The Goodjelly Blog
By Christine Carron
Are you familiar with this moment? The one where you have made all the big picture changes on a revision. And you have done multiple passes through the manuscript, reading and/or reading aloud, listening for musicality, for clunkiness, for awkwardness. Line-editing mode...
By Christine Carron
There was a weeping willow tree in the backyard of the house where I spent my youngest childhood years. I have a particular memory of climbing it. Higher and higher I went until I was clinging to the central leader at the very top of that willow. I inchwormed myself up just...
By Christine Carron
In software development, the process that ensures that a delivered product works as expected is called quality assurance (QA). Perhaps as a result of being steeped in software development for over twenty-five years, I have always thought of the editing and revision process in...
By Christine Carron
If you’re a writer, then I figure I’m not going too far out on the proverbial limb if I state that you probably want someone, even lots of someones, to read your work. Basically, you want readers. I fully admit to having that particular want myself.
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By Christine Carron
The other day I watched a special episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee from 2015 where Jerry Seinfeld visits with then President Obama in the White House. In the second half of the interview, after Seinfeld cheekily points out that he’s made way more money than...
By Christine Carron
I’m learning to juggle. I’m about three weeks in. My process, for the most part, has been (a) throw balls into the air, and (b) watch balls fall to the earth. On occasion, my hands interrupt the falling. A joyful squeal may have (okay, totally did) come out of me...
By Christine Carron
In writing, as with anything we do, there’s the desired output and the process we go through to achieve the desired output. Let’s say the desired output is a commercially successful novel, i.e., we want to earn some scratch (gasp!) for our artistic labor. Now, for...
By Christine Carron
I am a sucker for British crime dramas so I feel a tad bit guilty for what I am about to do: dissect a scene from one (that shall remain unnamed) in order to highlight dialogue techniques that are probably best left to the small screen—and retro small screen at...
By Christine Carron
Sometimes I order books and they sit unread for years. Others I inhale immediately. How to Become an Extreme Action Hero by Elizabeth Streb was an inhaler.
Before proceeding, let’s be clear. I am not an extreme action hero. I once took a boot camp style exercise...
By Christine Carron
In The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact, authors Chip Heath and Dan Heath explore why certain brief experiences jolt us, even transform us—and how we can learn to create such elevated moments in our life and work.
We writers, of...
By Christine Carron
Thirty pages. Thirty pages to go to get through the rough-cut of this revision I have been working on since October. It’s got me thinking about us writers and how, since writing is such a long game, we are in what can feel like a constant state of longing to complete: ...
By Christine Carron
In college, I applied to be a Resident Assistant (RA). I had to participate in a panel interview—me facing off against three senior RAs. During the interview, we were discussing how much I enjoy dancing. One of the interviewers said, “I can’t dance. I have...
