The Goodjelly Blog

By Christine Carron

Your writing adventure is most likely not going to proceed in a straight line. There will be zigs, zags, challenging twists, and exciting turns. You may have already experienced this. Truth is, the whole adventure could end up feeling a little discombobulating. Unless you take c...

By Christine Carron

A client hired me to reset a project that was months behind schedule and about one million dollars over budget. In the first week, I completed a high-level analysis of the remaining work, met with senior leadership and the delivery team to get a picture of the challenges from va...

By Christine Carron

Toward the end of last year, I shared two facts about my reading habits. First, that in any given year I bought a ridiculous amount of books, many only to be later culled due to limited shelf space—culled often before I even read them. Second, that I started reading many more bo...

By Christine Carron

We live in a culture that values doing, accomplishing, taking action. On the writerly adventure, leaning into that cultural norm is a good thing. You have to take action—a whole lot of action—as a writer, or your literary dreams will never amount to anything. Coulda . . . Should...

By Christine Carron

I left for the conference with high hopes. Not only was I going to get all the main conference sessions, I had paid for a session with a V.I.I.P., i.e., a very important industry professional. I was going to be mentored by an agent or an editor or a successful author who had rea...

By Christine Carron

I’ve been on the writing adventure for over a decade, and it kind of blows my mind that last week was officially my first ever personal writing retreat. I have attended conferences and classes and workshops galore, but never before have I gone away with the main purpose of me si...

By Christine Carron

For years, I tried and failed to meditate. Instead of being calmed by the process, it stressed me out. I felt a bit ashamed about this. Wasn’t meditation supposed to be a universal salve? When I finally ‘fessed up about my meditation chagrin to my therapist, she wasn’t surprised...

By Christine Carron

[The inner game] takes place in the mind of the player, and it is played against such obstacles as lapses in concentration, nervousness, self-doubt and self-condemnation. In short it is played to overcome all habits of mind which inhibit excellence in performance.

- Tim Gallwey...

By Christine Carron

I had been living in the small studio apartment on Rue de Bremondis in Aix-en-Provence for a week. Madame Leyssieux was my landlady. A lovely woman who kindly agreed to let me parrot her in attempt to improve my French pronunciation and vocabulary. Each one of our early conversa...

By Christine Carron

There I was. In a writing workshop with seven other writers. We had completed a writing prompt a moment ago. The workshop leader called on me to read and instead of reading the prompt, I launched into an . . . I don’t know what. 

Apology? Explanation? Plea to the other particip...

By Christine Carron

It’s true. An active Inner Critic can wreak havoc on our writerly adventure. She* might keep us from sharing our work. It’s so not good enough! Seriously. Total dog doo-doo writing. . . . 

Or stop us from taking classes that will help us grow as writers. What are you thinking? ...

By Christine Carron

I have worked on software development projects for over twenty-five years. First as a business analyst, then as a project manager. There are many moving pieces involved in building a website that satisfies (and ideally exceeds) a client’s expectations, but the one I want to focu...