Category: Anecdote (Page 13 of 30)

Books Are Not Precious

April 6, 2015 / Katie L. Carroll

I never highlight, make notes, or otherwise intentionally mark the pages of my books. Even when I was in college and purchased text books, I never like to take notes in the pages. Books are sacred, precious, not to be marred.

Then I had kids. And if I’ve learned anything from my boys, it’s that my world view is often flawed and certainly not absolute. To kids and babies, books are more than the words and pictures in their pages. They are teethers, drums, they can be stacked to make a tower or stairs.

Not that I don’t discourage them from doing all these things; we try to teach the boys to take care of their belongings. But that doesn’t mean they revere books in the way I do. To them, books are not sacred or precious. They are for reading, of course. And we love reading them. But they are fun in other ways, too. And if that gives them a life-long love affair with books, then I’m all for it!

The Very Inspiring Blogger Award

January 30, 2015 / Katie L. Carroll

A very big thanks to Beverly Stowe McClure for nominating me for The Very Inspiring Blogger Award. Beverly is a force in the kidlit world with a slew of writing credits to her name and a generous soul. Make sure to check out her website and blog The Story of a Writer.

The rules for accepting this award are as follows:
1. Thank the person who nominated you, and link to their blog.
2. Display the award logo.
3. Nominate at least 15 other blogs (more or less) and provide a link where they may be found.
4. Then, go to their blog, leave a comment to let them know they have been nominated, and where to find the information they need to accept (rules).
5. Mention three things that inspired you the most during the past few weeks.

So here are the three things that have inspired me recently…

1. My kids…of course! Love those little guys. They are a constant reminder of all that is wonderful in the world: the way they think, the way they learn, the way they share, even the way they “fight.” (A fight between the boys usually entails The Boy yelling at The Prince for some nonexistence slight or rudeness–cause 7-month-olds are so rude, right–and The Prince, loving the attention from his older brother, breaks into a big two-tooth grin.) They’re still young enough to be impressed by their old mom, so I’m enjoying their enthusiasm while it lasts. Just yesterday when The Boy spotted the cover of my picture book, he said, “Oh, I love that one,” and insisted we read it. So, yeah, they keep me inspired in so many ways, even as they are tiring me out.

2. A group of students I have yet to meet. I’ve been putting the finishing touches on a school presentation for early February in conjunction with The Great Connecticut Caper. Among the group, are 7 students who submitted a story to the Caper’s first contest and won the author visit. Just thinking about the fun activities I have planned for them and thinking about the writing that will hopefully come out of it keeps me excited about my projects.

3. My writing group. I have a pretty awesome in-person critique group that I meet with once a month. The quality of the work coming from every single person in the group has reached such a level of excellence lately. We’ve really hit a groove. Not only do I look forward to reading their offerings every month, but knowing they are all waiting for the next installment in my WIP keeps me on track with my word count goals.

Okay, now it’s your turn. I’ve never been very good at nominating people for these blogger awards, so here’s five people I’ve come up with. And, if you’re a blogger and would like to be nominated and play along, just leave a comment and I’ll add you to the list. My nominees:

1. Kai Strand – Strands of Thought

2. Meradeth Houston – Write Stuff

3. Stuart R. West – Twisted Tales from Tornado Alley

4. Eric Price – Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Whatever Else Comes to Mind

5. Jeff Chapman – Jeff Chapman’s Writing

6. Comment to have your blog added here!

Happy Holidays From My Family to Yours

December 16, 2014 / Katie L. Carroll

It’s a busy time of year for everyone, and that’s no exception for this gal! Between the decorating, cookie making, and holiday activities, a minute of spare time is just not to be found.

This past weekend we took a holiday train ride with Santa (and other fun characters) on the Essex Steam Train. And tomorrow we’re taking The Boy on his first ever trip to NYC. So that means another train ride (this time on the train we see from the cafe all of the time), seeing the big tree at Rockefeller Center, and probably a trip to the toy store.

I’ve also got some really exciting things going on with the writing career, but I’ll be gabbing about all that in the New Year. If you’re local, don’t forget to check out the launch party for The Great Connecticut Caper at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford on January 7, 2015. The countdown has already begun for the first chapter release on January 4, 2015. The official site for reading the chapters as they release is http://ctcaper.cthumanities.org/.

I’ve got one last guest post scheduled for Thursday (a cover reveal!) and then I’ll be taking next week off from blogging for Christmas. The Observation Desk will be back strong in the New Year with lots of guest posts from The Great Connecticut Caper contributors and the usual writing, parenting, blathering posts from me. 😉

With that, I wish all of you a happy and healthy holiday season and New Year!

Stripping My Emotional Self in Writing

December 4, 2014 / Katie L. Carroll

I’m the kind of person who holds her emotions really close to her chest. I hate crying in front of people, even the ones I’m closest to, and have always, as far back as I can remember, felt this way. I don’t like openly showing many strong emotions often feel embarrassed when I do, and sometimes even feel embarrassed for other people when they are showing strong emotions (though they themselves probably aren’t feeling that way…they are simply reveling in whatever they are feeling).

It’s not that I don’t have strong emotions. In fact, it’s just the opposite; I have strong emotions, it’s just hard for me to show them. When I’m upset about something or hurt, it most often comes across as anger…because for some reason my brain thinks it’s okay to show anger if I have to show something.

Psychoanalysis aside (not really interested in analyzing myself, especially not here on a public website…yikes!), being this kind of person makes it hard for me to open up my emotional self in my writing. One of my goals this year was to push my writing to show deeper levels of emotions, and that included all forms of my writing: blogging, the journals I keep for the boys, my novels, everything.

I really stripped down and got real here on the blog with my post “How Does a Mother’s Love Grow?” back in February. I was going through a really tough time as a mother and shared some real and not necessarily flattering feelings. Frankly, that was a terrifying moment when I hit Publish on that post. But it got a lot of hits and so many wonderful comments. Though when I think about people reading that post, it kind of makes me nauseated.

My WIP is a really gritty novel, a thriller about a girl with a dark past (much of which she can’t remember) and who isn’t sure if she deserves a chance to remake herself. She isn’t even sure if that’s possible and wonders if she’s just an evil person at the core. Not that her feelings are my own per se, but the idea is to push and explore those very deep emotions and draw them out. Whatever they may be.

So I think I’ve begun to chip away at that goal. And I think it’s bringing my writing to a whole new level. Because it’s those deep emotions that resonate with readers, it’s what they connect to and remember from a story. Ultimately that’s the kind of stuff I want to write, even if it kind of makes me cringe a little on the inside. It also makes me glow on the inside, too. One of the many dichotomies of my life!

I guess the next step in this process of mining my emotions would be to allow myself to express them to a fuller extent. Not only would that aid in my writing, but it would probably be healthy for me and my relationships (not that any of that is bad, but those could always be better, right?).

So where have you pushed yourself and your writing this year and where are you taking those things in the next year?

Confession of an Author: Prolific Writers

November 10, 2014 / Katie L. Carroll

Confession #9: I hate prolific writers.

Yes, I’m using the word “hate,” a word–you guessed it–I hate (it’s so unimaginative and really when you think about it, rather vague). It seems every other author I’ve ever heard of is a faster writer. Yeah, I know, it’s not a good idea to compare yourself to other writers and their processes or successes because to each his own and everything, but, man, I wish I could just write faster…and that I hadn’t heard of all these other writers who have a million books coming out all the time.

Seriously, my writer friends seem to have books releasing every day. I know about all their new books because I’m constantly hosting them here on this blog and reading their amazing stories. They post about their huge word counts (I’m happy to get a couple hundred words in a day, and I don’t even write every day…not even close to every day) and they do NaNoWriMo and write, write, write. And I love these writer friends of mine, but I hate them too. Why? Because they are so prolific and I am, well, not.

And I know what you’d say to me (because you, my dear blog readers, are a wonderful, supportive group of people). “Katie,” you’d say. “You have a preschooler and a baby, you have your editing, a husband who does housework, and a wonderful, full life.” And I’d say, “Yes, that is all true, and thank you for saying so.”

I do have all these wonderful things in my life, but I only have two published books and one collaborative work on the way, and I want more published books. I want more work to put out there. I want more time to write and when I do have time to write, I want to write more. Bottom line, I want more! “Wah, wah, wah,” right?

Then I feel guilty because there are other writers who are struggling to have anything published, writers who deserve to be published. Because I remember having that kind of wanting before ELIXIR BOUND came out, and that is a whole other kind of longing.

Back on topic, even this blog post feels like it’s taking forever to write. Why can’t my brain just get the words out of my head and onto the page in a manner that doesn’t feel like losing a 100-meter race to a slug? I’m a fast typist, so that’s not the problem. I’m a fast thinker, too. I think part of the problem is how much I have to think about things before I write them down. My process is part of who I am, not just as a writer but as a person. That’s hard to change.

I have to have a really good sense of what I’m writing before I even begin to put it down on the page. And then when I do start to get it down on the page, it spawns all these other thoughts and ideas that I have to rein my brain in. Wait, I think that means I think too fast, so it’s hard to focus on the writing and just get it on the paper. My brain moves too fast for my fingers. Plus, I’m a deliberate person. I don’t just do things nilly-willy (not saying prolific writers do things this way…only a comment on myself); I need to be ready to do things before I do them. I’m not sure there’s a way to circumnavigate that.

Okay, now I’m thinking out loud on the page, and boy, that’s a scary thought because who knows what will come out next. Let me gather my focus again. I am not a prolific writer and I may never be one because it’s just not the way I work. So all you prolific writers out there, just cut it out already! 😉