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3 Writers Whose Paths Are Still Teaching Me So Much

April 18, 2013 jcladyluv

I know that there are tons of lessons that I have yet to learn from writers who have already been propelled to a Hollywood level of success that I eventually hope to get to. Writers like J.K. Rowling, Terry McMillan, Tyler Perry, James Patterson, or Sue Grafton. Reading their works, studying their patterns, their habits, are valuable lessons to be instilled in my everyday quest for reaching my goals.

However, there are other writers also, other not yet famous (and I say yet because they are either just getting on their way or they will be) authors that this industry should be on the lookout for. There are 3 writers in particular whose lessons I can’t disregard and one’s that they are currently teaching me for my present circumstances.

Writers like Christina Katz, who for the years that I have been following her blog and her career, has reminded me continually that just because I am a mother does not mean that I can’t raise my career alongside my child and be an awesome Writer Mama. She also has showed me that building a platform is vitally important if you want to become successful within the writing industry and that it’s important to establish that platform before you release the book.

Then there is Catherine Ryan Howard, who is a prime example that being a self-published author is not a death sentence to your writing career but that it could potentially make you more of a household name. Catherine Ryan Howard has a remarkable blog and has self-published several books that are successfully driving her readership higher and higher and her determination is something to be admired.

Speaking of determination, not to mention drive, LaMonique Hamilton, who launched her online magazine, PieHole, just last year, is a writer who I admire greatly. She has such a love and passion for writing and for the media industry in general. She really will be the Oprah of the next generation and her passion for the arts is contagious.

There are many other writers whose names aren’t on someone’s Hollywood hit list yet that we can learn from on our way to career success. Let’s not take for granted the lessons that can be learned on a smaller scale that will help us get to the larger scale that we’re looking to get to. All lessons are important no matter where they come from. Even the small lessons that we learn can lead us to big results!

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

Write 2 Be Magazine is now out so please go check it out at http://write2bemagazine.com/. Also please go and join the magazine on twitter https://twitter.com/write2bemag, join the email listing for the magazine or submit a request for an author interview at Write2bemagazine@yahoo.com, and also like the Write 2 Be Magazine fan page https://www.facebook.com/Write2BeMagazine. Please help support my endeavor and my new journey and help me spread the word about Write 2 Be and its meaning.

Put Your Money Where Your Dreams Are

February 13, 2013 jcladyluv

The idea and title, for that matter, of my blog post today was inspired by my best friend Ms. L’s video blog post regarding her thoughts on the State of the Union Address made by President Obama last night. One point she made in her post was about us, in our everyday lives, being willing to invest in ourselves and essentially “put your money where your dreams are”.

She got me to thinking of how we can find a happy medium in between investing everything we can into that dream we are striving towards and being able to somehow still reward ourselves for the accomplishments that we do achieve along the way in our journey. I thought of a couple of things that we can maybe think of doing that might not seem so impossible to actually do.

1.) Bank on Your Dreams—Give your dream its own bank account. If you already have a separate business account, this would be also considered your dream account (unless your own business is not in fact your dream- then you still need a different account to build on your dream). This is an account that is only for things pertaining to making your dream a reality. This IS NOT an emergency fund for when things start getting tough. If you are striving to be a successful writer and make your entire income by writing then when you need to go to a conference to network, that would be when you tap into this account. It is not for seeing a movie that you want to call research for your next great project. That is not an emergency.

2.) Be Your Own Bill Collector—Treat your dream, and the expenses for accomplishing your dream, as if it is a bill and you are its bill collector. Whether it be once every two weeks, or once a month (however your income flows) take a percentage or a set amount each time you get paid and put into your dream. This is where the dream account comes in handy. If we treat our dreams as if it is just like all of our bills other bills that come every month, the one’s we stress ourselves over, then perhaps we will actually manage to put some money into it.

3.) Give Up Unnecessary Wants—Be prepared to give up what you don’t need to have. You know what I mean. That night that you ate out when you had food in the house you could have fixed. That extra pair of shoes that you didn’t really need to buy. That bottle of wine that you didn’t actually need to get. Those cigarettes that you bought when you know you need to quit anyway. Those are things that you want, possibly things you think you need, but that you don’t. This is money being taken away from that dream you keep hoping to see progress in.

4.) Reward Yourself Feasibly—Okay just because I said that you have to be willing to give up those unnecessary wants doesn’t mean that I am saying to not ever reward yourself for the things you do accomplish along the way. If you don’t reward yourself in some way you will most likely start to feel like you’re not getting anything out of this because it is (unless you are lucky enough to make it big overnight) going to take some time to see the complete end result that you are looking for. However, let’s keep our end results in mind when we reward ourselves. For instance, I can see buying those sneakers that you really need because your current pair are almost in the category of falling apart, but do you really think the extra pair of $300 shoes is necessary. That handbag that you want to buy for $100 is not really a need when you have a dozen perfectly good handbags at home (and that one is hard for me because purses are my weakness). One cup of Starbucks a week is a nice reward but do you actually need to go every day when you have a perfectly good coffee maker at home. Reward in moderation.

So do you see any of these on the list that you can at least start with this week? I think that I can see one specifically that I need to do for myself that I can’t even believe I haven’t done yet. Hopefully you will find some of these helpful and perhaps you can even think of a few that I didn’t include that you can share with me. Let’s start taking our dreams off of the back burner where we tend to forget about them, and placing them on that front burner so they are always at the top of our agenda. We have to take our dreams seriously, because if we don’t know no one else will.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

Everything Is Not Always a Good Fit

October 2, 2012 jcladyluv

Last week my best friend Ms. L. wrote a blog post about people not thinking that they are too good to do something in order for them to get further ahead. She was speaking of people who make comments such as “I don’t do windows, or I will not work at a fast food restaurant, or I won’t scrub and clean people’s floors” but still find themselves scrambling to get ahead. She spoke about the people who turn their noses up at those particular types of jobs because they believe that they are supposed to be somewhere better but yet they have not paid their dues.

Now while I agree with some of what she says in her post, I have to say, unashamedly, that I am one of those people who will not take a job at a fast food restaurant or cleaning rooms at a hotel. However, it is most certainly not me looking down on people that work in the fast food or restaurant industry or people who are maids, or are in the retail industry. In fact I worked in the retail industry for years and yes as a part of that work I did clean some bathrooms, and I cleaned up other people’s mess, and I did grunt work that I absolutely hated.

When I decided to work on making writing my full time and only job (or passion with benefits of income as I would rather refer to it) it wasn’t because I felt I was too good to work in those industries (because believe me, I know that is not the case), but rather because I no longer wanted to work to further someone else’s dreams (being the owners of those companies) while my dreams took a seat somewhere in the far back corner. It wasn’t that I felt I was above those positions, it was more that I felt I would be doing a disservice to those who worked in those industries and loved what they do and who do it well.

It’s kind of like when you go into a restaurant and have the worst waitress you could possibly have and you leave the restaurant saying to yourself “if she doesn’t want to be there, she just shouldn’t be working there”. I don’t want to be one of those people who is doing a job because I am desperate and have no choice because then I will never do the job the way that it is supposed to be done. I feel that I am destined to do a specific job on this earth and I just don’t want to waste my time, or anyone else’s for that matter, doing a horrible job at something that I wasn’t meant to do in the first place.

I agree that you should never look down on jobs that don’t appear to be glamorous, especially if you don’t know what it is that you want to do and you are trying to find your footing. However, I also feel that if you know that you have a dream and a goal, and you know what direction you are headed in, you should never settle for something that you can’t give 100 percent to. It’s not turning your nose up at a particular job, or even those that do that particular job, to realize that you just wouldn’t do that job justice and that it just isn’t a good fit for you.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

There Can Be No Victory Without Having Something to Defeat

April 27, 2012 jcladyluv

“Victory is sweetest when you’ve known defeat.”

~Malcolm S. Forbes

This morning I read Ms. L.’s latest blog post and it got me thinking about how we tend to only want to talk about positive things and spare others from the bad (or at least from so much of the bad). I myself sometimes feel as if when I post I tend to zero in on the problems and that the positive spin that I try to put on certain struggles I deal with and doubts and fears that I have are just not positive enough.

In reading Ms. L.’s post it dawned on me that we all love when we hear the feel-good stories but I’m not sure that we realize that the reason we love them so much is because of the struggle that they come from. We like to hear about the things that people overcome and how hard people have to fight to get where it is that they want to be in life and we applaud the victory on the other side of their struggles. It gives us a sense of hope for our own situations.

We can’t always put a positive spin on things that happen in our lives. Sometimes we just have to tell it like it is and hope that others can take something positive away from whatever it is that we are going through. There are always lessons to be learned from the experiences that we go through and sometimes the silver lining just doesn’t show up until after the storm clouds are gone.

However, we still have to fight our way through the storm clouds, and not only that, we have to share our fight. We have to use our struggles to equip others with the necessary tools that they may not even realize they already have so they can weather the storms too. There are silver linings to everything, but Ms. L. is right when she points out that those silver linings don’t really mean much without the clouds that you had to go through to get there.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

Where Writing Leaves Off, Music Picks Up

April 20, 2012 jcladyluv

“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and cannot remain silent.”
~Victor Hugo

I just finished reading Ms. L.’s blog post from last night. I swear sometimes when she writes a post it’s almost like she tuned into something that I was already thinking about and wanted to say but somehow couldn’t actually find the words to say it. And then I usually read her post and it helps me put what I wanted to say into perspective.

She talked about the musician side of her and while I must say I don’t have the songwriting capability that she has, I too, have had dreams of being on the stage singing with the whole shebang, lights, cameras, band, and background singers. Now it’s usually hard for me to toot my own horn most of the time but there are two things that I have no problem acknowledging that I am good at, my writing (of course) and my singing.

I can still sing, or at least carry a more decent tune than most, but there was once a time when I really (really) used to be able to sing. I had a really good range and I could hold a note for a really long time. I might have had a little too much vibrato at times but it could’ve been managed.

I miss the times when I used to just pull out my stacks of CDs and just hold my own personal concert in my house. Sometimes there would even be an occasional group of my friends (of course they could sing too) and we would do group songs, duets, and each would take turns being the soloist. Those were really fun times.

Singing was my release, almost as much as writing was. In fact when I wasn’t writing you would more than likely find me singing. Even when my daughter was a baby I would sing to my daughter and it would literally lull her right to sleep. I would still get together with that group of friends and we would sing to entertain her and she loved it.

I never really thought about the possibility of writing songs until recently, partly because I feel my voice wasn’t what it once was and I realize that I might never get to contribute to the music industry the way I had once intended to, on stage. I’ve even been told all throughout my time of writing poetry that I had some poems that have the potential of making really good songs. The problem with that would be that, unlike Ms. L., I can not write or read music, so I’m always left with this melody of something in my head that I can’t for the life of me (because I’m getting old and my memory isn’t what it once was) remember later.

Sometimes I do feel like I am really missing out on something by not getting some piano lessons and perhaps beginning to actually write my own songs to sing. But I suppose that if it’s meant to be for me to create music, because it is ingrained inside of me, then it will be present within my journey.

I do, however, miss the days of gathering up my stacks of CDs and cranking my stereo up, and singing for hours on end. Music has a way of healing my spirit in ways that sometimes (very rarely) writing can’t. When I can’t find the words to convey what I am feeling, I can always find the song. It’s as if it picks up where writing leaves off and then allows my writing to weave its way back in.

“Where words fail, music speaks.”

~Hans Christian Andersen

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

Structuring Ourselves In Order to Sustain His Blessings

April 17, 2012 jcladyluv

“Your real strength, your guts, your tenacity, your staying power, your discipline, is in the things God did for you when nobody was looking.”

~Bishop T.D. Jakes

I realized last night that my post yesterday was a little unfinished. I don’t think that the message that I was trying to convey was finished yet. I was reading Ms. L’s blog post this morning and realized that there was more I needed to say. She spoke of having doubts in her mission and her purpose with what she is trying to do with her company and her new magazine, PIEhole, and in reading her post I thought all of these doubts sounded all too familiar for me.

I hadn’t realized that she was experiencing this much doubt. I always see her as so well put together and it just always seems that she is fearless and ready to take on the world. I started thinking back to the Bishop T.D. Jakes sermon that I listened to yesterday and the particular part that I wanted to convey to Ms. L. in her time of doubt, and what I have to get through to my own mind as well, is that greatness takes time.

“The best miracles in your life take time; can not be driven by hunger, or need, or necessity. Sometimes you have to get yourself structured and in order so that you are ready to receive the magnitude of what God has for you. Just because you have a driving need does not mean that you can disperse with the order and the time and the structure that is necessary to hold the weight of what God is going to do. Some people are so busy trying to get what God has that they don’t provide the structure that is necessary to sustain what they have been given.”

This quote struck me when I heard it in his sermon. It hit me like a ton of bricks because I thought about the fact that I have not necessarily built up a stable structure. I have not yet gotten the order that I need to have to sustain the kind of structure that I need. It makes sense that God would want to hold onto the overflow of blessings that he has stored up for me until he sees that I have built up a stable enough structure to hold the weight of those blessings.

I am still working on the order and my structure and perhaps I should stop rushing God along to give me what he knows that I am not ready to sustain. “Until you can be thankful for something that is not enough, then what you have can not be multiplied into what is more than enough.” Perhaps my time would be better spent preparing my structure and being thankful for the things that he has already blessed me with and seen me through instead of just waiting for him to do what he has in his plans to do for me.

So that’s what I’m going to continue to strive for and work on. I am going to be building up my structure and getting my ‘house’ in order and enjoy and be thankful for what God has already blessed me with on an everyday basis. He has blessed me with so many things in my life thus far, among them a purpose, knowledge of how to go after that purpose, and the ability to carry out that purpose. I know that once he feels I am ready for the overflow, my cup will runneth over.

*(And Ms. L., your cup is already nearing the edge.)*

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

Even an Icon Like Oprah Can Have Fear

April 2, 2012 jcladyluv

“The thing you fear most has no power. Your fear of it is what has the power. Facing the truth really will set you free.”

~Oprah Winfrey

This morning Oprah was on the CBS This Morning show and she was promoting her network, OWN. She talked about a lot of different things but one thing that struck me was when she admitted that if she knew then (when starting the network) what she knows now she probably wouldn’t have done it (or at least not at the time that she did it). She acknowledged that when she launched her network she was not ready. In fact that was one of the lessons that she took away from her process of starting the network, that you shouldn’t launch something just because you already gave a date to everyone else if you are not ready to.

That was both shocking and admirable to me and just made me want to model my business sense (that I am still trying to mold) after the road she has already paved for the women coming after her even more. She spoke of the critics in the press who have criticized her brave but somewhat dismal start to her cable network, and one headline, “Oprah not quite standing on her OWN”, that she tries not to let dictate whether she is in fact succeeding or failing at her new endeavor. In her words, “it’s just press”. She said that because you fail at something (which her network is in no way failing) doesn’t mean that you are a failure.

It made me start to think about that good old fear of failure that I can’t seem to shake for the life of me. Why am I so afraid to fail? It’s not as if my failing at any given thing would mean that it’s the end of the road for me and my dreams. In my heart I know this but my head (or perhaps that little devilish angel sitting on my shoulder) keeps telling me that if I fail even one more time at something then that’s it, I’m just destined to be a failure. If only I could shake that demon trying to creep its way into my subconscious every time I think I’m going to get somewhere. But maybe that’s just it. Maybe it creeps in because I am getting somewhere.

My best friend, Ms. L. always says that when everything starts to begin to go wrong that she knows she must be doing something right. She says that it just means that the devil is working overtime to stop the progress she is making. And look at Ms. L., she just launched her magazine, PIEhole (of which I have an article in) and it’s taken off better than I think even she expected it to (although I knew it would). Although she never acknowledged being afraid as often as she probably was, she never let that fear stop her.

Hell, if Oprah can have the courage to admit that she was afraid of something (because it seems that she just does this stuff so fearlessly) but that she pressed on anyway, then why couldn’t that be my story down the line as well? I know that I would never want to be doing anything else and I truly feel as though God instilled in me this specific purpose and I owe it to him, if not myself, to see that purpose through. As Oprah also said in her interview, “There’s never going to be a time to quit. I will die in the midst of doing what I love to do and that is using my voice and using my life to try to inspire other people to live the best of theirs.”

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

Spring Cleaning for Creativity’s Sake

March 28, 2012 jcladyluv

Ms. L.’s post yesterday reminded me that it’s that time of year again. You know, the time when everyone starts to begin thinking about all of the spring cleaning they have to do. I am really big on getting into the whole spring cleaning vibe and going through and tossing out old clothes, doing a big clean up around the house that involves not only mopping all floors but also wiping down all surfaces until they are spotless, and tackling the re-organizing my tiny little corner of an office in my room. But spring cleaning should not stop after the household messes that we have been putting off for just such a time for mass clean-up are actually done.

For us creative types spring cleaning doesn’t just end at the household, but it transcends to spring cleaning your mind, your spirit, and your body, in an effort to spark your creativity and become even more productive. For me, there are three things that affect my creativity in a negative way; if my house is a mess, if my body isn’t feeling its best, and if my mind is cluttered with conflicting and contradicting thoughts.

I feel like it’s not just my house that I have to get in order (as far as cleaning), but that I need to amplify my efforts on maintaining good healthy habits (helps with the stress), and most of all I need to really get my head in the right frame of mind and focused on what’s important and what needs to be done. As you all know I am really concentrating on getting that fire back about my writing goals and making the things happen that I want to happen. Hopefully spring cleaning on all fronts will help me do that.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

My Up and Down Marriage to Writing

March 15, 2012March 15, 2012 jcladyluv

“Marriage is a book of which the first chapter is written in poetry and the remaining chapters in prose.”

~Beverley Nichols

Ms. L. and I always joke about writing and our laptops being our husbands. It seems like more of a reality as time goes on and as I pour more of myself into it. If I were truly married to my writing, then I think that our marriage might be in trouble and standing on very shaky ground right now. Marriage of any kind needs love constantly poured into it, attention consistently given to it, passion infused all through it, and it needs to be nurtured through all of its years of commitment and union.

As I think about my writing in those terms, I realize that I haven’t been a good wife to it lately. At times I have neglected my writing and have been completely lazy when it comes to my talent. I haven’t spent enough time with my craft and I have let way too many other personal dilemmas stand in the way of me taking my writing career to the next level (or stage of our relationship). I haven’t nurtured my gift for expressing myself through my words as I know that I can and at times I have appeared to have completely given up on the relationship altogether. But I haven’t given up.

My writing may be the only constant relationship I have had since I developed a love for it at the age of ten. It has been by my side and it has never abandoned me (at least not for extremely large amounts of time), nor has it judged me. It has allowed me to use it as my vessel to the rest of the world and lately I have taken advantage that it will always be around for me. I have not showed it just how much I truly treasure it and how passionate I still feel about it and I am sorry for that.

I know that if I don’t stop neglecting my writing and my purpose altogether, then it will soon leave me. It gives me warnings every time I come down with writer’s block but I’m sure that it feels that it hasn’t gotten through to me. I know that there are times when it just weeps at the fact that I appear to have abandoned it for the fear (the invisible third party in our relationship) that I will never do it justice. Well writing, I want you to know that you have gotten through to me. I am ready to recommit myself to you from this day forward.

I am turning my back on the fear that has interfered with us and plagued us for quite some time now. I have finally realized that if I don’t give you the love and time that you need, you can’t give me the fulfillment that I need in return. I know that I have to nurture you and take time to enhance our relationship so that it only gets better and more purposeful as the years go on.

I plan to spend as many seconds and minutes of the day with you that I can on a daily basis no matter how impossible it may seem to make it happen. I thank you for hanging in there and giving me continuous chances to get our relationship back on the right track. From now until forever I will make sure to honor you and be true to you so that we can prosper in this life together.

I love Writing and I’m just thankful that Writing still loves me right back.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”