Carrie Callahan

I've been struggling these last few weeks to reconcile the two goals I have for my social media accounts, so I'm splitting them. On one hand, I want to express myself specifically to my friends and family members. I want to write about silly adventures and my publishing successes. I want to post anecdotes and philosophies and other things I find interesting. On the other hand, I also want to write for writers. I want to be able to contribute to writing communities by reviewing resources, offering writing advice (whatever good my advice would do), and encouragement. Instead of doing either of those things, I've been trying to write to some middle ground on this blog. As I've kicked up my social media habits in the last few weeks, my Instagram account has come to look positively schizophrenic. I'm alternating selfies with writing prompts, pictures of my dog with blog posts about writer's block. Who even is that person? So, to maintain my sanity (as much ...

Impostor syndrome has held me back so much more than I have admitted. For the last five years, I've had an idea percolating in my brain. It's had about six different false starts, followed by very real stalls and failures. That idea is About Write --a YouTube show teaching creative writing through a slightly academic lens. After graduating, I wanted to continue my education on my own, but all I could find were how-to books and expensive webinars. I didn't want to get further into debt to learn craft--I just wanted to keep practicing! So I thought that to spare others the price tag, maybe I could make my own free web series on the topic. I made a list of episodes, and wrote out scripts. I referenced some of the texts from my degree and even bought a DSLR camera! But what happened? A rotten question crept into my head: why would anyone listen to me? Sure, I had the education, but so what? I wasn't an "expert." I wasn't even published! I was an impost...