Bringing Some Goodjelly to the Writing World
….Or How to Jam With Books.
Effervescent. Process Oriented. Savvy — Those are the three words I would use to describe writer and productivity expert Christine Carron. We chatted by phone recently — a conversation filled with plenty of candor and lightheartedness.
Christine’s knowledge of process, psychology, and technology as applied to the writing world was impressive. And her passion for assisting aspiring writers in creating a more productive approach to their writing chops, well that was eye opening as well.
She has honed her skill bank for over twenty-five years, working with scientists, academics, designers, dog trainers, and those in countless other fields. Daily, she uses her suite of business processes and productivity heuristics to fuel her own writing journey.
Please share a little about your life journey and how your love for reading first developed?
Outside of school I did two things as a kid: read and dance. Hours a day of both. They were fully immersive experiences for me.
On the reading front, I would read intensely and fast, almost melding with the stories. To this day, I am not the best at remembering covers, titles, or even authors. Probably due to a pattern set in childhood: open book, read nonstop, finish book, and be on to the next one. I simply didn’t build a habit of engaging much with covers.
I always wanted to be a writer but took a detour through grad school and a career as a process improvement consultant and productivity expert. All the time I spent traveling, working, and living abroad during that period greatly enriched my life.
Eventually, I quit my day job and started my own consulting company so that I would have the time flexibility to finally set off on my own writing adventure. I wanted to write stories for children and young adults. I had a simple mission statement for those stories that still guides my writing today: Write well. Write to delight.
I launched Goodjelly in 2020, blending my process improvement chops and productivity know-how with my love of writing. I love having a front row seat to writers’ processes and helping them get their writing projects done. It is a great honor to play a small role in helping more books get into the world.
What is something interesting about you that most people don’t know about?
I’ve read only one horror novel and have watched only one horror movie in my entire life. I read Stephen King’s Carrie when I was eighteen and was full stop terrified. Basically, Mr. King wrote that book so well he scared me off an entire genre.
The horror film was Arachnophobia—which evidently is not even a horror film, it was billed as a “thrill-omedy.” Going to see that movie was not by choice. I was dragged there by one of my older sisters who wanted me to be a buffer on a blind date. We arrived late, the only seats were in the very first row, and I ended up startle-scaring the entire audience more than the movie did when I let out a ear-popping shriek at one of the fake out scare moments.
Roger Eibert wrote that the film made audiences "squirm out of enjoyment, not terror." I absolutely was not squirming out of enjoyment.
And, yes, horror films and “thrill-omedies” (and serving as a blind date buffer) were officially put on my “will never do again” list from that night forward.
Your company GoodJelly helps writers take charge of their writing and mindset process. Describe what a series of working sessions with you might look like to a client.
I founded Goodjelly on the premise that the writing adventure doesn’t have to be so hard. When writers know how to take charge of their work, their process, and their mindset it becomes so much easier to create consistent writing flow.
I work with writers mainly through my Jam Straight program. The Jam Straight is a unique membership for writers, as I don’t teach any craft and there is no critiquing of their work—it’s 100% focused on helping writers get their writing done using smart process, grounded power, and inner kindness.
I also blog weekly on the Goodjelly Blog, and you can see me in action teaching the Goodjelly goodness on our recently launched Youtube channel.
You’ve mentioned having a pretty robust reading lifestyle that even involves purchasing books in bulk. Can you offer us a peek into the inner recess of your book interests?
It is easier to say what is not my book interest, which, of course, there is only one—horror. Beyond that my reading habits are totally eclectic and all over the place. I read multiple books at once. I have to be careful going into bookstores as I usually leave with a huge stack. (Bookstore owners absolutely love to see me walk in. . . . )
I’m currently reading a memoir, a book on organizing, a book about scientific thinking, a book about searching for zero, and a romance novel. I am also perusing eight different books about sketchnoting, which I want to get better at for those Goodjelly goodness videos I’m sharing on Youtube.
As I am typing, there are five piles of books within my line of sight that I have pulled for one reason or the other in the past week: some I am actually reading, others I just pulled for a quick reference for an upcoming blog post, others are research for a story I am working on, and others I needed to find a passage for one of the writers in my program.
What book themes and topics tend to resonate with you? Are there any authors you have a particular connection with? What section of a bookstore would we most likely find you in?
My reading can best be described by a lyric from “The Sound of Music”: How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?
In a semi-desperate, completely earnest attempt to add some specificity to this answer, I walked around to my bookshelves, book piles, and nightstand and let intuition guide me to create a sampling of what I read. Here you go:
My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Mehakem
How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell
Beauty by John O’Donahue
The Critical Response Process by Liz Lerman
Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
The Hummingbird’s Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea
Painted in Words by Samuel Bak
The Joy of Science by Jim Al-Khalili
And there you have it. A reading cloud that refuses to be pinned down.
Do you have a preferred mode of reading? Hardback/Paperback? Audiobooks? Digital Books? A combination of these mediums?
I definitely prefer old school books over e-books. If I have a long drive ahead—which is not very often—I will download some audio books, but they are always nonfiction. I find it near impossible to listen to fiction. I feel a little lost without having the physical connection to the words as fiction was and is so intensely immersive for me.
My theory is that my brain relates to nonfiction differently, in the way it would listen to a class or lecture. Now, if someone else is doing the driving, then bring on the (old school) books of any genre. I love reading in cars. No carsickness whatsoever.
If I am getting books from a library, I generally prefer paperback. At home I care less, because I can take the dust jackets off on my own books. Library books with all the plastic wrapping to protect the covers make holding the books a less pleasurable tactile experience.
It has occurred to me in typing up my answers to these questions that, for me, just as dance is an embodied experience, so is reading. So it all comes full circle back to those same early loves of reading and dance.
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