My First: Nothing Racy. But It is Crafty.

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Sandra Neily

In 2017, Brenda Buchanan invited me to send in a guest post to Maine Crime Writers. . . . Here’s my first. (Thanks Brenda.)

CRAFT & CRAFT-Y

I burst into tears when I first held my fingers over the keys to write fiction. I paced around, knowing I needed help. Lots of help. I stemmed the tears by turning the names of five friends into a mantra, sure that if they were in my living room, they would be cheering me on. Then I taped paper up on my camp wall, and scrawled “CRAFT. BE CRAFT-Y” at the top.

This ever-growing advice list, collected from webinars, seminars, workshops, friends, author mentors, articles, books, and the writing cosmos, is my compass and bible. It goes everywhere I go. (Looking pretty ragged now: squashed bugs, grease smears, and something that looks like squash, but I don’t really want to know.)

I like the word crafty because it’s an adjective we can put in front of our names telling us we are sly, creative, skilled, calculating, and potentially proficient. And that we are people who assemble something out of raw materials. Like artists who work in clay, metal, or paint, we shape something raw into a novel way of seeing the same old world. . . .
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Moosehead. The Kennebec. And An Endless Steps Workout

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OH MY! Wildlife delivers $1.4 billion to Maine’s economy; $1.9 billion w multipliers. Begs the question, is the Moosehead Region ready to secure this and other nature-based economic assets against inappropriate development or over-use? Do all of Maine’s ‘gateway’ communities have the support they need to harness conservation for long-term economic health?

On August 16th, I will be a guest of a Natural Resources of Maine webinar to discuss recreation tourism in the Moosehead Lake region. The panel will share our ideas on the issue as well as tips of how to explore the region. (Info and registration here.)

Explore Moosehead Tips:

Suggest you access land sites around 6 AM (or on September weekdays) as hiking and fishing sites have gotten very popular. (Pandemic discovery has not waned.)

Paddling: Moosehead Lake often has big water, pushed by its forty-mile length. My favorite paddle is the north end of Indian Pond (fed by the Kennebec River’s two headwaters leaving the lake). It has protected shores, campsites, hidden coves and . . . Read more >

Rejection. Rejections. And Blizzard Therapy

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sad-looking dog

I want to talk about rejections.

On Facebook and Instagram, and Twitter and these public places, we don’t usually hear about gut-wrenching stuff. These sites are perhaps how we market ourselves to the world. How we manage the front window of our lives and perhaps pull the curtain on the back room which might be darker and certainly messier.

I’m not saying what is shared out there isn’t genuine. These sharings simply seem selective as in . . . no one wants to hear someone whine.

I won’t go back too far, just to my last bout of job hunting (2008-2010) and then a bit of feedback as I shopped around my first novel. One led to the other. At the age of sixty-three (2009), when I seemed suddenly unemployable, my soon-to-be husband said, “Ok. Write the book. I’ll pay for vet bills and food.”

And I won’t try to say that rejection is a healthy thing that sets us on a better road or is a gift. That feels glib. Rejections hurt. Read more >