HeyJaredCaroline Woodward On Words
This is a Friday morning column about all the things I'm learning while writing books, which is why I've spent as much time as I have writing them, I suspect. It is also a space for my no-nonsense fed-up alter-ego, Dr. Carolina Calmdown.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 12
- Latest publication
- Sep 25, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Jul 10, 2026
Latest issues
The Literary Warrior Is Called A Spy (opens the original)
Read excerpt
I was writing in my journal on a train leaving Columbo for a village in the Sri Lankan interior in August of 1974 when a drunk man started yelling at me. “What are you writing?”“My journal, my travel journal.”“You are CIA! You are a hippy spy!” “I am not! I am from Canada. (You’d think that distinction would settle the matter for all time but nope.)He looked wild-eyed, red-eyed in fact, a city man judging by his white shirt and grey slacks, his plentiful mop of hair glistening with coconut oil.
The Literary Warrior On Facts Or Fiction (opens the original)
Read excerpt
I’ve been away gallivanting for the last, or second-to-last camping expedition of 2026 hence the tardiness of this post. The laptop decided to hiccup and malfunction so I set it aside and returned from the relative wild to hundreds of emails stacked up. My beloved in-house tech guy dug into the innards of this thing and sorted it out (all variations of turn it off and turn it on, for both modem and computer in order for them to communicate amicably again) so now I am fully present and accounted
The Literary Warrior’s September Reading List (opens the original)
Read excerpt
How good it is to have one final, or possibly second-to-final camping session of 2026. Friends, food, beach walks, reading… and some writing too as I bear down on my altruism-themed collection of short stories. But we all know reading good books is a lot (easier), I mean more pleasurable than writing them, and rewriting them, and taking years on end to publish them. That’s hard, slogging, solitary work. Reading is a joyful end to my every day, a reward for the afore-mentioned work. So, here are
The Literary Warrior On The Feast & Famine of Publishing Success (opens the original)
Read excerpt
As some of you know, I love to celebrate good things happening to me and to people I love, or to causes I support and wise decisions being made by policy-and law-makers world wide. Making especially good food, chilling the libations to toast the success of one thing or another, for just a few of us or adding to the joy with a crowd, all of this is part of The Feast of Happy Occasions. Have you noticed that good things often happen in threes? I had two good things arrive within a week, one involv
The Literary Warrior aka Dr. Carolina Calmdown on Back Alleys... (opens the original)
Read excerpt
Reconsider That Alley Short-CutText within this block will maintain its original spacing when published The back alley drivers raise enough dust for a smallish herd of longhorns (upstairs in our apartment my Dutch genes grumble) Bad enough that ashes from wildfires sift down for days & weeks coating the seldom-used bathtub made in Louisville, Kentucky some year before 1899, the year before our two-storey house was built the cast-iron tub which journeyed by oxcart, train, sternwheeler & four stro
Publishing over time
Last 90 days. Choose a month to open its work.
Recurring subjects
Named in the text we hold. One piece can cover several.
Audience
No verified audience measurement yet.
About this data
Counts cover the work we have indexed. Tone needs enough text and a confident classification. Excerpts and episode notes are not full articles or transcripts.
Identity or attribution wrong? Suggest a correction.