals a dramatic history and an astonishing versatility. It is the language of survivors, of conquerors, of laughter.”

Deep stuff, right?

Brown believes that writers don’t need to just have life philosophies, but also language philosophies.

“A word leaves a smoke trail behind it that curls into the past,” she says.

We think of words as fixed. Instead, she says, they are pendulums: moving, swinging, shimmering, somethings static, but not usually.

Words are our first tool as writers, right? Each word we use creates associations.

Some of them are associations most people in a culture have.

• McDonald’s=golden arches=french fries.

Some of them are associations that are deeply personal.

• McDonald’s=golden arches=french fries=throwing up orange juice in Paige’s dad’s car=him yelling=spittle=bad, bad, bad.

Each word you pick matters. Each word you write down means something. A tweak, she says, changes that meaning.

• My love is not my adoring

• Snow covered the abatjour has a different feel than snow covered the skylight.

• I am so bumfuzzled feels wild. I am so confused? Not so much.

Words, Brown says are “separate units of consciousness” because they hook into our minds, our memories, create associations.

LINKS TO LEARN MORE

https://daily.jstor.org/barack-obama-and-the-nommo-tradition-of-afrocentric-orality/

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/01/24/us/politics/0124-words.html

https://www.npr.org/2009/02/11/100525275/the-art-of-language-obama-style

https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2021/february/oppenheimer-politics.html

QUICK NOTE.

This blog/newsletter/Substack/whatever will always be free to read now, but it’s also part of how I pay my mortgage.

If a paid subscription is way too big an ask, I’m always thankful for help buying dog treats.

Or, honestly, just sharing that this Substack exists is super cool.

I usually send these emails twice a week.

*My WRITE BETTER NOW posts also come one to two times a week if you sign up for them, too, which you should.

And COMFORTING is where I just have no filter at all and am totally schmaltzy is here. That’s once a week or so.

Note: I will not be terribly, perfectly, grammatically correct.

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So, I gave up on posting on social media last week. I will likely go back. Mostly because my cousin, Khalilah, said that you can’t dim yourself because of haters.

And she is right.

“Haters got to hate” or whatever that saying is, but you got to do you, too.

In my life, I’ve given up a lot and let haters win before bouncing back and continuing on. I think maybe that we all do.

But when you publicly criticize people, even for something small (or maybe especially something small), it can create a ripple effect. People pile on sometimes. And that can happen even when the initial person was kind and trying to be helpful and working from a good place in their heart.

This isn’t a call to not make people accountable—or especially politicians or those in power—it’s just about simple kindness that happens between regular humans out and about in the world.

Joy Harjo, the poet, believes that every bit of art has a legacy that is historic, familial and cultural. Nothing, she says, “exists within a vacuum.”

Connections are what happens when we experience anything.

“How do we get here? Where are we going?” reads material from her master class.

“Everyone faces these questions, but we each have different ways of asking them and seeking answers. Your identity, your cultural background, your beliefs, and your constructs are unique to you—and your words will reflect this truth. ‘Each human is a complex, contradictory story,’ Joy says. ‘Each is a zigzag of emotional design and ancestral architecture.”

When talking to poets, Harjo often mentions plotting their creative lineages, writing, “by finding your own poetry ancestors, you can better understand the spirit that drives your passion.”

Now, obviously, this isn’t just about poets. It’s about any art form. But I think it’s beyond art too. The links between us and those who have gone before us and those who simultaneously exist as/when we do are great and many and varied.

But you can take her step for plotting that lineage and use it for plotting your art or your self. And by self I mean, who you want to be in this life that you are living right now.

Here is Harjo’s exercise for poets.

Now, look at those questions and replace ‘poet’ with ‘person’ and replace ‘want to write’ with ‘want to live.’ I think the answers might wow you.

Another exercise she has is just to make a list (no annoying beginning, middle and end; no need for a conclusion) and write “what comes to mind when you think of boundaries in your life”

You should try to just write whatever pops into your head as it relates to you, your life, your experience.

Then write a second list for ‘points of connection.’ What turning points and junctures and crossroads have made your life move in certain directions.

Harjo herself references Lorde, but Lorde’s poem is such a good example of this connection aspect of poetry and lists and explorations that Harjo’s exercise compels me to think about.

Audre Lorde’s “A Litany for Survival” begins:

Let me know if you do these exercises, okay? I hope you’re having a tremendous week and thank you for being here with me.

“How do we get here? Where are we going?”

I want it to be someplace good, someplace together.

LINKS

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/147275/a-litany-for-survival

https://www.joyharjo.com/

QUICK NOTE.

This blog/newsletter/Substack/whatever will always be free to read now, but it’s also part of how I pay my mortgage. Yes! I know! I have a mortgage. Very adult of me.

If a paid subscription is way too big an ask, I’m always thankful for help buying dog treats.

Or, honestly, just sharing that this Substack exists is super cool.

I usually send these emails twice a week.

*My WRITE BETTER NOW posts also come one to two times a week if you sign up for them, too, which you should.

And COMFORTING is where I just have no filter at all and am totally schmaltzy is here. That’s once a week or so.

Note: I will not be terribly, perfectly, grammatically correct.

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First a quick poll:

Okay. Now that the very important survey is done, a quick ramble about setting.

Writers, you need that setting.

You need it with your whole heart.

You might not want it. You might not be good at it, but setting is like a good fart. Sometimes you have to expel a little gas out of your rectum in order to be your best.

Similarly, you want to have some setting in your story to make that story be its best.

If you are a pretentious writer and anti-setting, you might want to say, “I want readers to be able to imagine the story is in their town or city or part of the world and setting details will ruin that,” but that’s not going to work at all.

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 these 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.

And you know what happens when a reader floats in the sky? The reader drifts away.

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. So be specific.

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.

A rabid dog cornering you in a car isn’t as scary when you are in Boston in modern times and have a working cellphone. That’s because there are a ton of cops there and animal control officers, unlike a small town in Maine.

Meeting a super-wealthy potential mother-in-law in her mansion isn’t usually quite as scary when she’s just the mom next door in her split-level.

You want to anchor your readers in that setting every time it changes. So, yes, you’ll want to fart out that setting multiple times in your story. You can have a big city for your story—Bar Harbor, Maine (Just kidding! So small town, population 5,000.)—and a smaller setting—my office. And once you show us readers where we are, you want to make sure to slowly reveal aspects of setting rather than shoving it all down our throats at once in the first paragraph. Too much gas at once often pushes the modern reader far, far away, holding their noses and writing reviews that say, “THIS STINKS!”

There is a balance here.

To recap:

Setting is like a fart. Even if you don’t like to write it, it has to happen.

Without setting, your readers float away or are just in the dark, confused, lost, untethered.

Setting is important for the characters in your story. It gives them something to play off of, interact with, it informs who they are, it shows who they are, it creates who they are (I am currently a woman of the comma splice), and it gives your story atmosphere and sometimes plot.

Ground your characters whenever the setting changes.

Reveal that setting slowly.

Whew.

And please, if you have time, fill out the survey. :)

QUICK NOTE.

This blog/newsletter/Substack/whatever will always be free to read now, but it’s also part of how I pay my mortgage.

If a paid subscription is way too big an ask, I’m always thankful for help buying dog treats.

Or, honestly, just sharing that this Substack exists is super cool.

I usually send these emails twice a week.

*My WRITE BETTER NOW posts also come one to two times a week if you sign up for them, too, which you should.

And COMFORTING is where I just have no filter at all and am totally schmaltzy is here. That’s once a week or so.

Note: I will not be terribly, perfectly, grammatically correct.

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Right now in my state, in the race for senator so much money is being spent on 25 negative ads that it’s actually more than the $46 million our state gets for heating assistance.

That’s a lot of money.

And it’s a lot of negative ads.

I was once an elected official. I know! I know! Shocking. The biggest negative ad in our local race was the other party saying I should take my hair out of pigtails and be more serious.

Obviously, that did not happen.

A long time ago, I ran for state rep and happily lost. However, it was one of the biggest things that made me a braver person. I know! I know! I don’t present as very brave and I’m still working on it.

Since people keep thinking that I’m running for things (I am definitely not and rooting on the people who are brave enough to do that.), I thought I’d share this story . Some of you may have heard it before. Apologies.

Before I start let me say that my favorite part of running for office was doing doors, which is where you knock on people’s doors and say hello.

This was because:

1. I got to see people I hadn’t seen in a while and hear their stories and listen to them, which is one of my favorite things to do.

2. I got to meet new people and if I was lucky, I got to hear how they thought about things.

Let me also say that my least favorite part of running for office was doing doors.

This was because:

1. I always felt intrusive and I’m a pretty shy person who doesn’t like randomly surprising people (potential introverts) by knocking on their doors.

2. Sometimes people would spit on me (just one) and sometimes I would see a penis that I did not want to see. This is that story.

Part of how you get people to vote for you is you go meet them. This requires knocking on their doors, petting their dogs, and smiling a lot while you introduce yourself. I like smiling. I love dogs. My favorite part was meeting the dogs. I like meeting the people, too, but, like I said, I felt terribly intrusive knocking on their doors.

One of the towns in my district was Otis. You had to drive about 20 minutes from where I lived to get there. There were 596 people in Otis. They are either super rich and live on the lake or they are extremely poor. They are also pretty conservative. And though I was pretty moderate at the time, I presented as super liberal. It was highly doubtful that I was going to win Otis.

Spoiler: I think I did win Otis. Thank you, many years later, Otis.

So, I went up to this trailer on the Otis Road in Otis and there were all these piles of dog poop on the stoop. I stepped around the dog poop. I tried not to breathe in, and I knocked on the door. I didn’t hear anything so I started to write on my flyer (we call this a palm card), “SORRY THAT I MISSED YOU.”

Heavy footsteps pounded through the trailer.

There were two doors. The screen door, which had a plastic bottom and a glass top. Then there was the inside door. The inside door opened about six inches and there was this guy ... this really REALLY white guy (undead levels of pale) and he was not wearing a shirt and he had about five long, black stringy hairs in the center of his chest. He didn’t make eye contact.

Me: Oh. I am so sorry. Did I wake you up?
Pale Guy with the Naked Chest: No. It’s cool.
Me: Um. I’m Carrie Jones. I’m running for the State House of Representatives.…

I noticed he was still not looking me in the eye.

Me: Are you sure I didn’t wake you up?
Pale Guy with the Naked Chest: Yeah. You’re running?
Me: Blah. Blah. Blah. Here’s my flyer.
Pale Guy with the Naked Chest (opens door, takes flyer): Great.
Me (stepping closer to point out my phone number on the back of the flyer which Pale Guy with the Naked Chest is holding waist high): My number is—Oh!

I had suddenly realized that Pale Guy with the Naked Chest was wearing very large boxers. There was a gaping hole in the very large boxers. There was a half-awake worm-like creature in the gaping hole in Pale Guy with the Naked Chest’s boxers.

I wondered if I should scream. Stephen King novels flashed into my brain.

Then I realized that no, it was not a half-awake worm in Pale Guy with the Naked Chest’s boxers, it was, actually, a half-awake penis in Pale Guy with the Naked Chest’s boxers.

It was my first campaign penis. It was not my last.

WHY MEETING NEW PEOPLE MATTERS

The thing is that meeting new people (despite those awkward moments) matters. Even my socially awkward, shy self knows that. And it matters even when you’re not running for office.

And there’s two big aspects of why that I wanted to quickly hit on.

IT MAKES YOU MORE CONFIDENT

I say that I’m shy. I present as somewhat shy before I get anywhere, but it’s really almost a bit like stage fright. Most of the time, I turn into a raging extrovert when I actually do get to the event or party or door to an absolute stranger’s house, but as I was telling a lovely book store owner this week, I get really anxious before I step inside.

And the thing is that I know each time I push myself out of that stage fright, I get braver.

Sean Kim writes about this in the Thought Catalog saying,

”It takes guts to meet new people and actually keep the conversation going long enough to become a new friend. This type of practice isn’t just a good life skill, it can also help in other areas as well. For instance, when you are speaking to new potential clients at work or trying to convince your children that they should listen to you, being able to be convincing and persuasive is a skill. Like any other skill, it must be practiced in order for you to get good.”

---

IT OPENS YOU TO NEW IDEAS

When you meet someone who thinks similarly to you? It can be inspiring. It can make you think more deeply about things you’re passionate about and you get energized. Shaun and I take walks sometimes to just do this. But we know each other since, you know, we’re married. :)

When I meet someone new who is all excited about something I’m excited about? It’s magic.

But this is true about people who aren’t the same psychographics as me.

The Greater Good writes,

“When people are brought together to solve problems in groups, they bring different information, opinions, and perspectives.

“This makes obvious sense when we talk about diversity of disciplinary backgrounds—think again of the interdisciplinary team building a car. The same logic applies to social diversity. People who are different from one another in race, gender, and other dimensions bring unique information and experiences to bear on the task at hand. A male and a female engineer might have perspectives as different from one another as an engineer and a physicist—and that is a good thing.

“Research on large, innovative organizations has shown repeatedly that this is the case.

“For example, business professors Cristian Deszö of the University of Maryland and David Ross of Columbia University studied the effect of gender diversity on the top firms in Standard & Poor’s Composite 1500 list, a group designed to reflect the overall U.S. equity market. First, they examined the size and gender composition of firms’ top management teams from 1992 through 2006. Then they looked at the financial performance of the firms. In their words, they found that, on average, “female representation in top management leads to an increase of $42 million in firm value.” They also measured the firms’ “innovation intensity” through the ratio of research and development expenses to assets. They found that companies that prioritized innovation saw greater financial gains when women were part of the top leadership ranks.”

Yes, you may stumble sometimes, meet a half-awake worm, but it’s mostly good. Usually. Just don’t look down.

Also, try to stay away from those negative ads.

QUICK NOTE.

This blog/newsletter/Substack/whatever will always be free to read now, but it’s also part of how I pay my mortgage.

If a paid subscription is way too big an ask, I’m always thankful for help buying dog treats.

Or, honestly, just sharing that this Substack exists is super cool.

I usually send these emails twice a week.

*My WRITE BETTER NOW posts also come one to two times a week if you sign up for them, too, which you should.

And COMFORTING is where I just have no filter at all and am totally schmaltzy is here. That’s once a week or so.

Note: I will not be terribly, perfectly, grammatically correct.

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Here you go, a super easy hint to sound like you aren’t AI, but also to make happier readers and better stories/essays/anything.

Sentence length is all about flat writing, really. You know, when you feel like there’s just something wrong on your page, but you can’t quite figure out what it is?

One of those things that can be making your writing feel blah is actually just the construction of your sentences. It can make your brilliant, amazing story super boring.

Mixing It Up

No writer (except those of standardized test questions) wants to bore their reader. And monotony? It can be boring. When all your sentences and paragraphs are the same length?

Well, the reader stops paying attention.

Like here:

That’s incredibly flat, right? And it’s an extreme example, but a lot of us do this with our sentences without realizing it. Like here . . .

Oh, the similar construction! Right?

Compare that to this:

It’s really different feeling.

Let’s start with sentences. If we want to create a dichotomy here, we can say that long sentences and short sentences are the two main groupings.

What Do Those Two Sentence Styles Tend to Do?

• Short sentences pop. They slam into you. They grab your attention. They are impactful, but too many is really annoying.

• Longer sentences meander into their truths, allowing you to ponder ideas, characters, events as you go on a journey of discovery and understanding. Too many of these, though, make some readers leave. This is especially true for reluctant readers who don’t like big blocks of text.

The average sentence length in an American novel is like 13 words or something? Wild, right?

GO LOOK!

Sometimes a good exercise is to look at your own page and count up how many words are in each of your sentences and see if there is a pattern. Or just look at the average.

If you look at a passage of your own story, it can be really fun to figure out the rhythm that’s going on there. How many words are in each sentence? How many syllables?

As the creator of your story, you get to control how fast or slow the reader moves through your lines, pages, and paragraphs. Using different amounts of words in each sentence allows you to play with the pace of the story and influence your readers.

Why would you ever want to slow the pace?

• You’re digging in and focusing on the emotion of the moment.

• If things are super difficult to understand, it gives the readers’ brains a time to catch up.

• It makes things a bit more suspenseful.

Being understandable is a really big deal. We want our readers to get what we’re saying, right? That’s because writing is communication.

Don’t be afraid to slow the pace when it helps build up the emotion, the suspense or the clarity of the action.

Onto the Paragraph

It’s a bit of the same thing with the paragraph. I was once dinged because a reviewer on Goodreads didn’t like short paragraphs, but that’s totally fine not to like them! But it’s important for us authors to be able to use them when we want to.

So important.

See what I did up there. The same goes for the long paragraph. While filling your story with 5,70 page-long paragraph may seem very MFA program of you, it’s not necessarily the best idea to keep your readers engaged.

We want all the paragraphs to fit into a story and we want to be able to vary the lengths of those paragraphs when we need to.

What even is a paragraph?

That’s a pretty good question for those of us who don’t remember back to grade school grammar lessons. A paragraph isn’t meant to be about length, but about thought. The sentences that make up that paragraph should move forward towards a destination.

Fowler wrote in Modern English Usage,

Paragraphs allow the reader to have white space on the page.

What even is white space?

White space is, of course, the bits of the page or the website that aren’t filled with actual words. The white space allows our brains to rest, dream, ponder, and make connections with the words on the page. How much white space (and how many and what length of paragraphs) you should have can vary by genre, age-group, reading level, author intention and so many other things. Don’t worry about that too much.

Just vary your paragraph lengths.

Hint: The long paragraph followed by the super-short paragraph is really good at creating dramatic emphasis. Use it when you can! But don’t overuse it. Us writers get a little addicted to our tools of the craft, so I just want to make sure you get a heads-up about that potential addiction.

QUICK NOTE.

This blog/newsletter/Substack/whatever will always be free to read now, but it’s also part of how I pay my mortgage.

If a paid subscription is way too big an ask, I’m always thankful for help buying dog treats.

Or, honestly, just sharing that this Substack exists is super cool.

I usually send these emails twice a week.

*My WRITE BETTER NOW posts also come one to two times a week if you sign up for them, too, which you should.

And COMFORTING is where I just have no filter at all and am totally schmaltzy is here. That’s once every other week or so.

Note: I will not be terribly, perfectly, grammatically correct.

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So, sometimes we burnout and that is why I’m upcycling (recycling?) a lot of the content in this post.

I am burnt out. It’s mostly from newspaper stuff. It feels like a lot right now. I think this is a normal October thing for me.

How about you?

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 or TikTok reel, but from the National Institute of Health.

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 a significant amount of the time.

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

That sounds naughty. I do not mean it in a naughty way.

If you know me in real life, you’ll know that I never mean things in naughty ways.

Anyway, the tips . . .

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. And you do not—I repeat, do not—have to be perfect.

Make a to-do list, sure. But in that miles long to-do list 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 FROM JACK

We used to do dog tips for life when we had a podcast. I sort of miss it.

Here’s the tip: Take naps! Only get off the couch for food. No, not really. But do take a nap if you need one.

LINK TO LEARN MORE

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/mystery-terrifying-big-grey-man-26996822

QUICK NOTE.

This blog/newsletter/Substack/whatever will always be free to read now, but it’s also part of how I pay my mortgage.

If a paid subscription is way too big an ask, I’m always thankful for help buying dog treats.

Or, honestly, just sharing that this Substack exists is super cool because maybe someone else will volunteer to be a paid subscriber and I might not feel so damn burnout. :)

I usually send these emails twice a week.

*My WRITE BETTER NOW posts also come one to two times a week if you sign up for them, too, which you should.

And COMFORTING is where I just have no filter at all and am totally schmaltzy is here. That’s once a week or so.

Note: I will not be terribly, perfectly, grammatically correct.

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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 rule:

• 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 and you don’t want characters hissing all the time.

“Said” and “asked” are your besties on the page.

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 and caterwauled.

That can be your intention, but you don’t want to keep doing it all the time because it’s something that’s sort of annoying and then it takes all the spotlight away from what’s being said.

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.

Look at it with just saids except one.

• “I love you,” she said.

• “I love you,” he said.

• “I know,” she said.

• He said, “Of course you do.”

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

You can change the rhythm and focus by switching around where the tag that isn’t said.

Look at it with just saids except a different one.

• “I love you,” she cat-called.

• “I love you,” he said.

• “I know,” she said.

• He said, “Of course you do.”

• “And what do you mean by that?”

It’s a different scene, right?

And you can always take out a bunch of dialogue tags if it is super obvious who is talking during an exchange. However, if there are more than three speakers on a page this often gets a bit confusing.

• “I love you,” she cat-called.

• “I love you,” he said.

• “I know.”

• “Of course you do.”

• “And what do you mean by that?”

  ---

DON’T HISS “I LOVE YOU.”

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.

This requires a comma after the word ‘you,’ and a lower-case S for ‘she.’

• “I love you.” She sighed.

This 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.

Like you can’t write:

• “The duck in the muck is looking for luck,” I hissed.

  ---

  QUICK NOTE.

  This blog/newsletter/Substack/whatever will always be free to read now, but it’s also part of how I pay my mortgage. Okay. Just a tiny part.
  
  If a paid subscription is way too big an ask, I’m always thankful for help buying dog treats.
  
  Or, honestly, just sharing that this Substack exists is super cool. They usually come 1-2 times a week

  
  Note: I will not be terribly, perfectly, grammatically correct even when giving writing tips because I’m awful like that.

  ---

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I keep learning and re-learning that my own happiness really depends on getting outside, doing something creative, and having social support. If one of things fall off? It’s all over and I have to scramble for equilibrium.

I relearned that again yesterday when I failed to unclick a box that sent out a press release by a Maine senator to everyone at the Bar Harbor Story. We run our federal reps’ and senators’ press releases all the time, but only on the webpage. We don’t send them to everyone via email. There are a couple of reasons for that:

1. We get a lot of them and if we were to email them to all the subscribers, they’d be getting 20 emails a day if you include our actual news stories and other press releases. Nobody wants that.

2. We don’t have time to do that and everyone would be so mad if we did it.

I immediately realized what happened, let out a garbled scream that scared the dogs. And wrote an apology explaining what happened, clogging everyone’s email even more.

As we all know, I am so human and so good at messing up.

The whole point of this is that people were mostly really super-nice about it. Except for seven subscribers (out of almost 7,000), they didn’t ghost me. They didn’t yell. They actually were encouraging and kind. Some people actually became paid subscribers (We offer all our news for free because we don’t think only people who can afford to be informed should be informed.). I got a lot of very kind pep talks.

This support was across demographics of wealth and political party. Instead, they praised me for always being super clear about it when I mess up.

That shouldn’t be a refreshing thing, I don’t think. It should just be what we all do. But often we lean into—and only remember—shaming and unkindness and us-vs-them mentalities.

I live where I live—Bar Harbor, Maine—quite purposefully. I know that I’m going to be a terrible driver as I get older. I want to be able to walk to libraries, restaurants, parks, and not drive. I’m not a big fan of the energy used to drive. I waited and hoped for a place to live here for years. I lucked out eventually and I’m so glad that I did.

Our community is a place that creates and supports things like a bike bus where kids all ride to school on their bicycles once a week (parents come too). It builds things like a marathon, a music festival, bed races, belt sander races, and conserves natural spaces in big ways.

Our community is a place where people gave money and supported a library addition, a hospital addition, helped a historical society move into a grand big home.

People complain all the time. All. The. Time. And everything isn’t perfect. Property taxes are increasing. The cost of living is increasing. There are big worries.

But this place? It’s amazing.

Anyway, during a bit of doom scrolling, I came across bobbyinspace on Instagram.

I know! I know! Not the most promising start to a post.

Bobby’s account is mostly talking about how to create community in space, how to make friends once you’re out of the doors of your home.

One of the things he writes is “Your 10-minute radius matters more than almost anything else about where you live: Think about what you can get to in ten minutes without making it a whole thing. I can get coffee, get groceries, go to a park, and go to a friend’s place. We spend SOO much time thinking about the city we live in but honestly, most of your life happens in this tiny little radius around your home.”

Bobby’s not the only human (or potential AI) out there that links happiness to where you live.

Think about what happens when you step outside your home and onto the street. Do you breathe in? Are you excited about what waits? Do you hide from your neighbors or shout hello?

Those are the smaller factors, but there are bigger ones too.

”Where you live can significantly impact your well-being, but the reasons go beyond just climate or scenery. Factors like community connections, access to healthcare, environmental quality, and economic stability all play crucial roles in shaping both happiness and health. Research shows that living in supportive, safe, and resource-rich environments promotes mental and physical well-being, while areas with high stressors or limited resources can have the opposite effect. Understanding how location affects your overall quality of life can help guide decisions about where to live for optimal health and happiness,” Update Health writes.

Some of us, obviously, don’t have a ton of choice about whether or not we can move, but if you do, it’s kind of cool to think about how we can find places that help us be happier and healthier.

Temma Ehrenfeld writes for Psychology Today, “Being surrounded by happy (or unhappy) people can dramatically affect your own well-being. You might consider favoring a place with strong social supports, a better-off population that exercises, and vibrant parks. Don’t assume that mild winters will help, unless you know that the winter is hard on you. In that case, you might look into whether a sunlamp or getting outside earlier could help with seasonal affective disorder (SAD).

“However, if you feel low and can’t move, or not anytime soon, you might head to the greenest place nearby. Research also confirms something most of us already know: It helps to watch an upbeat movie classic like ‘The Wizard of Oz’ or ‘Harold and Maude.’”

LINKS TO LEARN MORE

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/05/23/613762326/where-you-live-affects-your-happiness-and-health-but-how-exactly

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/where-you-live-has-a-bigger-impact-on-happiness-and-health-than-you-might-imagine/2018/05/11/16be7126-2c55-11e8-8ad6-fbc50284fce8_story.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/06/26/where-you-live-impacts-your-health/

QUICK NOTE.

This blog/newsletter/Substack/whatever will always be free to read now, but it’s also part of how I pay my mortgage. Yes, a very small part.

If a paid subscription is way too big an ask, I’m always thankful for help buying dog treats.

Or, honestly, just sharing that this Substack exists is super cool.

I usually send these emails once a week.

*My WRITE BETTER NOW posts also come one to two times a week if you sign up for them, too, which you should.

And COMFORTING is where I just have no filter at all and am totally schmaltzy is here. That’s every other week or so.

Note: I will not be terribly, perfectly, grammatically correct. Also note: I will mess up.

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This week has been a week for me.

A delivery man on a e-bike almost knocked me over on my street by cutting in front of me to turn into a drive, making eye contact as he did so. I had to stop abruptly and sort of step back.

I cried.

This might sound like not a lot, especially to you city-dwellers, but it was a lot to me in the moment, mostly because of that eye contact when it was happening.

I had a really hard time going out of the house after that, actually.

I made it out again though.

I’ve also spent this week working on the Bar Harbor Story (our digital newspaper) a lot. I’ve watched other places with huge staff try to raise a $1 million dollars from a community so that it could be nonprofit. Cool, right? It would if their news wasn’t paywalled.

That paywall is one of the three major reasons the Bar Harbor Story exists and that we work so hard to serve our community.

And then, on social media, I see fiction writer after fiction writer giving up. I read their worries about publishing houses and tariffs and less paying school visits and the income that they stitched together whittling away.

It’s a lot, right?

Writers and life? We’re often like this.

A few years ago, one of my blogging friends was feeling sad even though he is published because, basically, he was worried about being a mediocre writer.

It is easy to worry about this.

There’s that essential sense of horror about never being good enough, never making a difference, never being on a NYT bestseller list or being nominated for a National Book Award.

That’s not what writing is all about. (Note: I forget this a lot.) Another much lauded writer friend of mine shared on her social media about how a reader just contacted her about a book she’d written 10 years ago and how it had changed his life. Her book. Her book did that.

One of my friends who became my husband wrote me this in an email back when he was just my friend when I was worrying about not doing enough good in the world because I am just a writer:

“You never know what kind of positive effect you are having in someone’s life as an author. Even if it is just that someone can escape for an hour from their life, that may be the best part of their day. Think of the kid who doesn’t like their home life or maybe their school life or maybe both. When they pick up a book by Carrie E. Jones, they get to escape the realities of their life and lose themselves in somebody else’s for a while. How cool is that?”

If you are a published writer and having a bad day, you can just substitute your name in there for Carrie E. Jones because it’s true for everyone.

But, that isn’t just about the lucky ones who have been published.

If you are unpublished writer and having a bad day, you can do the same thing because you are writing; you are creating; you are escaping and thinking and plotting and feeling; and that is a positive for you FOR YOU and hopefully for other people too some day.

Being a writer can be hard. People write stuff in reviews that can be cruel rather than constructive. People make you stress about being your authentic self, about whether or not your stories are even worth telling.

You have to give up a lot of control of your work when you put it into the world. That’s scary.

You’ve got to ovary up to deal with that stuff when you’ve poured your heart and soul into a story. That’s scary, too.

So, be kind to authors when you review them. And musicians. And businesses. Don’t get off on being clever and cruel. Get off on being kind, okay? Don’t stare people down as you almost run them over.

Spreading kindness is so much lovelier than spreading cruelty.

That’s true about your own self, too. It’s okay to mess up, to not be perfect, to confuse the uses of a semicolon (;) and a colon (:) or occasionally writing pubic for public or fornication for fortification. Cough. Me. I did that. Me.

Anyway, don’t let that stop you. Keep going. You’ve got a dream. Okay?

Writing Exercise

The Story Shack has a pretty fun writing prompt and first line generator that you should go check out. These were mine when I went over there.

Once you have the link, keep writing!

P.S. It’s okay to be weird.

PLACE TO SUBMIT

Red River Review via duotrope.

Red River Review is now accepting submissions for Issue 78.

We publish poetry, short fiction, creative nonfiction, hybrid work, and visual art. We are interested in work distinguished by voice, craft, originality, and artistic intention—work that feels fully realized and rewards close attention.

We welcome a range of subjects, aesthetics, literary traditions, and approaches from emerging and established writers and artists.

Submissions open August 31 and close October 15, 2026.

QUICK NOTE.

This blog/newsletter/Substack/whatever will always be free to read now, but it’s also part of how I pay my mortgage.

If a paid subscription is way too big an ask, I’m always thankful for help buying dog treats.

Or, honestly, just sharing that this Substack exists is super cool.

I usually send these emails twice a week.

*My WRITE BETTER NOW posts also come one to two times a week if you sign up for them, too, which you should.

And COMFORTING is where I just have no filter at all and am totally schmaltzy is here. That’s once a week or so.

Note: I will not be terribly, perfectly, grammatically correct.

Subscribe now

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Someone I love wakes up every morning and thinks, “Ugh.”

This, obviously, is pretty common, but it’s also a pretty sad way to be. It’s hard to live happy when you’re dreading every day.

All of my dads (I have three—long story) weren’t like this at all.

Dad #1 was a truck driver and he’d hop out of bed, excited about hours and hours on the road.

Dad #2 was a contractor and carpenter and he’d tell me, “Being alive still is enough reason to be excited.

Dad #3 was a man who thought of each day as a chance for humor and maybe a conquest. He was a bit of a ladies man, apparently, and also a man capable of training his Great Dane to use the toilet.

When I woke up in the morning, my mom (only one of those!) would always be in the kitchen humming before she went to work. I mean, there were occasional days she was on the phone and not humming, but mostly she was humming and trying to convince me to eat breakfast.

Not everyone feels the way my mom and dads did. I would like everyone to feel this way.

In an opinion piece for the New York Times, Bill McKibben writes:

“A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey released in early September found that in 2024, 71.5 percent of adults reported that at least some of the time in the past three months they felt fatigued, defined as “physical or mental tiredness or exhaustion that does not improve with additional sleep or rest.” As the survey’s lead author, Natalie A.E. Young, told NBC, fatigue has become “one of the most frequently reported health concerns in primary care visits in the U.S.,” and sufferers — a category that, again, includes a vast majority of us — are “at higher risk of activity limitations and disability, including permanent work disability.” The most recent Stress in America report from the American Psychological Association found that a majority of adults reported feeling isolated and more anxious about the future than they used to be, and that much of the trouble could be laid at the door of our impossible politics: Almost two-thirds of respondents cited “societal divisions” as a significant stressor.

“A kind of overwhelming weariness and even sadness is increasingly the default state of people who, in living memory, had been optimistic, get-up-and-go-ish fellow Americans. I think if we had some way of surveying Americans at 3 a.m., we’d find huge numbers of them awake, wondering what new strain might be in store come morning. I don’t think it’s fragility at work — how are we supposed to respond to the now almost daily news that roving bands of A.I. agents are up to mayhem, or that the onrushing El Niño will take temperatures to heights no human has ever experienced?”

And that? That feels pretty hard to hum about unless it’s that ancient REM song that goes, “It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.”

He calls for a three things: “Because if human survival and economic resilience are important goals, so is a world calm enough to meet the needs of the human nervous system. We can’t keep on like this — it’s simply inhuman. We’re creating a world that’s fit only for something artificial.”

I can not make us all survive. I can’t even make us all resilient. But I can home that I can make myself (and maybe help a couple of other humans) toward a nervous system more like my parents.

This brings me to Ikigai.

IKIGAI

I have a friend who is very good at solving problems and mechanical skills. He loves using his hands and he is great at staying calm under pressure. He is pretty addicted to adrenalin rushes. Having been deployed in the Army, he is skilled at a million things, but one of his favorite things is helping people in medical crisis—and fishing—but that doesn’t come into play here.

He’s an EMT, a firefighter, a nurse. And he’s a pretty happy guy. When I think about people who are pretty stable, pretty happy with life, feeling like they have a purpose and who lose themselves in tasks? I think of him. And now I also think about Ikigai.

WHAT IS IKIGAI

That turns out to be a really good question, but it’s at least partially related to waking up in the morning and feeling good about the day, about the life, about the purpose that is you.

There’s a post from 2020 by Jeffery Gaines, Ph.d, on Positive Psychology all about Ikigai. I am no expert at all about this, but I’m intrigued.

But that Gaines post is really really interesting to me and hopefully to you, too. Plus, it has graphics.

These diagrams are rather Westernized, so please know that. And many believe that they are a bit wrong because Ikigai doesn’t need to have anything to do with work. As the BBC writes, “For Japanese however, the idea is slightly different. One’s ikigai may have nothing to do with income. In fact, in a survey of 2,000 Japanese men and women conducted by Central Research Services in 2010, just 31% of recipients considered work as their ikigai. Someone’s value in life can be work, but is certainly not limited to that.”

That’s broken down in a lot of places in Western culture including MasterClass.

Anyway, Gaines writes,

“Ken Mogi, a neuroscientist and author of Awakening Your Ikigai (2018, p. 3), says that ikigai is an ancient and familiar concept for the Japanese, which can be translated simply as “a reason to get up in the morning” or, more poetically, “waking up to joy.”

“Ikigai also appears related to the concept of flow, as described in the work of Hungarian–American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. For Csikszentmihalyi, flow occurs when you are in your “zone,” as they say of high-performing athletes.

“Flow is a string of “best moments” or moments when we are at our best. These best moments “usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limit, in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990).

“Flow can be said to occur when you are consistently doing something you love and that you are good at, with the possible added benefit of bringing value to others’ lives. In such a case, flow might be seen as in tune with your ikigai, or activities that give your life meaning and purpose.

“It is important to note that ikigai does not typically refer only to one’s personal purpose and fulfillment in life, without regard to others or society at large.”

There’s also a MasterClass about this. You can see that link here. And a TedTalk about it here. And a tool to maybe help find it here.

QUICK NOTE.

This blog/newsletter/Substack/whatever will always be free to read now, but it’s also part of how I pay my mortgage.

If a paid subscription is way too big an ask, I’m always thankful for help buying dog treats.

Or, honestly, just sharing that this Substack exists is super cool.

I usually send these emails twice a week.

*My WRITE BETTER NOW posts also come one to two times a week if you sign up for them, too, which you should.

And COMFORTING is where I just have no filter at all and am totally schmaltzy is here. That’s once a week or so.

Note: I will not be terribly, perfectly, grammatically correct.

Subscribe now

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I was a bit blocked about writing advice this week.

Why?

I think it’s because my milquetoast self (Yes, someone did call me that once.) doesn’t really like giving out edicts.

No one is a writing advice god. And the people who pretend to be? They and their grift and their egos annoy me. How is that for not-milquetoast, right?

People get to write the way they want, structure the way they want. If the way they are doing it isn’t in vogue right now? Whatever.

Writing a novel is just telling a story and their are craft rules to help you tell it in a way that is deemed “better” right now, but also, you should do you.

All that said, here is a craft tip that you can take or leave. Again. Up to you.

Right now, agents, editors, publishers, and readers in the United States aren’t super cool with you if you do this in your story.

Not super cool in the writing world right now.

Why?

Well, it’s because you’re having Lucretia show the same exact thing in three pretty boring ways.

1. She nods

2. We’ve got “her agreement” in there.

3. She says yes.

It’s kind of a lot of wasted space being repetitive.

You can just get away with this . . .

Or this . . .

Or you could be a bit more interesting

In the last one, we see a bit of Lucretia’s character.

Here’s a few more:

• She nodded her head.

• They shrugged their shoulders.

• He shook his head.

• With his eyes, he glanced over toward the manatee.

• With her tongue she made words come out her mouth in conversation.

• She sniffed in through her nose.

• She made a poo-pop out her rectum. Oh! So naughty!

But you see what’s happening in those examples, right? We don’t need the body parts for certain actions; it’s just kind of extra baggage that’s weighing your reader and your story down.

And there you go. That’s as bossy as I get, unless you want me to get started on em-dashes.

EM DASH ME!

Okay. I’m going to do a quick thing about em-dashes. I saw a post on THREADS yesterday when I was doom scrolling and it as about AI writing and em-dashes. Everyone defended their em-dashes, which was lovely, but then they started to get the use of an em-dash wrong.

The em dash is basically best used to

1. Show an abrupt break in thought or dialogue or the sentences. Life if I—

2. It can also make things a bit more drama when you use it like a parenthesis—I’d argue parenthesis also show a break in thought—or a comma or colon.

Too much drama, though, makes it a bit over-the-top. Em dashes everywhere? It’s very reality tv.

Also the em dash is longer than the en dash.

Em dash — the size of a m.

En dash - the size of an n.

QUICK NOTE.

This blog/newsletter/Substack/whatever will always be free to read now, but it’s also part of how I pay my mortgage.

If a paid subscription is way too big an ask, I’m always thankful for help buying dog treats.

Or, honestly, just sharing that this Substack exists is super cool.

I usually send these emails twice a week.

*My WRITE BETTER NOW posts also come one to two times a week if you sign up for them, too, which you should.

And COMFORTING is where I just have no filter at all and am totally schmaltzy is here. That’s once a week or so.

Note: I will not be terribly, perfectly, grammatically correct.

Subscribe now

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There’s a new NYT article about how dogs don’t really protect people from bears.

Obviously, I have thoughts about this since dogs and bears are two of my favorite animal groups and I’ve encountered a few of them.

“When it comes to bear encounters in or near the wild, dogs are the aggressors in 54 percent of incidents, according to a recent study conducted by bear experts at Brigham Young University and other institutions, and published in the Journal of Wildlife Management. In approximately 36 percent of the encounters, dogs did not come to their owners’ defense. And they only successfully alerted their owners to the presence of a bear in about 9 percent of cases,” Alexander Nazaryan wrote for the Times.

I am the 9 percent.

I have an anecdote.

When I had a Pyr (Tala) and a Pyr mix (Scotty) and I was living in Ellsworth, Maine, I was taking them outside for their walk one time. Totally normal.

Not totally normal? They both stopped at the garage door to the outside.

Tala did not want me to go outside. This was bizarre because Tala loved-loved-loved going outside and romping around and going on runs.

I ignored her weirdness because I wanted her to get her walk and I had a schedule and giant list of things to do.

She blocked the door. I told her to move. She looked at me like I was stupid and kept blocking the door.

I moved her leash into the same hand as Scotty’s and reached around her. I had two leashes for two large dogs in my hand, threw the door open in my other and there was a black bear.

A black bear.

I love black bears.

The cutie bear was just standing there (looking cute) and a mere twenty feet away at most, slightly up a hill next to our driveway.

It must have been early spring, because we still had a snowbank in the driveway. In Maine snowbanks from the plowed snow melt last.

I said something brilliant like “oh … a bear.”

My two dogs rushed up the snowbank after the bear, hauling me with them. I screamed for them to stop.

They stopped. The bear rushed away. They barked at the bear. The bear did not stop.

Were my dogs the aggressors? Maybe? To be fair, they could have just wanted to play? I’d seen them bound after dogs similarly and frolic for ages.

Or maybe not.

I’d also seen Tala stare down a coyote and make it run away before with the sheer power of her doggy stare.

Anyway, the dogs did not get their walk right then, but they did get extra treats.

In Taoism, it is written that happiness is a bit of a paradox. So are dogs interacting with bears when viewed by the lens of humans—be they scientists or goofy writers in Maine.

In the moment, what qualifies as aggression or play or curiosity?

I don’t think my dogs thought that they were being aggressive. I’m not sure they thought anything. They smelled a bear. They tried to avoid the bear (by not going outside). They rushed after the bear.

A rational mind might think that was aggressive. I’m not so sure I can make it that simple.

As Keltner writes, “The meaning of life may not be necessarily grasped by your rational mind, you have to experience it, let it unfold.”

Lao Tzu says in the Tao Te Ching, “When man is born, he is tender and weak. At death he is stiff and hard. All things, as well as the grass and the trees, tender and subtle while alive, when dead, withered and dried. Therefore, the tender and the weak are the companions of life and the stiff and the hard are companions of death.”

My dogs were mysterious in that moment to me. They were weak and tender and hard barking and busy, running in a straight line toward something (the bear) that they’d never met before.

“It’s a little bit paradoxical: weakness and tenderness may be the pathway to life and the Tao and the mysterious force of life. And again, challenging us to put aside preconceptions to find happiness,” Dacher Keltner, director of psychology at UC Berkeley writes.

I wonder sometimes about our preconceptions—not just for happiness—but in all the way we see the world and want to categorize it: aggressor, hero, and so on. How much truth do we see that is only truth because we choose to see it that way, right?

What is even the truth behind how my dogs acted with that bear? I only know what I saw: hesitation at door, refusal, going outside finally, going straight toward that bear at full doggie speed.

What I don’t know is what my dogs were thinking (or not) and what the bear was (or not). I only know what I was and that influences everything about my experience.

LINKS TO LEARN MORE

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-good-life-review-the-habit-of-happiness-11673478213

https://kyoko-uchida.medium.com/value-happiness-d30ba569fe86

The Science of Happiness, Berkeley, EdX

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/27/science/dogs-chasing-bears.html

QUICK NOTE.

This blog/newsletter/Substack/whatever will always be free to read now, but it’s also part of how I pay my mortgage.

If a paid subscription is way too big an ask, I’m always thankful for help buying dog treats.

Or, honestly, just sharing that this Substack exists is super cool.

I usually send these emails twice a week.

*My WRITE BETTER NOW posts also come one to two times a week if you sign up for them, too, which you should.

And COMFORTING is where I just have no filter at all and am totally schmaltzy is here. That’s once a week or so.

Note: I will not be terribly, perfectly, grammatically correct.

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Oh, I am so late with the writing post this week and I apologize. I’ve been in a wee bit of a funk this past month or so and a bit work-whelmed. Yes, I made up that word. It just means overwhelmed by work.

So, apologies!

Now let’s get to it.

Characterization is basically how you create that adorable fictional character on your page.

There are two basic kinds of characterization:

1. Direct.

2. Indirect.

DIRECT CHARACTERIZATION

This is just when you are blunt. There is no subtext. It’s very telling. You write stuff like:

• Missy was a happy manatee with a quiet voice and a great love of kelp.

• Pogie Pup snarled at anyone she didn’t know. It took her a week to warm up to someone and even when she did, there was a risk of a snarl.

  ---

INDIRECT CHARACTERIZATION

Here, we are not so blunt. It’s more showing by action or dialogue (And sometimes by internal monologue, but there are arguments about that. There are always arguments, aren’t there? Sigh.) on the page.

• Missy flounced across the bay toward the bed of delicious kelp. Perhaps, she’d poach it beneath the red kayak that always drifted by at 2. Perhaps, she’d just scarf it down right now.

• Pogie hunkered under Carrie’s desk, shaking, nose quivering. Someone was at the door. How dare they? Her ears pressed back. She’d show them the mighty snarl, she was known for on a count of one….

It’s a lot like show vs tell, right? In the indirect characterization, readers get a bit more immersed in who Pogie and Missy are and might be engaged a bit more.

THINGS WRITING COACHES, EDITORS AND TEACHERS WILL TELL YOU AS IF THEY ARE COMMANDMENTS.

Backstory.

They will tell you that you shouldn’t first introduce Missy with backstory (or any character. That’s just stuff like telling all about their lives before the actual action of the story. Like:

• Page One, First Sentence: Missy had lost her parents to a shark and a paddle boat full of karaoke singers, in that order, twelve years before she swam in the Florida bay, having escaped the marina and then the zoo and then the aquarium and then the marina againt.

Describing too much in too much detail.

Pogie’s toenails were split but her teeth were clean and she had exemplary jowls.

ONE GOOD WAY TO SHOW WHO YOUR CHARACTERS ARE

The best way to see who characters are in a story is a bit like the best way to understand who people really are in real life.

That just basically means that how they react to things tells you who they really are.

Someone can say all day long that they would never hurt a fly, but that doesn’t mean anything if they are out there slaughtering spiders, right?

The plot of your story shows who your characters are, how they react, how they act, their priorities, how they deal with problems when going after what they want. That. That is what characterization is about.

QUICK NOTE.

This blog/newsletter/Substack/whatever will always be free to read now, but it’s also part of how I pay my mortgage.

If a paid subscription is way too big an ask, I’m always thankful for help buying dog treats.

Or, honestly, just sharing that this Substack exists is super cool.

I usually send these emails twice a week.

*My WRITE BETTER NOW posts also come one to two times a week if you sign up for them, too, which you should.

And COMFORTING is where I just have no filter at all and am totally schmaltzy is here. That’s once a week or so.

Note: I will not be terribly, perfectly, grammatically correct.

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Okay. I had a rage moment Sunday.

This is not normal for me because I lean toward sorrow rather than rage, so I’m going to share it with you.

I’d driven across the island to try to take photos of a cool event and was coming home when two enormous wild turkeys crossed the two-lane road and then decided to stand right in the middle of it.

I live on Mount Desert Island; it is a tourist hot spot in the summer because Acadia National Park is here. There are mini mountains and ocean and cliffs. It is gorgeous and lovely and full of nature.

Online and in person, people ask if they will see a moose, deer, whales (not on the land), seals, hawks, eagles, and so on. They come here to see nature, right? To be in nature. That’s part of the appeal.

So, I was driving slowly down the Eagle Lake Road and right at a curve were these two gorgeous turkeys, coming to a stop right in the middle of the road on the yellow line. One was looking one way. The other was looking the opposite way.

I stopped the car.

I flashed my lights at an oncoming car because the turkeys were now chilling in the opposite lane. The big black SUV with New Hampshire plates stopped.

About five seconds passed. It might have been even less.

The man in his SUV leaned on the horn, obnoxiously, twice.

The turkeys didn’t react.

I, however, did.

And I yelled at the man. “What are you doing?”

He’d been inconvenienced for five seconds tops. The turkeys moved further into his lane, following the siren call of his horn, maybe? Maybe SUV horns are turkey mating cries?

He drove his SUV into the almost-not-there breakdown lane to veer around them and then drove very slowly past my car, staring into it, glaring at me.

Did I go to a place of calm peacefulness? No. No I did not.

Instead I yelled, “GO BACK HOME.”

This is hysterical because I am from New Hampshire. I’m sure some people want me to go back home and they’d define my home as “Not Bar Harbor.”

It’s also hysterical because I’m actually a person who likes tourists, but I have to tell you that I did not like this man. Not one bit.

The car behind him—from New Jersey—just stayed there chilling out, watching the turkeys. New Hampshire SUV left, zooming toward Acadia as soon as he was done glaring at me.

I sat there behind my steering wheel, in my car that unfortunately smells like dog (in a bad way), and needs to be replaced because it’s totally breaking down, and was a bit dumbstruck.

I took a breath and watched the turkeys who slowly made their way up that opposite lane and turned their heads to look into my window (just like the New Hampshire man) in a slow walk by. I crept forward, worried about the car behind me getting impatient too, but when I glanced up in my rearview, the people in that car were smiling.

The turkeys’ eyes were wide and alert. They seemed to stand more upright as I watched as if they were expanding with pride under the gaze of the rest of us there on the roadway in our big, loud cars as we appreciated them.

I could have stretched my arm out and touched their gorgeous snoods, those red, bumpy carnucles, the feathers somewhat taut against their bodies, rippling in slight color gradations like waves on a mostly calm gray Atlantic Ocean day. It was a glorious and humbling thing, witnessing those turkeys so close, heading on their way and not giving a turkey’s butt about the honking man from New Hampshire.

Those turkeys didn’t even honk back, but I sure had, not with my horn, but with my instant rage.

Those turkeys though? They were so beautiful and so sure of their place.

And in that slow walk by, I could see right into their eyes, the alertness in them, the way their eyes met my eyes as they did a creeping trot up the asphalt, right in the travel lane.

“Please move over,” I whispered to them. “I don’t want anyone to hurt you.”

They kept going on their way, moseying toward that breakdown lane eventually and we all went on our way, too.

New Hampshire man and his companion? They missed out. I’m not sure what the entire minute of turkey encounter (that’s how long it happened) cost them in time, but I know what it cost them in beauty. A lot.

QUICK NOTE.

This blog/newsletter/Substack/whatever will always be free to read now, but it’s also part of how I pay my mortgage.

If a paid subscription is way too big an ask, I’m always thankful for help buying dog treats.

Or, honestly, just sharing that this Substack exists is super cool.

I usually send these emails twice a week.

*My WRITE BETTER NOW posts also come one to two times a week if you sign up for them, too, which you should.

And COMFORTING is where I just have no filter at all and am totally schmaltzy is here. That’s once a week or so.

Note: I will not be terribly, perfectly, grammatically correct.

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Sometimes, writers crash.

It happens to all of us. To some of us it happens all the time. Cough me.

It’s hard to stay motivated about your story when it gets rejected 8,000 times or you publish it and nobody reads it or you are still writing the draft and it feels more like drudgery than song.

And being a writer is weird. A lot of things mess with your head.

Once, one of my books was up for an award and it totally didn’t win.

One of my friends emailed me and he said, “Grrr … I hate that your book loses anything.”

Which is SO funny because he’s so protective in a happy-good way and also funny because let’s face it: Books lose things all the time.

Not every book gets on the NYT Bestsellers list. Not every book gets a Printz or a National Book Award or a Cybils or a Caldecott or any of those big fancy prizes that get BOLD LETTERS and where you get to wear ball gowns and look all elegant.

But just getting a book published is really cool. And I am so okay with losing contests because I am really super lucky to have had books published at all. There are so many stories that are brilliant and life-changing and funny that don’t get that chance. So I am SAVORING IT!

And it’s kind of like getting a significant other ….

If you are like me you pine ALL THROUGH EIGHTH GRADE and hope for a boy to somehow eventually like you, and of course it isn’t just any boy it is … um….

But of course he’s like a British actor playing a Time Lord who dates models and actresses and things and doesn’t hang out in New Hampshire and even if he did he’d get arrested for dating you because he is like way old.

And you pine … And you hope … And you send out your query (or yourself) to editors and people who aren’t Time Lords and EVENTUALLY someone who is NOT a Time Lord or old actor person (or Super Editor Celebrity) actually says, “Hey Baby Let’s get together.”

And when they say that about getting together, you are all YAY!!!!

And you are published/in love and not eaten by the jealousy/the loneliness/the zombie.

And it doesn’t matter that it’s not Super Celebrity Pop Star. It’s your significant other. It’s your editor. And they love your book. How cool is that?

It is AMAZINGLY COOL and you don’t want to spend all your time thinking, “I could have won a Printz” or “I could be dating a British Pop Star.” Instead you’ve got to savor what you have.

Even if all you have right this second is time to actually write your novel (even if it’s just five minutes), please savor it.

I would love to have time right now.

So, yeah. I’m okay with losing things. Because I have won already in SO many ways and I will lose again in SO many more. And I’m cool with that. And that’s what I have to remember when I feel stuck with my story or my career or anything.

Now, I’m going to try to actually be helpful. Hold on, okay?

Here are some quick tips on how to stay motivated about your story.

Dig Deep

I don’t mean dig deep about your story, but about why you are a writer. Who are you doing this for? You. Good. But add someone else. Are you doing this for your mom so she can be proud of you? Are you doing this for kids like you who have never had a story about them before? Are you doing this because you’re mad at authority?

Digging deep and finding your motivation to be a writer and to write this specific story helps. It helps a lot.

Make Daily Story Goals

If you commit daily to making a word count goal or a revision goal for your story it helps. Make a goal every single day. Make those goals your own. Don’t let other people tell you to write 1,000 words a day or for 15 hours or whatever. This is your story. You get to make the goals. You’re in charge.

Start Early or Do It Late

If you are a write every day kind of person, try to write earlier on in the day before all your daily chores and stress drain away your motivation. A lot of people won’t put their writing first if there is a house to clean, a kid to get to school, another job to work at. But remember, this is a job, too. You’ve got to work at it to be the best writer you can be. So, if it matters to you, write as early as you can. Being productive and hitting your goals actually helps you stay motivated. Weird, right?

If you’re brain just can’t write early, that’s okay too! You can just tell yourself that from 2 am to 3 am you will not put on your vampire cape, but you will put on your writer cape.

When Writing, Focus On Your Story Not the Other Stuff

If your goal as a writer is to make money you’re not really going to be constantly motivated about your story. If your goal is to be the best writer you can be? To learn everything you can about craft? Yeah, you will probably be more motivated.

Try Not To Succumb to the Negative

It’s really easy for a lot of us to succumb to our negative thoughts. Don’t limit yourself with negative thoughts about how you suck. You don’t suck. Look at you, you’re so motivated to be a good writer, you’re reading this Substack post and you’ve almost hit the end of it.

Think about all the ways you’ve made yourself awesome.You’re reading, learning craft, thinking of characters and worlds and plots and cool words.

You can do this.

You just have to work, to be persistent, and to believe.

Write down those negative thoughts. Do this a few times – not all in the same day. Sometimes by writing them down, we escape from them and realize that we don’t need them holding us back anymore.

QUICK NOTE.

This blog/newsletter/Substack/whatever will always be free to read now, but it’s also part of how I pay my mortgage.

If a paid subscription is way too big an ask, I’m always thankful for help buying dog treats.

Or, honestly, just sharing that this Substack exists is super cool.

I usually send these emails twice a week.

*My WRITE BETTER NOW posts also come one to two times a week if you sign up for them, too, which you should.

And COMFORTING is where I just have no filter at all and am totally schmaltzy is here. That’s once a week or so.

Note: I will not be terribly, perfectly, grammatically correct.

Subscribe now

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I’ve never been the kind of writer that teachers loved.

I mean, even growing up, I was not the writer that teachers praised. I was the writer that the other kids thought was funny.

Except for one teacher, but he didn’t happen until high school.

But when I was in middle school, we had these Author of the Month contests in fifth grade. Every month, we’d read our stories in front of the class and there would be two Authors of the Month. One would be the teacher’s choice. That was Kathy A. It was Kathy A. pretty much every month. Once in a while it was Julie or Kim.

It was never me.

The other author of the month would be the kids’ choice. That would be me.

Even before fifth grade, I wanted to be Kathy. She had a house with two floors. Our house had one. She had two parents. I had one at a time. She had a mom who made Swedish meatballs and worked in a library and did arts and crafts and took me to Pioneer Girls at the Calvary Baptist Church every Friday and this is where I would hope really hard that Jesus had come into my heart finally.

My mom was the sort of mom who sang songs about wicked women. She was lovely and smart and kind and amazing. She just wasn’t a Calvary Baptist Church mom

Anyway, in that church basement, we’d sit around in a circle, close our eyes and silently ask Jesus into our heart. We’d raise our hands if we wanted help. I was really concerned about Jesus coming into my heart and forgetting to close the door behind him and all the blood rushing out of my heart and into my chest, which is probably what a heart attack was maybe.

Maybe?

I didn’t know.

But I would always silently ask, “Dear Jesus. If you are not in my heart already, could you please come in and also could you please shut the door behind you?”

I figured that it was a good idea to be polite to Jesus.

Then I’d ask Jesus to come into my mom’s heart, too, because everyone seemed to think she was headed straight for hell because she didn’t go to church because she caught the minister cheating at bowling and when she called him on it, he lied.

“If someone doesn’t have bowling honor, how are they supposed to be my spiritual support system, huh?” she steamed. “A man who cheats at bowling is not my pathway to Heaven.”

She never got over it.

Nobody listened to her.

Everyone said that my mom held a grudge. She somehow became the bad guy in that cheating story.

My mother (and my avó and my nana) didn’t hold grudges. They held knowledge. They held knowledge of wrongdoings for a long time. They had to remind themselves of the wrongs that had happened because nobody else would listen to their voice. They held that knowledge close to their hearts because that was all they had power to do. They held those grudges to keep themselves safe and sane.

Anyways, Kathy had the life I wanted. She had two parents who didn’t hold grudges, Swedish meatballs, knew Jesus was in her heart and didn’t really freak out about Author of the Month contests because she knew she was destined to win.

I had no idea how that felt.

How did it feel to know you were destined to win, that you were smart, that you were strong, that you were beloved and loved?

I wasn’t that kid.

I was the poor kid who needed to be saved, I guess. This is probably why a lot of the kids in my books are poor kids who want to be saved?

But the thing that saved me over and over again was writing. I wrote my way through it when my stepdad died (which I was just talking about today on the sidewalk with an amazing woman who lost her sister), when men were bad to me, when my best friends died, when my brother died, when my mom died, when my dad died. I wrote my way into college scholarships. I wrote my way out of sleeping in the backseat of my car. I wrote my way out of living in an apartment where the ceiling was caving in. I wrote my way through pain and into triumph over and over again. I’m pretty sure I even wrote my way into political office – yes, it was just city council, but it still counts, right?

Here’s the thing: Writing gives voice to those who society has silenced.

Here’s the other thing: Writing gives you power when you are absolutely powerless. It gives you hope when all hope is gone.

But reading? Reading is just as important. Reading outside your own experience, helps others to be heard. There is nothing better than hearing, than growing, than knowing about things and experiences outside of yourself. Empathy and knowledge aren’t swear words. They are words that make us all better, lifting us up.

Listening to other people’s ideas and opinions? Same thing.

So, go write even if your teachers or your friends don’t give you an A-plus and you don’t know where the semicolon goes.

So, go read even if it’s things that other people make fun of.

Go listen even if you think you’ve heard it all before, right?

Go create. Even if you feel like nobody else will ever listen to you, YOU need to go listen to you.

Write your way through it.

Write your way up.

Be your own author of the month, author of the year, author of your life. You’ve got this.

We all can’t be Kathys. But we can all be ourselves. And that’s even better.

I’ve published bits of this before, but it was a rough weekend for me and I couldn’t get my brain in the perfect brain space to start something all fresh and helpful. I hope you don’t mind.

QUICK NOTE.

This blog/newsletter/Substack/whatever will always be free to read now, but it’s also part of how I pay my mortgage.

If a paid subscription is way too big an ask, I’m always thankful for help buying dog treats.

Or, honestly, just sharing that this Substack exists is super cool.

I usually send these emails twice a week.

*My WRITE BETTER NOW posts also come one to two times a week if you sign up for them, too, which you should.

And COMFORTING is where I just have no filter at all and am totally schmaltzy is here. That’s once a week or so.

Note: I will not be terribly, perfectly, grammatically correct.

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This is what I post around Sept. 11 of every year. It is now the 25th year since the reason for this post.

I am so sorry if you’ve read it before.

A lot of things have changed in my life in the years. I went from being a newspaper reporter and city councilor to a newspaper editor to unemployed to a New York Times (and internationally) bestselling novelist and now being the me I am, which is a lot of those things all connected and I have created a hyper-local news site with my husband, Shaun, called the Bar Harbor Story.

But how I feel about heroes will never change.

This is a post I wrote a while ago about two heroes I knew, older guys, not on an airplane, not on the NYPD or NYFD or people who worked in the towers. There are a lot of stories about those heroes and I’m so glad of it.

Ben died in 2016, after years and years of being a hero to the people of Shelter Island, New York; years and years of being a paramedic (one of the oldest in the country) and not only just saving people, but being the last one to comfort and touch the living.

Last year I said that it would be the last year I'd share this.

I lied.

Why?

Because I am a person who prefers to remember the heroes—big and small. And I think remembering them is important.

++++ +++++++ ++++++++ ++++++++

It’s hard not to think about September 11 without thinking about loss.

That’s how it should be. But I do know that so many heroes that we never hear about worked hard on that day. It’s important to remember them too, because they are, I think, what it truly means to be an ideal American and an ideal person.

My former (through marriage) uncle, Charlie, who lives in Maplewood, NJ was just across the shore when he saw the plane go into one of the tall towers in New York City. He was over 80 and a doctor. He was in World War II. He hates war.

He told me when he saw that plane full of people go into that tower full of people that he said, “Jesus Christ… Jesus Christ…”

He mumbled it for a second, a prayer, a plea, a name, a hope.

He said his heart sank right into the bottom of his feet as he stood there watching. He said like he felt like he stood there on the shore forever. He didn’t. He moved after a second. He went right over towards the towers, towards the death and the hurt and the terror and the screaming, and the whole time in his head he kept repeating those words, that name … Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.

He started to help people. He was over 80, breathing in all kinds of horrible things into lungs that were already tired and aged, but that didn’t stop him. He’d helped people all his life. He had served his country all his life. Nobody would have thought anything if he had turned around, walked away, got in his car and drove back to Maplewood.

But Charlie would have thought something if he did that.

He could have never done that.

My now former father-in-law, Ben, also over 80, is an EMT. He became one when he was 65. After years of being an insurance company executive, he wanted to feel like he did something good in his life, something helpful. He was part of the Red Cross disaster team. He went over to the site too, got grit out of people’s eyes, helped them breathe, helped them cope.

You ask him what it was like, and he shakes his head slowly and says in his deep/hoarse voice, “God, that was an awful scene. Just an awful scene.”

Charlie and Ben weren’t firemen on duty or police officers like so many heroes that day were. They weren’t official first responders.

What I love about them is that they made the choice. They chose to go. They chose to help, and they didn’t give a poop about how old they were, about how many people they’d already helped in their long lives.

They didn’t care about the ache in their bones or the fact that both their hearts were starting to fail. They cared about something else. They cared about people.

So they went.

They will always be my heroes. They are just two of many, many stories that happened on that day and on other days. People can do awful things. We can hurt our loves, bomb each other, scream words of hate, glorify ignorance with bats and cars, ignore a smile of a cashier, be too busy to pay attention to a child. We can turn away from tragedies, pretend they aren’t real, pretend that they have nothing to do with us.

But we can do beautiful things, too. We can love, and heal; we can put others first, rush to a scene of mayhem, put ourselves in peril on the off chance that we might be able to save a life, get grit out of an eye, give comfort, give a hug. And that … that is what makes people worth it. That is what makes people magic. That is what makes people heroes over and over again.

So, I will remember Ben and Charlie and so many others today. I won’t ignore the hate and pain and sorrow that happens on Sept. 11 or on any day of war or violence, but I choose to remember the good, too. I choose to remember the heroes.

QUICK NOTE.

This blog/newsletter/Substack/whatever will always be free to read now, but it’s also part of how I pay my mortgage.

I usually send these emails twice a week.

*My WRITE BETTER NOW posts also come one to two times a week if you sign up for them, too, which you should.

And COMFORTING is where I just have no filter at all and am totally schmaltzy is here. That’s once a week or so.

Note: I will not be terribly, perfectly, grammatically correct.

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Last week I talked about structure.

I talk about structure a lot. That’s because it’s sort of what most of us novelists have the hardest time with. I am included there in most authors.

Structure can be complex—a hero’s journey, the six act, etc.—but it also really boils down to this Matt Bird quote:

So simple.

Then, the next step is just keep giving them reasons, right?

Structure typically (We are going to be typical in this post.) in the U.S./Canada/Australia/UK has certain expectations.

Let me make a list of those expectations for people with brains like mine—brains that like lists.

EXPECTATIONS FOR STRUCTURE

1. There is cause and effect.

2. There are usually chapters.

3. There is usually a lead character going after their goals and solving a big-deal problem (for them, if not for the world, depending on the type of story).

4. The lowest point in that character’s quest usually comes about 75% through the total book. Then they do stuff to actively fix things.

5. There is usually in our country right now a positive change that happens in the lead character’s circumstance from the beginning of the book to the end.

6. There is some wiggle room in the structure, too, so don’t feel super confined, okay?

Simple, right?

Bird breaks structure into four parts. He calls them quarters, which makes me think of football, but whatever.

BIRD’S FOUR QUARTERS ALL SIMPLIFIED

The first quarter

• The lead character has a personal problem.

• They also have an opportunity

• But there’s some sort of conflict or challenge that makes the opportunity not easy.

All these things have to be related. Like it can’t be:

• The lead character is shy.

• There is a zombie party for shy people.

• The challenge is whether or not the their apple tree is hatching Big Foots.

The second quarter

The lead character tries to take care of stuff, but they don’t realize that poop is real and difficult, and they are just going after that opportunity without being super self aware. They expect it to be easy. It is not easy. They crash.

The third quarter

Now they have to regroup and do it the hard way. The hard way is hard. They probably have to do some emotional growth.

The fourth quarter

Whee! No more spiritual crisis. They think the right way. They tweak their goal a bit and all is good.

LINKS TO LEARN MORE ABOUT ONE OF BIRD’S STRUCTURE SETS ON HIS BLOG

• How to Structure a Story Around a Big Problem, Introduction

• How to Structure a Story Around a Large Problem: What’s the Difference Between Problems, Flaws, and Goals?

• How To Structure a Story Around a Large Problem: 14 Steps x 56 Movies = 784 Examples

• How To Structure a Story Around a Large Problem, Step 1: The Longstanding Personal Problem

• How To Structure a Story Around a Large Problem, Step 2: The Public Humiliation

• How To Structure a Story Around a Large Problem, Step 3: The Intimidating Opportunity

• How To Structure a Story Around a Large Problem, Step 4: Hesitation

• How To Structure a Story Around a Large Problem, Step 5: The Hero Commits

• How To Structure a Story Around a Large Problem, Step 6: Committing Creates Unexpected Conflict

• How To Structure a Story Around a Large Problem, Step 7: The Hero Tries to Solve the Problem the Easy Way

• How To Structure a Story Around a Large Problem, Step 8: The Promise of the Premise is Fulfilled

• How To Structure a Story Around a Large Problem, Step 9: The Midpoint Disaster

• How To Structure a Story Around a Large Problem, Step 10: The Hero Tries the Hard Way

• How To Structure a Story Around a Large Problem, Step 11: The Spiritual Crisis

• How To Structure a Story Around a Large Problem, Step 12: Proactive Pursuit of the True Goal

• How To Structure a Story Around a Large Problem, Step 13: The Timeline is Unexpectedly Moved Up

• How To Structure a Story Around a Large Problem, Step 14: Climax and Epilogue

QUICK NOTE.

This blog/newsletter/Substack/whatever will always be free to read now, but it’s also part of how I pay my mortgage.

If a paid subscription is way too big an ask, I’m always thankful for help buying dog treats.

Or, honestly, just sharing that this Substack exists is super cool.

I usually send these emails twice a week.

*My WRITE BETTER NOW posts also come one to two times a week if you sign up for them, too, which you should.

And COMFORTING is where I just have no filter at all and am totally schmaltzy is here. That’s once a week or so.

Note: I will not be terribly, perfectly, grammatically correct.

Subscribe now

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I’ve recently realized that I am the most bored and probably the least happy when I’m in front of my computer or watching tv/screens/whatever.

This should not have been a revelation. Somehow, it was. Even when I was little, I was not into watching things unless there was a bear involved or a dolphin, unicorn, puppy or manatee. I haven’t changed that much actually.

All of this realization made me think of an op-ed I read yesterday and in that op-ed for the New York Times, professor Mark Edmundson writes:

“The utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham said we should seek maximum pleasure at all times and do all we can to avoid pain. Oscar Wilde, a lifelong sybarite, wrote in his letter ‘De Profundis’: ‘I don’t regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does. There was no pleasure I did not experience.’

“Yet there are others who think that happiness of this sort is, if not to be avoided altogether, then taken in guarded doses.”

Edmundson is more into the people who think that way—the people who worry that too much happiness is boring. And boredom? They think it’s dangerous.

“The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer warns us that human beings have two main enemies: pain and boredom. We use our intellects to guard ourselves from pain. But once we have escaped it, the mind keeps whirring on, demanding new objectives, new distractions. So off we go into folly. We gamble (and often lose); we have affairs (and fracture our marriages); we provoke quarrels. By their nature, our minds cannot rest. The problem with that happy life we’re pining for is that it will inevitably breed boredom, and boredom begets trouble,” Edmundson writes.

So, yes, I am easily bored, which I’ve been thinking about, but I’ve also been thinking about Edmundson’s words about how other philosophers have advocated dealing with that boredom.

He writes, “Schopenhauer’s solution? Find something to occupy your intellect. We can collect coins or stamps, learn about insects and birds, acquire languages, read good books and summarize them in our journals. Do not let the mind succumb to idleness. Most scenes that people associate with happiness — the golden beach, the splashing waterfall — are boredom traps.

“Simone de Beauvoir also argues for activity over passive forms of happiness. Like her collaborator Jean Paul Sartre, she thought that the most dangerous temptation was what she called ‘being-in-itself’ (in French, être-en-soi). People who cultivate being-in-itself want to embody a standard of perfection. They strive to show others that they are complete and whole.”

He then talks about gender constructs, but I’ll put a link to the op-ed so you can read it if you’d like. It does go into how we can work to keep recreating ourselves so that we are not bored, so he links it all back.

What’s interesting to me is that now we have so many tools and choices to keep us from being bored and many of them might not be awesome for our brains: doom scrolling, scrolling-scrolling, and so on.

There are so many choices out there and things seeking our attention. It can be kind of overwhelming.

In another op-ed for the Times, that was written a couple months ago, David Epstein writes,

”The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who first used the term ‘flow’ to describe states of complete absorption in an activity, put it well. By making up one’s mind to invest in a choice, regardless of more attractive options that may come along later, ‘a great deal of energy gets freed up for living, instead of being spent on wondering about how to live.’

“This is critical today because chronic maximizing has never been easier. In 2006 an economist calculated that the consumer options available to citizens of modern economies exceeded those of preindustrial societies roughly by a factor of 100 million. That is an almost incomprehensible multiplication of choice, and it extends well beyond consumer goods into questions of who to be, how to live, where to work and whom to love.

“Social media has intensified the problem by functioning as an infinite comparison engine. When you can see a curated highlight reel of everyone else’s career, relationship, home and vacation, the very concept of “good enough” begins to feel like settling.

“The pull to keep searching for something better has poisoned even the most mundane moments.”

Maybe the problem is how quickly we’ve learned to escape boredom in ways that aren’t necessarily all that helpful.

I can be standing in line, waiting for the water to boil, sitting in the car, or lying in bed, and within seconds I can reach for my phone and give my brain something else to do. There is always another article, another video, another person’s vacation, another thing I could buy, another idea I could pursue, another version of my life I could be comparing mine to, another moment where I could be wondering if I’m happy enough, too much?

It’s an astonishing amount of stimulation. And sometimes it feels less like freedom than a very elaborate way of never having to sit still.

That’s what I find interesting about these two pieces. Edmundson is writing about the dangers of boredom, while Epstein is writing about the dangers of too much choice.

Maybe they’re circling the same problem from different directions. We need things that engage us, challenge us, and give our minds somewhere to go, but we also need to be able to choose something and then stop choosing.

A good life isn’t one in which we are constantly entertained or constantly maximizing; it’s when we can become absorbed in something we’ve chosen and, for a little while, forget about all the other possibilities and occasionally be a little bit bored.

LINKS TO LEARN MORE

The Edmundson op-ed

The Epstein op-ed

All photos by me.

QUICK NOTE.

This blog/newsletter/Substack/whatever will always be free to read now, but it’s also part of how I pay my mortgage.

If a paid subscription is way too big an ask, I’m always thankful for help buying dog treats.

Or, honestly, just sharing that this Substack exists is super cool.

I usually send these emails twice a week.

*My WRITE BETTER NOW posts also come one to two times a week if you sign up for them, too, which you should.

And COMFORTING is where I just have no filter at all and am totally schmaltzy is here. That’s once a week or so.

Note: I will not be terribly, perfectly, grammatically correct.

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Mystery author Jane Cleland wrote a book with the longest title ever—Mastering Suspense, Structure, and Plot: How to Write Gripping Stories That Keep Readers on the Edge of Their Seats—all about mastering structure back in 2016 and super close to the beginning of her long-titled book, she puts out a really simple maxim that I don’t think people really talk about enough.

Okay. Back to the point now that I’m depressed.

In Cleland’s book she says two things when it comes to structure:

1. Use a linear structure if you want to be simple and clear.

2. Use a nonlinear structure if you want drama and complexity.

Linear is basically chronological. The events follow that cause and effect in a straight path through time.

Nonlinear is more like a Fualker novel. As Cleland explains, '“It shifts in time and place and perspective.” It helps when you’re trying to tell a lot of storylines and a lot point of views.

Whatever structure you pick, you want to make sure it’s the right one for your story.

LET’S BE NONLINEAR TOGETHER

I feel like we all get what a linear story is. So, I just want to take a hot second and share about nonlinear structures.

Over on Famous Writing Routines, there’s this really great info about nonlinear narratives. They write:

“Non-linear storytelling comes with its own set of signature moves. Time shifts are a big part of it. Instead of following the tick-tock of a clock, these stories might jump back decades, or flash forward to the future, then circle back to the present. This dance with time can keep readers or viewers guessing, adding a layer of mystery and anticipation to the story.

“Then there are fragmented storylines. Imagine a story broken into pieces, like fragments of a mirror, each reflecting a different part of the whole picture. The story might shift from one character’s perspective to another’s, or jump between different plot points, leaving it up to the audience to piece it all together.

“Multiple perspectives are another hallmark of non-linear narratives. Instead of just following one character’s journey, the story might jump into the minds and lives of several characters. This can create a richer, more rounded view of the world the story is set in.

“Non-linear narratives shake up the usual storytelling structures, challenging what readers and viewers expect from a story. Instead of comfortably following a set path, audiences have to be more active, piecing together clues and making connections as the story unfolds in its own unique way.

“This style of storytelling can make themes and emotional impacts hit harder, too. By showing events out of order, or from different viewpoints, writers can highlight contrasts and parallels, deepening the meaning of the story. It can also make emotional moments more intense, as the non-linear structure can build suspense and curiosity, keeping audiences hooked until the very end.”

EXAMPLES OF NONLINEAR NARRATIVES

James Joyce's Ulysses

Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad

Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five

For film, Reservoir Dogs is a good example, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

QUICK NOTE.

This blog/newsletter/Substack/whatever will always be free to read now, but it’s also part of how I pay my mortgage.

If a paid subscription is way too big an ask, I’m always thankful for help buying dog treats.

Or, honestly, just sharing that this Substack exists is super cool.

I usually send these emails twice a week.

*My WRITE BETTER NOW posts also come one to two times a week if you sign up for them, too, which you should.

And COMFORTING is where I just have no filter at all and am totally schmaltzy is here. That’s once a week or so.

Note: I will not be terribly, perfectly, grammatically correct.

Subscribe now

Share

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