Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation

One of us is a cat person.

It was a moment of truth, people. A moment of truth.

To be a writer and a human you often have to be courageous. Writers put their books out there for other people to see. Humans put their selves out there (sometimes in places like Tinder) for people to see. And that’s scary AF, honestly. With us writer people we’re putting our inner thoughts on a … Continue reading "Public Humiliation and Us – Dogs are Smarter Than People Podcast or Should We Say Pod-cat?"

What is A troll? A troll is someone who is a poop. No! No. Sorry, let’s try to be a bit more academic here. WHY DO THEY TROLL? All trolls are different and everything is a generalization but usually because they are bored and want some attention. Don’t Feed Them It’s incredibly hard not to … Continue reading "Troll Me Up, Baby or How to Ignore the Trolls"

Someone just told me (Carrie) that we weren’t really having a wedding anniversary because: We are celebrating it a few days late. We both forgot about it until the Thursday before the Sunday of the anniversary. Apparently, we didn’t talk about it on Facebook. Gasp! Who knew those were the criteria to keep your anniversary … Continue reading "How Are We Still Married and Happy Anniversary, Buddy!"

There’s a 65-year-old man, Henry, who lives near Philadelphia who has depression. He didn’t want to take medicine but he noticed he was happier when he was near his alligator, Wally. Yes, a guy in Philadelphia has an alligator named Wally. If you can get past that, you can be okay with the rest of … Continue reading "Emotional Support Alligators and You"

Carrie has been working on the Write Submit Support Class that she’s doing with the Writing Barn and the whole class is about creating a writing community and supporting each other, right? One of the first classes talks about “Living the Literary Life,” which is a phrase that she’s honestly not super into because she … Continue reading "Boxers or Briefs or the Commando – Living the Literary Life"

So, Shaun and I made a bonus podcast at yesterday’s Fourth Annual Bar Harbor Winter Beer Fest. Yes, you heard that right. We basically battled ridiculously cold temperatures to hang out with a bunch of other Maine beer drinkers and made new friends, talked to men in kilts, brewers, and a really cool guy making … Continue reading "Beer Fest is Not a Question. It is the Answer. Dogs are Smarter Than People Bonus Podcast where we get a little tipsy to support local brewers."

How can we make our organizations and ourselves happy? 

We talk about this ALL THE TIME in our house. To be fair we also talk about expelling gas out the rectum and cookie recipes, but happiness gets mentioned a lot.

We like to think of this, which Will Durant wrote, “We are what we repeatedly do.”

Humans are pattern seekers, but sometimes those patterns aren’t helpful ones. We fall into our default patterns; they become like well-used highways, constantly-used routes to our thinking. Our brains are like mechanical devices, wired for efficiency and for those learned patterns. 

How many of us get up, make coffee, go out and exercise, come back drink our coffee, go to work via the same road, every day – or some pattern like that. We’re wired for efficiency. We’ve learned the pattern.

But the cool thing about our brains is that we can rewire them. 

The currency of the media, social media, blog posts makes it that news is attention. And negative news gets a lot of attention. Threats get attention more than positive stories and inspiration. Or do they? 

The more entrenched in our lives and our organizations and our networks that we become, the less we see the need for new patterns.

But we need are inspired evangelists.  What we need is growth and change in our lives and in our writing.

WRITING TIP OF THE POD

Go write somewhere new. Seriously. If you are able-bodied, get up and go write somewhere besides your normal desk or coffee house or library. Switch it up.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Routines are important for dogs, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t get bored. Let your dog stop to sniff an interesting bush. Let yourself stop to notice an interesting tree. Add in 15 minutes to your schedule to allow yourself some room to discover and roam.

Shout Out

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song?  It’s “Night Owl” by Broke For Free.

Warning

Shaun was painting the walls in a super small room right before recording the podcast. You can tell.

Help Us and Do An Awesome Good Deed

Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness as we talk about random thoughts, writing advice and life tips. We’re sorry we laugh so much… sort of. Please share it and subscribe if you can. Please rate and like us if you are feeling kind, because it matters somehow. There’s a new episode every Tuesday!

BE A PART OF THE PODCAST!

Hey! If you download the Anchor application, you can call into the podcast, record a question, or just say ‘hi,’ and we’ll answer. You can be heard on our podcast! Sa-sweet!

No question is too wild. But just like Shaun does, try not to swear, okay?

Here is the link to the mobile app.

WRITING AND OTHER NEWS

ART.

I do art stuff. You can find it and buy a print here. 

TIME STOPPERS!

You can order my middle grade fantasy novel Time Stoppers Escape From the Badlands here or anywhere.

People call it a cross between Harry Potter and Percy Jackson but it’s set in Maine. It’s full of adventure, quirkiness and heart.

MOE BERG 

The Spy Who Played Baseball is a picture book biography about Moe Berg. And… there’s a movie out now about Moe Berg, a major league baseball player who became a spy. How cool is that?

It’s awesome and quirky and fun.

FLYING AND ENHANCED

Men in Black meet Buffy the Vampire Slayer? You know it. You can buy them hereor anywhere.

WRITING COACH

I offer solo writing coach services. For more about my individual coaching, click here.

I am super psyched to be teaching the six-month long Write. Submit. Support. class at the Writing Barn

THERE ARE ONLY TWO SPOTS LEFT

A recent study by the Authors Guild basically says that if you want to be a writer, prepare to be poor.

In 2017, full-time writers made a median salary of around $20k. That’s full-time writers. In the last ten years, writers’ earnings have decreased by 42 percent.

The article talks about causes and how this impacts authors’ writings and our society. But it doesn’t talk a lot about mental health, about how a lack of pay impacts creativity.

The study’s press release quotes T.J. Stiles as saying, “Poverty is a form of censorship. That’s because creation costs. Writing requires resources, and it imposes opportunity costs. Limiting writing to the financially independent and the sinecured punishes authors based on their lack of wealth and income.”

So all that basically sucks, but still we write. And there are a ton of YOU CAN MAKE A MILLION DOLLARS ON YOUR FIRST BOOK people out there. Those people? They are people who are trying to make their own million dollars – off of you with their vague ‘info-videos’ and ‘seminars’ and downloadable assets that basically tell you to write, read, write more, submit, make a blog site. There we gave the same advice for you right now for free.

This week the Golden Globes were on and there were a bunch of winners, but way more losers. And while we were reading about it, the same lesson kept ringing out at us.

You and the work you do contributes to a bigger purpose.

Your actions make a difference to people.

Your presence, your existence, is important.

You don’t have to be Hollywood to be important. You don’t need a million followers. You don’t need to win a golden globe.You just need to be. Do you. Realize that your work matters and you matter more than the outside metrics of awards and money. You don’t need other people to tell you that you’re a success. You are one by being here.

Writing Tip of the Pod

Be okay with not making a ton of money and having to do some side hustles – of the legal kind. Write the best stories you can, focus on craft, read a ton and you’ll stand out from the rest.

Dog Tip for Life

Joy is more important than money but money buys bacon.

BE A PART OF THE PODCAST!

Hey! If you download the Anchor application, you can call into the podcast, record a question, or just say ‘hi,’ and we’ll answer. You can be heard on our podcast! Sa-sweet!

No question is too wild. But just like Shaun does, try not to swear, okay?

Here is the link to the mobile app.

SHOUT OUT

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song?  It’s “Night Owl” by Broke For Free.

WRITING AND OTHER NEWS

ART.

I do art stuff. You can find it and buy a print here. 

TIME STOPPERS!

You can order my middle grade fantasy novel Time Stoppers Escape From the Badlands here or anywhere.

People call it a cross between Harry Potter and Percy Jackson but it’s set in Maine. It’s full of adventure, quirkiness and heart.

MOE BERG 

The Spy Who Played Baseball is a picture book biography about Moe Berg. And… there’s a movie out now about Moe Berg, a major league baseball player who became a spy. How cool is that?

It’s awesome and quirky and fun.

FLYING AND ENHANCED

Men in Black meet Buffy the Vampire Slayer? You know it. You can buy them hereor anywhere.

OUR PODCAST – DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE.

Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness as we talk about random thoughts, writing advice and life tips. We’re sorry we laugh so much… sort of. Please share it and subscribe if you can. Please rate and like us if you are feeling kind, because

Okay. Okay. I know we always try to be positive because we are positive people. Cough. But New Years? It’s a little frustrating.

That’s because it’s all about goals and new starts. And you know, every day should be about that, right? And then you’re like, “Crap, I failed in my goals. Crap, I need new goals. Crap, why is this party boring? Crap, should my new goal to be to never attend a party?”

And so on.

But that pressure? To be Instagram-worthy, to be super achiever goal person, to be extra? That’s what makes New Years suck. At this house, we like to just celebrate that we’re still alive, not bankrupt, and not in jail. It’s way better that way because there’s not as much pressure.

A long time ago – back in the 1980s – this guy Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi was studying happiness. He gave people pagers. Remember this was in the 1980s. Then he and his research assistants would send the people messages at random times and ask how they were doing, feeling, what they were doing, etc. It sounds a bit like when your mom texts you, honestly.

And he discovered flow. People were happy when they were super engaged in the task they were doing. People weren’t happy when they were doing nothing. They were happy when they were involved in something.

Minds were blown.

When people were in the ‘flow,’ they forgot about time, space, all the other detritus in their lives. They were focused on the now, on what they were doing. What they were doing might be writing, sports, hanging out with other humans, art, and so on… But for them the involvement was so intense that they became engaged and absorbed into it and were happy.

Writing should do that for you.

Writing Tip of the Pod

If you aren’t in the flow, why are you writing? Give yourself ten minutes. Set a timer. If it isn’t working, get up and go back later. Life is too short to be unhappy. Make that your new year mantra.

Dog Tip for Life

Fun and work aren’t mutually exclusive. Having fun and being useful aren’t either, man. Pull out your inner dog and go with the flow this year. Look for the flow.

Be a Part of the Podcast!

Hey! If you download the Anchor application, you can call into the podcast, record a question, or just say ‘hi,’ and we’ll answer. You can be heard on our podcast! Sa-sweet!

No question is too wild. But just like Shaun does, try not to swear, okay?

Here is the link to the mobile app.

SHOUT OUT

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song?  It’s “Night Owl” by Broke For Free.

WRITING AND OTHER NEWS

ART.

I do art stuff. You can find it and buy a print here. 

TIME STOPPERS!

You can order my middle grade fantasy novel Time Stoppers Escape From the Badlands here or anywhere.

People call it a cross between Harry Potter and Percy Jackson but it’s set in Maine. It’s full of adventure, quirkiness and heart.

MOE BERG 

The Spy Who Played Baseball is a picture book biography about Moe Berg. And… there’s a movie out now about Moe Berg, a major league baseball player who became a spy. How cool is that?

It’s awesome and quirky and fun.

FLYING AND ENHANCED

Men in Black meet Buffy the Vampire Slayer? You know it. You can buy them hereor anywhere.

OUR PODCAST – DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE.

Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness as we talk about random thoughts, writing advice and life tips. We’re sorry we laugh so much… sort of. Please share it and subscribe if you can. Please rate and like us if you are feeling kind, because it matters somehow. There’s a new episode every T