Carrie Mac's Blog

Author Statement in advance of LAST WINTER’s upcoming release:

People are quick to claim their support badge for de-stigmatizing mental health, but less so for mental illness. It’s not insta-ready or easily packaged for a tweet or tik tok.
Depression & anxiety are the only mental health poster children most people are willing to identify with and/or throw money, energy or support at.
People who experience mental illness also have stories worth reading, watching, or listening to. We seek l...

Found Writing Advice #18

Found Writing Advice #18

Like an idea. Write it down.

Found Writing Advice #15

When you can’t quite get yourself into the light, spew rainbows from the shadows until it’s safe to come out.

Found Writing Advice #14

Sometimes life demands that you pause. With or without your consent. Birth, death, health, finances . . . all very good reasons to take a break. Sometimes it’s okay not to think.

Found Writing Advice #13

Let’s start with the metaphorical.

If you rush through your life, in a hurry to get to the next Interesting Thing, the next New Lover, the next Writing Project, you will miss everything on the periphery. Details live in the periphery. If they’re scattered by the rush of air you leave behind as you rush by, you will miss out. You need the details that reside in the places much slower than you may want to go. If you can study dust motes, or watch the clouds roll overhea...

Found Writing Advice #14

Review Life Every Hour.

Writers are observers. If they aren’t, they can’t infuse their work with the life details needs to create a connection between the reader and the story that they’ve worked so hard to bring out of their imagination. This means review life every hour, or more. This does not have to be LIFE. It mostly means life. It all counts, because your ficticious would has the same elements as the one we walk in now. Even if you write steampunk fantasy or cri...

Found Writing Advice #13

Everything you lave left is unwritten. If you are like most authors, everything that you can write — but haven’t yet — vastly outweighs that you have written. We think too much about what we’ve written. We edit it. We look to give to a good home. We’d like it to work for us. We want our readers to sit with it and give it their concentration.

But once you have written something, don’t give it too much attention.

Make space to explore all the unwritten wonders you still...

Found Writing Advice #12

Semiotics.

This is how writers communicate meaning, using images and symbols woven into their work.

Now, if you are sitting there thinking, “Geez, I need me some more semiotics,” you probably don’t. Most writers get their meaning across without thinking too hard about it. The real work of this is usually done in revisions, when you can pull back a bit and see connections where you hadn’t noticed them when you first set them down, and build up any imagery or symbolism...