“PAUSE. BREATHE. Don’t Respond.”
This is a sticky note I have pasted to the top of my computer screen. I try to focus on it when I’m on zoom calls or when I read something on social media and feel the irrational urge to SCREAM AT PEOPLE (or cry).
Continue reading “PAUSE. BREATHE. Don’t Respond.”This morning, something magical happened. Maybe it was a coincidence, or maybe it was a sign. Or maybe it was a message. I’m still not certain exactly what it was. Nick thinks it was evidence of a husband I have in an alternate reality.
Continue reading “Message from My Other Husband?”Are you wasting all your time with all these words? #areyoustillwriting #amwriting #writerswrite
I have gotten out of the habit of writing.
And serious writing depends on just that—habit. Not waiting for inspiration or time or a good night’s sleep or a better outline or the dog to shut up or until you take some class/webinar/retreat.
Writing requires that you sit down and do it. No matter what. As often as possible, every day if you can. You start where you are and spill your jumbled thoughts, wandering storylines, and vast emotions on the page. Your fingers tap along as your heart and mind try to make sense of it. (or maybe that’s just how it works for me.)
If you keep going, pressing past the doubt and frustration and discouragement and that little nagging bird fluttering all around you chirping that you’re wasting so much time, if you wave her away and type on, I promise something will come of it.
Continue reading “Writing or Wasting Time?”BLIND TURN is officially out in the world today.
Thanks to the pandemic, though, it feels like any other day. There is no launch party, no celebratory signing, no champagne with friends even.
I’m planning a Facebook LIVE at lunchtime on my writer page, but I’m certain it will feel as lonely as every other LIVE I’ve done—talking into the abyss and wondering when I finish if I’ve connected with anyone.
Releasing a second book during this ‘unprecedented time’ feels like the final nail in the coffin of my dream to ever make-it-as-an-author. I had such high hopes for this year. I thought it was the year that I would ‘arrive.’ The less-than of every moment leading up to this book feels unfair and personal, as if God doesn’t think I can take a hint.
These are the thoughts spinning through my selfish mind. But then my heart says, “Get over yourself; this isn’t about you. It never was.”
On the mind vs heart equation, I usually operate at about a 40-60 ratio, but I think I’ve finally realized that if I want to be happy—really happy—in my life, I need to get to a 20-80 or even a 10-90 on the mind v heart battle.
So, shoving aside all the business and planning and success factors of my writing career, I’m overjoyed that Blind Turn is out in the world. It’s a book I have poured so much into and a book that has saved me again and again. Not only did it land me both of my agents, it has pulled me back into the fight again and again when I’ve all but given up and gone to work at Walmart.
Blind Turn is a story that sums up my own philosophies about life—everyone deserves a second chance and no one is irredeemable; we need to be present in all the moments of our life and conscious of the fact that any single moment can change everything; and more than anything, real love requires forgiveness on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis.
Those might be the three tenets of my life. And there they are in this story. I never set out to write a story about any of those things, though. I simply dreamed up a few characters, tossed them into a situation that scared the heck out of me, and wrote through what happened.
And as I wrote, my heart spoke its truth, sometimes surprising me on the page.
Blind Turn isn’t a classic or a parable or even literary fiction. It likely won’t find its way onto a bestseller list since it is coming out with an independent press few people have likely heard of, but it’s finally real. It’s loose in the world, my heart’s message to the masses.
Incredible thanks to the people who have always believed in this book, and in doing so believed in my heart, and in my mind’s ability to tell a story worth reading.
Hey, thanks for reading. I know you’ve got lots of options, so thanks for sharing a few of your minutes with me.
Honored,
Cara
Blind Turn is a mother-daughter story of forgiveness in the aftermath of a fatal texting and driving accident. Learn more about it and read a few early reviews here.
If you’re curious about what else I’m up to, check out my website, CaraWrites.com.
If you’d like to subscribe to my (sometimes) monthly e-newsletter, click here.
And If you’re a dog lover, check out my other blog, Another Good Dog. And if you want to know what is really happening in the animal shelters in this country, visit, Who Will Let the Dogs Out.
I’d love to connect with you on Facebook, twitter, or Instagram, and I’m thrilled to get email from readers (and writers), you can reach me at carasueachterberg@gmail.com.
My book, 100 Dogs & Counting: One Woman, Ten Thousand Miles, and a Journey Into the Heart of Shelters and Rescues was released this past July from Pegasus books and is available anywhere books are sold, but if you’d like some help finding it (or want to read some lovely reviews), click here.
As a writer, I hear from would-be writers all the time. They used to write, hope to write someday, had a teacher who told them they should be a writer, and a few who have been working on a novel for years.
The thing about writing is that anybody can do it.
I’m not just saying that. It’s true.
Anybody can write.
What they write, the quality of it, the success of it, well, that’s another story, but that’s not the point.
I believe Continue reading “Anybody Can Write”
I don’t understand the internet. Or my computer. Or my phone for that matter.
I’m pretty much convinced that it’s all magic. Mostly a good magic, but magic still.
My son is a professional ‘coder’ but I don’t really understand what that is beyond Continue reading “It Must Be Magic”
This was the first year in five years that I didn’t have a new book released.
(And yes, it does feel kind of surreal to say something like that and yes, I am one lucky writer and no, I am certainly not complaining. My cup and saucer runneth over.)
2019 was a year of growth and pain and frustration for me in terms of writing, and maybe in terms of life, but that’s for another post.
It wasn’t that I wasn’t writing. Oh, I was writing. Working like a little devil. I had a book contract for 100 Dogs & Counting and the manuscript was due December 1 and will be published July 2020, so the work has only just begun.
I’ve kept mum about this year’s other big writing project because Continue reading “Careful What You Wish For”
The thing about writing is that you are always taking a risk. If you aren’t taking that risk, then you’re probably not writing anything that matters.
If there is no danger involved, you are likely regurgitating a five-paragraph essay for your high school English teacher.
Doing what’s expected, what won’t raise any alarms or get anyone fired up enough to challenge you, is flimsy writing. It won’t hold up; it won’t motivate anyone to change their lives or fire off a rebuttal, let alone turn the page.
The well-worn sentiment that you can’t please everyone all the time, should be tattoed on your forehead as you write. Do not write to Continue reading “Writing Dangerously”
I think all writers are insecure.
Or maybe it’s just that all people are insecure.
None of us feel like we have it all together. Or live up to our own billing. We worry that Continue reading “All Writers Are Insecure”
“Being a writer invades my life 24/7.”
When I read that line in Shonda Rhimes’ book Year of Yes, I thought, Exactly.
All day long I take mental notes of everything I see. I can’t not do this, even when I want to shut my brain off. Even when I notice stupid details that will likely never make it into my writing, like how cigarette butts pile up in intersections where people empty their ashtrays while their cars idle or how the smell of the dollar store clings to you even after you’ve been out of the store for hours.
And I wonder about everything…The Wal-Mart employee with the raccoon eyes, snapping her gum as she stands frozen, starring at a shelf, a product in her hand. Is she putting away returned items? Is she doing a price check? Has her brain frozen in place? Does she know her eyeliner is running? Does she care? Maybe she’s depressed? Maybe her boyfriend just broke up with her this morning after he used her toothbrush and took the last bagel. Maybe….
The squished toad on the driveway, guts spewed out its flattened mouth. Did the driver notice before they ran it over? Did I run it over? The flattened skin has the same texture as a football.
The pink hue to the light at dusk and how it makes everything softer, the same way snow makes everything look cleaner. How do you capture its essence in words?
Walking the dog, I find myself narrating my actions as if I was in the story itself. “They crested the hill and scanned the woods for the fox that keeps watch over the chicken pen. A hawk circled overhead– was it a sign?”
I can’t seem to stop my brain. I tell it to chill, but it doesn’t listen. Maybe I should sign up for yoga or learn to meditate. Something to stop my busy brain.
Sometimes I’m frustrated when I can’t seem to put into words what I truly feel in my heart. The perfect words that floated through my thoughts as I ran along our country roads this morning, escape me when I finally sit down to type them out. When I read the writing of someone like Shonda Rimes, who so easily, almost embarrassingly, spills her heart on the page, I think, “Yes! That’s it!” I’m grateful for her talent and strive to open my own heart unfiltered as she does.
I find there to be a magic in writing, a power well beyond me. So I’m grateful for this 24/7 invasion. It makes my days richer, even as it means that my mind is preoccupied and sometimes I forget about the clothes on the line or the tea I left steeping on the counter.
Writing makes life more real for me. I’m awed by the potential power it holds. Maybe this next sentence will change a life or lift a spirit, bring back a memory, or at the very least, make someone wonder. Maybe it will shine right through, all the way from my heart to yours.
Hey, thanks for reading. I know you’ve got lots of options, so thanks for sharing a few of your minutes with me.
Honored,
Cara
If you’d like to know more about me, my books, and where you might run into me, check out my website, CaraWrites.com.
If you’d like to subscribe to my (sometimes) monthly e-newsletter, click here.
If you’re a dog lover, check out my other blog, Another Good Dog.
I’d love to connect with you on Facebook, twitter, or Instagram, and I’m thrilled to get email from readers (and writers), you can reach me at carasueachterberg@gmail.com.
COMING AUGUST 2018 FROM Pegasus Books:
My Life in Paragraphs 