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On Possible Metaphors of a Mouse Tale

By Christine Carron

As I thought about what I would write this week, a memory kept sneaking up on me: the first time I used a mouse. It was also the first time I used a personal computer. I was a senior in high school nearing graduation and visiting my older sister at college. I had a final paper...

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On Stress Writing

By Christine Carron

I am not much of a gambler. Once I was in Las Vegas on a business trip and went with some colleagues to play blackjack. I giddily explained my novice status to our dealer, a white woman so brown and wizened it looked like she spent every non-working, waking hour in the sun,...

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On Scenting a Story

By Christine Carron

A friend is proofreading the revision I have been working on for months. After all the creative, intellectual, and emotional effort that went into that particular revision, it is a relief to have it off my desk and out of my mind. 

Its absence has opened up time in my...

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On Dancing with Doubt

By Christine Carron

Nobody puts Baby in a corner. So goes a famous line from the movie Dirty Dancing. Doubt on the writing adventure is like Baby. It will not be put in a corner. Like any emotion, doubt wants to be felt. To be moved. To be attended to. 

I was reminded of this last week as I...

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On Puzzling, Process, and You

By Christine Carron

I love jigsaw puzzles. Last night, I finished a particularly tricky one. My puzzle speed slowed dramatically toward the end as I sorted out the last fifty pieces or so, which all looked very similar. I got it done through a combination of methodical analysis, leaps of...

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On the Ironing Pass

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...

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On Going Far Enough

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...

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On Story QA

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...

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On Taking Your Readers on a Ride

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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On How To Be a Great Partner to Your Writing

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...

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On Balls in the Air

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...

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On Tutu Moments and Rocking Your ZPD

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...

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