Carol Newman Cronin's Blog, page 35

One Year Until Publication

In just 368 days, Ferry to Cooperation Island will be out in the world. As you read this, my award-winning publisher is working up cover ideas. I’m working on the next story—while actively not-worrying about what someone else’s perception of this one will look like…

June 16, 2020 is publication day for Ferry to Cooperation Island.

I’m more than ready to hold this book in my hands. So on this pre-anniversary, join me on a stroll down blog-memory lane, neatly packaged into six “acts”—a reminder to myself (and you) that patience is a critical part of the process.

Act I: The Idea

In February 2012, I compared writing first drafts to raising toddlers:

Suddenly I’m bottle-feeding these characters of mine, watching them react to a change in the light or another person entering the room. Laughing at the first words, the gestures that were somehow already familiar. Like any new parent, I’m both excited and exhausted…

Story Parenting

Act II: The First Draft

April 2016: I begin the real work.

I’ve been rushing to finish a rough draft, before I lose the magic of this island where I feel so much at home. Standing back a bit, though, that fear seems rather silly. I ignored this same idea for four years, and it’s still here—more defined, different from the original, but still holding firm, just as a rocky island should. This one gets an A+ for persistence…

The Story that Didn’t Go Away

Act III: The Cleanup

October 2016: Editing, round one

I’m currently slogging through edits of the new book, which makes it sound like the writing is done. It’s not, but the only way to see what’s still missing is to clean up what is already there. Kind of like doing all the dishes so you can wipe down the counters. I have to say this is not the fun part…

Cleaning Up After Myself

Act IV: Developmental Editing

June 2018: Hindsight is always 20/20

I could talk all day about my first time hiring a developmental editor and how wonderful it’s been, but instead I’ll limit myself to five tips that will help you choose the right one—and also help you decide when it’s time to do so. (Spoiler alert: This should’ve happened WAY sooner.)…

Why Hire an Editor?

Act V: Found an agent!

September 2018: All that hard work pays off.

A wise author friend predicted it would take me a year to find an agent, and she turned out to be spot on. I started querying literary agents in September 2017, and I’ve just signed a contract: I’m now represented by April Eberhardt!

Breaking News: Signed an Agent!

Act VI: Publishing Contract, Signed!

January 2019: (Almost) an anti-climax

Signing a publishing contract ticks a huge goal off my to-do list—and even more importantly, it is a major step toward getting this next book out of my brain and into your hands at last.

Publishing Contract, Signed!

And last but not least, I’ll leave you with this thought from a post written in September, 2017, when I “first” thought this book was ready for readers: 

Ten years from now, it won’t matter how long it takes to complete; it will only matter if the story is still attracting an audience. So I’m putting on my patience pants, one leg at a time—and asking you to do the same.

Pulling on my Publishing Patience Pants

Save the date: June 16, 2020. Meanwhile, thanks for your energy and enthusiasm throughout this process. I can’t wait to show it to you. I can’t wait to see it! But we’ll all have to be just a little more patient…

Happy 10th Anniversary, Blog

In June of 2009, I decided to start a blog. “I didn’t have any fixed goals,” I explained to my first subscribers, fifteen months later. “All I knew was that I’d discovered some cool commonalities between success as a competitive sailor and becoming a published author, so I named the blog Where Books Meet Boats.” (Read more about the first 101 posts.)

My niece looks a lot different now than she did in 2009.

I wasn’t yet committed to weekly posts, but themes had already appeared: Why I Blog, Imagination, Online Friends, Character Management. Over the past decade, I’ve learned a lot about both writing and sailing just by sharing my thoughts with you.

There have been some rough patches. In 2015, I temporarily Killed the Blog, losing the entire database. I was able to recreate most of the archive, so the best posts from the first six years live on… but all your comments were lost, and total post numbers are not nearly as impressive as they should be.

To celebrate a decade of blogging, I took a fresh stroll back through the archives to weed out 10 of my favorite posts. My takeaway? Specific topics have evolved, but the name is still a great match. See if you agree.

P.S. I often get asked how I maintain a weekly posting schedule. The simple answer: I make it a priority. And the best reward is comments from readers like you, so please share your thoughts below or send me an email. Thanks for the continued inspiration, and here’s to another ten years!

Where Books Meet Boats

On the eve of the Rio 2016 Olympics, I pondered the influence of those off-camera.

Coaches and Editors: What They Have in Common

At the end of 2014, a discussion of Game of Sails taught me about myself.

Olympic Sailing: Where Fiction Meets Fact

April, 2016: The origin story of Ferry to Cooperation Island.

The Story That Didn’t Go Away

February 2016: Sailing is such a speciality that it requires its own vocabulary.

The Language of Sailing

Summer 2013: A contemplation on Type A personalities, and their opposite.

Boats, Books, and the Pursuit of Excellence

February 2012: No diaper changes required.

Story Parenting

December 2015: A return to freelance work reminds me of Olympic campaigning.

Olympic Freelancing

March 2012:  Stories—like wind—have personalities related to what caused them.

The Shape of a Story

September 7, 2011: “The blessing and the curse of imagination is: it doesn’t listen to me.”

Yes, Dear: Listening to My Characters

March 2011: An attempt to explain where I get my ideas.

Stirring Stories from the Mental Melting Pot

The Goldilocks of Book Groups

Last fall, I started something new: a book group. 

You might be surprised that I wasn’t already involved in one, since I consistently read (at least) a book a week. I had tried out a few locally, but couldn’t quite find that perfect Goldilocks fit. The first one I tried was way too big, though both discussion and book choices were excellent (as were the cookies). Another was way too small, and it met in the middle of the work day. Yet another was closed to new members, at least until someone died. I wasn’t willing to wait that long.

Like a garden, book groups reward mixing textures and colors.

So, after receiving an enthusiastic response from a few potential members, I invited seven other readers over for a November evening discussion about All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr. I’d devoured it a few years ago (it made my 2015 Holiday Book List), so I knew I’d enjoy reading it again. What I didn’t know was what the rest of the group (chosen more for geographical proximity and easy conversation than for any particular taste in books) would think.

What I learned from that first gathering—and from every one of our monthly discussions since then—is that stories reach each of us where we are. Once a month, we puzzle through plot confusions, parse word choice and order, and piece together what we think the author was trying to accomplish. Respectfully, we interrupt each other and finish each others’ sentences, as one insight sparks another. We’ve mixed in some non-fiction, though most of our choices are novels. And though I haven’t loved every book, or always agreed with everyone on a particular character’s motivation, our free-range conversations always deepen my understanding.

Reading is a private endeavor, but the anticipation of talking through a story also makes me more thoughtful. Wondering what the others will think is always lurking in the background—and, for our more difficult choices, provides enough commitment to keep me slogging through to the end.

There is wine involved, but we have very little discussion that doesn’t somehow pertain to the story and its author. We don’t get too deep into themes, and nothing is written down (current blog excepted); this is not a high school English class. The hour rushes by, and I like to think we all go home a little wiser—not just about a specific story or setting, but about the incredible variety of perspectives that can be found even within such a tight geographic circle. That can’t be a bad thing.

For me, our monthly discussions are also a reminder to read reviews, a glimpse into the wider world of bookish opinion and what sparks discussion in readers. (Hint: it’s not always what we authors focus on most intently.)

Goldilocks might disagree, but for me this book group is “just right.”

Got a book suggestion or curious what we’re reading next? Leave a comment or send me an email and I’ll be sure to respond. Happy reading!

Heidi Doyle: Going with the Yoga Flow

In the past three years, I’ve written several times about yoga, and how it crosses my brain’s usual divide between physical and mental activity. What I haven’t written about yet is the teacher who most inspires me: Heidi Doyle.

Heidi Doyle, owner of The Island Heron

“She’s built such a lovely community,” I hear over and over again, from other class regulars who—like me—have built Heidi’s Flow class into their Tuesday morning schedules. One reason I wrote Ferry to Cooperation Island was to create a (fictional) world where community triumphs over conflict; meanwhile, Heidi has built such a place right in the middle of downtown Jamestown. As soon as I walk into her studio, I embrace the welcoming atmosphere of calm, quiet, intensity.

Curious about how she maintains such outward serenity while running a growing business, teaching several classes a week, mothering a toddler, and just existing in our chaotic squirrel-chasing world, I asked Heidi for an interview. The result was a cozy forty-five minute chat that taught me as much about my writing process and myself as it did about yoga and the woman I was interviewing.

How The Island Heron came to be

“I fell in love with yoga in college,” Heidi told me, as we settled down with mugs of tea in her “office,” which doubles as the welcome area of her studio. “When I first started practicing, I couldn’t get enough.” After college, she did a 200 hour intensive, the customary first step to becoming a yoga teacher—though that was not her primary focus. “I first did the training just for my own depth of practice and study,” she says—which explains why she then went over to India for another 200 hour intensive. Back home in Rhode Island, she tacked on an additional 300 hours; “ I just knew I wasn’t ready, and wasn’t ready, wasn’t ready. Then I was ready, but I was still scared. I was a very shy person,” she adds, with a smile.

When a friend approached Heidi about opening a studio together in downtown Jamestown, “it was terrifying and exciting,” because she hadn’t taught much yet. “It was really a way for me to come into myself more authentically in my own space.” The new business quickly outgrew its original location, so when the opportunity arose to design a larger, purpose-built studio in the back of the Bomes Theatre building, Heidi jumped at it. “I’d become comfortable in myself, and in teaching. So it was really nice to come here,” she said, gesturing around her at the comfortable seating and wall of small cubbies where students shed the detritus of everyday life before going into the studio. “I’m able to more comfortably service our community and offer a greater variety of programs. Continually evolving is part of the yoga practice itself.”

I first attended Heidi’s class in November 2016, only a few weeks after the new location opened. I was instantly comfortable in the light-filled space; grateful for the warmth, physical challenge, and mental relaxation, while staying visually connected to nature and sky thanks to large skylights and high windows. Since then, between poses, I’ve watched tree branches lose their leaves in the fall, whiten under a winter’s worth of snow, and then bud green again in spring. Inside, year round, a north windowsill blooms with a variety of flowers and greenery. It’s a private but welcoming oasis, only a stone’s throw away from the commercial hustle-bustle of Jamestown’s main drag.

What’s Yoga?

Yoga can take many forms, which makes it both hard to explain to newcomers and a vehicle for helping everyone. Rather than specializing in one aspect as many other studios do, The Island Heron offers a wide variety of classes and workshops. It’s a conscious choice, Heidi explains; “We need a lot of different modalities and approaches to be able to service everybody.” Weekly classes include Basic Yoga, Kundalini, Restorative, and—my favorite—Flow, which Heidi defines as continual movement with the breath. “Even when you’re in a pose, there’s this inherent sense of inner flow. People like that; I think it’s easier to keep moving.” That said, “Stillness is as important as movement.  It’s all about striking the balance.” And even poses that appear to be static lead to plenty of change in muscle and tissue.

Yoga practice varies with the seasons. “In the summer when it’s really hot out, you don’t want to do a really heat-provoking practice; you want to release the heat. In the winter, we want to move.” Time of day matters, too—and “a Sunday morning is different than a Tuesday morning.” The goal is for each individual to reach that state of “blissful flow,” but the structure Heidi builds to get us all there—like a book’s theme, or a community’s vibe—remains just out of sight, below the surface.

Confusingly simple

Trying to explain why yoga works is hard, Heidi admits. “It’s so simple, it’s confusing. People that haven’t done yoga before, they’re like, ‘Why is it good for you?’ My response is, ‘It’s good for every single aspect you could ever name that relates to yourself.’ That makes me seem a little crazy, but it’s true. Whatever you need you can find in yoga. You just have to be patient to find your match, because there’s so many different varieties, teachers, styles… like the beauty of creation itself, that variety. There are some styles of yoga that are more robotic; that’s really great for some people, because they know exactly what they’re getting in every class.” I reply that such rigidity would bore me. “Yeah, it’s really your personality,” says Heidi. (Which explains why I so enjoy starting class with The Confidence of Quiet.)  Helping each of us understand how we need to move is her ultimate goal; “you don’t want to have to be told how to get into your body, you want to be able to get there yourself.”

Building blocks

Like most experienced yoga teachers, Heidi often strings together several minutes of poses that are first performed, in order, on the right side of the body, and then repeated—in the same order—on the left side. I’ve often wondered how she manages to keep these “blocks” organized in her head. “I have an idea of what’s going to happen, but I don’t always plan when it happens. It’s kind of this flow within the flow, and a lot of it really depends.” Then she laughs, adding, “I also can’t really cook the same thing twice.”

When I ask how she chooses what she will do each Tuesday morning—after almost three years, no two classes have started with the exact same pose—Heidi says that her goal is to first get all her students onto the same wavelength. “I can sense if people are energized or tired. We’re all coming in from different places; who we are in the world is so dynamic and so diverse. I have to feel that out.”

Once the room’s energy has gelled, the real work can begin. Specific poses achieve different goals—strengthening or stretching, calming or energizing—and can be combined into different sequences. “There’s a grid in my mind that I’m populating, which is how I was taught. I’ll have a group of poses that I know I need to get in, and counter poses that just go well together. Or a peak pose that I want to get to, and then I back it up from there.” 

By meeting students where they are, Heidi creates an atmosphere that is both welcoming and safe. “Sometimes I find it difficult if it’s a group I’m not familiar with, that doesn’t know my teaching style. Then I have to trust that just being in the poses and breathing works; it changes something in us. I have to remember that it’s not all about this perfect flow that I’m going to try and offer. It’s about breathing and being in these shapes and whatever experience somebody has; I can’t control that.”

Creating Community

Writing a novel is hard, but I would argue that Heidi has met a much bigger challenge: creating a place in the real world where community and cooperation are valued more highly than conflict and chaos.

“The world is a very stressful place,” she says. “I like to help people de-stress their system so their life outside of yoga class is more aligned, inspired, and creative. It’s nice to recognize the ripple effect of that.

“All I can do is be inviting,” Heidi concludes; “people will just come when they’re ready. The study [of yoga] is lifelong. I have so many trainings I want to do and things that I’m interested in… possibility is infinite.”

For more information about classes and workshops, visit The Island Heron.

A Novel Description

Even though my next book won’t be available until June 2020, the Ferry to Cooperation Island publishing train is already boarding. The first of May was the deadline for a second round of tip sheets; this time, instead of providing adjective lists to help the in-house cover designers, a list of questions greeted me: what should the text on the back cover say? What books do I think are similar, and what keywords will best direct both readers and algorithms to this one?

I’m sure it will all get tweaked by the project manager, but to give her the best starting point possible I labored away—again—on two hundred words that will hook the reader without giving away too much. It was also a chance to consider the most important question of all: who in the world (besides devoted blog readers like you, of course) will actually want to read it?

Bird’s Eye View

Of course the answer I wanted to give was “everyone,” but that ends up helping no one. Hard as it is for me to believe, not “everyone” enjoys fiction, let alone seaside New England stories about small towns, coastal conservation, and friendship. (See what I did there?) I had to get out of my own world and climb up to 10,000 feet, looking down on this book to see what it’s actually about. What will make it stand it out from the sea of great books?

Until I hear back from the project manager, I’m enjoying the fantasy that what I wrote will be exactly what you read on the back cover next year. Stay tuned for updates; until then, see below. Are you hooked? (Or not?) Either way, let me know WHY in the comments or by dropping me an email. Thanks for the feedback!

FERRY TO COOPERATION ISLAND: A Novel

A boat captain is forced to team up with the woman who stole his job in order to save his New England island home from developers.

Loner James Malloy is a ferry captain—or used to be, until he was unceremoniously fired and replaced by Courtney Farris. Now, instead of piloting Brenton Island’s daily lifeline to the glitzy docks of Newport, Rhode Island, James spends his days beached, bored, and wandering the island’s rocky bluffs. 

When he discovers that a land trust set up years earlier by his lighthouse keeper father and the Narragansett Indians was never finalized, he’s determined to stop the development of island wilderness into private golf resort. But even though Brenton’s nickname is Cooperation Island, James is used to working solo. To save his home from “improvements’ and keep Brenton’s fields and shoreline open to all, he’ll have to learn to cooperate with the other islanders—and also with Captain Courtney, who might just morph from irritant to irresistible once he learns a secret from his own past.

This salt-sprayed fourth novel by 2004 Olympic Sailor Carol Newman Cronin brings to life a coastal community while celebrating wilderness and water, open space and open-mindedness, and the redemptive power of neighborly cooperation. Available June 2020.

Paul Cronin Studios: Capturing the Passion

Full disclosure: I’m married to the guy. If you want to stop reading right now, feel free. But you’d be missing out.

Paul Cronin Studios recently had a facelift, highlighting one of my favorite pictures (see above) as well as making Paul’s many areas of expertise a little easier to navigate. A naval architect? Yes. A world-champion coach? Yes. The video guy who knows way too much about boats? Yes. Award-winning photographer? Also yes. Add to that an upbeat tempo and “always learning,” and it’s easy to see that life with Paul is never, ever dull.

Paul’s been taking pictures since he was a kid and remembers developing photos with his siblings, in a darkroom they helped their dad build under the stairs. Professional sailing led to a yacht design degree, which eventually led to an America’s Cup win. Since then he’s owned a series of boats and land yachts, though fortunately he’s stuck with the same wife. (To understand why a small boy drawing boats was not a problem for his mother, read his bio.)

In early April 2019, Paul combined his coaching, photography, and video skills to help five Snipe teams get faster and smarter—including the team that won the Pan Am Trials and will represent the USA in Peru this summer. Centering a bobbing 15 foot sailboat in a handheld video camera while also driving a bobbing 16 foot coach boat one-handed isn’t a normal skill; even experienced coaches have been known to run into things while pounding upwind, trying to record what they’re seeing. Paul manages to watch where he’s going, while simultaneously logging stable footage and high quality photos. If asked, he’ll tell you it’s all about peripheral vision and understanding vectors, as if everyone should be able to do it.

But I started this post to write about his amazing photographs, all of which tell a story—much more efficiently than I could ever manage with words.

The Waves are my favorite, though it wasn’t until Paul pointed out the faces in the spume that I understood their names. He’s also captured Seascapes around the world (including a bluff in Dingle, Ireland, where we both tingled with recognition—in a place we’d never been before). Landscapes include California’s trees, where both brilliant greens and placid grays were captured within minutes of each other. Each Boating Scene somehow manages to convey the personality lurking behind rusted fasteners and gleaming topsides. And then, of course, we Climb on Board to Reach Home.

After a quarter century together, Paul still manages to surprise and inspire me. His revised website will show you why. If not—well, you might as well stop reading, right now.

Got a favorite boat or book topic you think I should write about next? Let me know in the comments below, or email me directly. Meanwhile, thanks for reading!

Finding a Literary Agent: It’s Personal

We’re setting aside boats this week to wade deep into the book publishing world. Recently a friend asked for pointers in finding a literary agent, and even though it’s a very personal journey, there are still plenty of lessons I learned over a successful one year search that might be useful to others.

First and most importantly, understand that the process (which even has its own Twitter hashtag, #amquerying) will likely take far longer than you think it should. Start a spreadsheet to record the agents you query (or plan to query), along with information about what they’re looking for and any books you’ve read which they’ve represented. That will prevent you from querying the same agent twice, and give you a “next!” list to turn to after a rejection (or stone-cold silence). It will also help you figure out what you really need in an agent, which at least for me wasn’t obvious at the beginning; I definitely ended up kissing a few frogs along the way to finding Ms. Right.

Look what a search for “frog and books” turned up. Image by Alexas_Fotos from Pixabay



One Stop Shopping

The one part of the process that’s easy is finding all those frogs, er, agents. There are several sites that compile listings into one place. My personal favorite is Query Tracker, because below the listings are comments from authors about the agent’s response (or lack thereof).

No matter what site you end up scrolling through, the first question to answer is your book’s genre, which is sometimes described as “where would I find it in a bookstore?” Well-defined genres include mystery and romance; less well-defined are “literary” and “women’s fiction.” (Seeking an agreed-upon definition of either term will lead you down a web rabbit-hole or three.) The reason you need to understand your genre is that agents have specialties, just as readers have preferences that take them to a specific section in the library. Querying your romance novel to an agent who represents memoir is worse than keeping that manuscript in a drawer, because it makes you look unprofessional.

Falling in Love

The next step is even murkier; trying to figure out which agent will love the book you’ve written, and you, based on what they say they like (or dislike). Here’s where Manuscript Wish List can be really helpful, since agents list their preferred sub-genres as well as a list of specific books they wish they’d represented. You can also hire many of these agents for a short (15 minute) consultation, which is a great way to learn if your query is ready for prime-time as well as whether that agent might be a good fit. #MSWL has also become a useful hashtag on Twitter (more about that in a moment).

What She Wants

One-stop-shopping only gets you so far; for anyone who looks like a good match, the next stop will be the agent’s website. Like online dating (I’m told), the quality and quantity of information agents provide about themselves will vary widely; many offer detailed lists of “do-send” and, even more valuable, “don’t send” items.

Making Connections

Twitter can be a great place to glimpse behind the persona that agents present to the world. A search for #MSWL will lead to an infinite scroll of “what she wants,” in sometimes way too much specificity.

What Twitter is not is a place to make an actual human connection; for that, a writer’s conference is the best bet. There are many around the country that include agents looking for new clients; my favorite is Muse and the Marketplace. (Join their mailing list so you’ll receive word about the next one before it fills up.)

Last but not least, Jane Friedman has written a great post on Finding a Literary Agent, and she knows the industry way better than I do. She covers the personal aspect well:

“When writers ask me ‘Can you find me a literary agent?’ they don’t realize it’s kind of like asking me ‘Can you find me the right spouse?’ This is a research process and decision that is best conducted by you.” 

The query process can be painfully slow and disheartening, but it forces you to describe your book to others in a New York minute—something you’ll have to learn even if you decide to self-publish. Querying also provides a back-handed education on where your book fits into the publishing marketplace. Be honest (and proud) about what you’ve written, keep at it, and you might just find your very own Ms. Right.

Other sites and hashtags I found useful

Manuscript Academy Reedsy.com #amquerying#ontheporch

Next week, we’ll get back to boats. Meanwhile, if you’ve got a question about the agent-finding process (or just want to vent about how subjective it all is), add a comment below, or email me directly at CarolNCroninATgmailDOTcom. Thanks for reading!

Books Meet Boats: How To Learn a New Style

Recently I spent four days training ahead of a three day regatta, which sparked several nerdy sailing articles* as well as—more surprisingly—some great big-picture thoughts about writing. Working with three of the top four finishers—all of whom were very open to sharing—and ably herded by coach Paul, it was the best of cooperative competition: try really hard to beat each other each day, and then share what had worked (or not) with the group afterward. As Snipe veterans, we were all pretty dialed in on basic settings, so we spent our time on pesky details I won’t bore you with here. What I want to focus on instead is what all those details add up to: a hard to define quality I’ll call “style.”

Training off Fort Lauderdale gave us a chance to dig into the details. Photo courtesy PaulCroninStudios



Style evolution

In both books and boats, style is highly personal—and hard to see in ourselves. After decades racing against the same skippers, I can recognize each one of them from across a hundred yards of open water, just by how they sit in the boat and hold the tiller. On video, though, my own posture was unfamiliar. (Do I really slouch that much sailing downwind?) 

In writing, it’s easy to see what works (or doesn’t) in other people’s word choices—and quite hard to see the tics in our own. 

What I was reminded of during that training camp is that our styles can evolve, once we decide the benefits are worth the effort. With enough time and practice, muscle memory can be retrained. I can learn to sit up straight downwind; my competitors can learn to steer more subtly—or, in one case, more aggressively. 

Devil’s in the details

What we think is “just how we do things” is actually the sum of many lessons accumulated over years and years of training. Pre-conceived notions of how a sentence should read, what the word order should be, and how we “should” write, lock us into old habits.

Here’s the important part: even the over-50 crowd can be re-programmed. Discovering an unlikely word combination or writing from a different point of view can be as enlightening as discovering a new way to hold the tiller—and might just take us to unexpected places.

Several multi-book authors have said that it never gets easier to write their next novel, because they are always trying to push themselves and use the lessons learned from the last one. That, too, carries over to sailboat racing: our expectations for the next regatta are set by the last one. 

Lessons Learned

All these links between the physicality of sailboat racing and the cerebral challenges of writing might seem a stretch, but all I know is that the chance to dig deep into one aspect of my life (competitive sailing) taught me almost as much about another (writing). Anything we take seriously and want to get better at will require growth and learning—which may demand a style update. I’ll leave you with a few final thoughts:

You’re never too old to learn, butYou can definitely be too stubborn (at any age)Studying the styles of others can be very useful, but Copying doesn’t workFocus on learning a new detail, rather than a whole new style

*Read the nerdy sailing articles on SnipeToday

For more great photos of Snipe sailing, cool waves, and other great subjects, visit PaulCroninStudios.

Got a thought about style and how to keep learning even as we age? Share it in the comments below, or email me: carolncroninATgmailDOTcom. Thanks for reading!

Diving Deep: Yoga and Writing

Right after I finish this blog post (or maybe even before), I’m heading downtown to a 9am yoga class called “Flow,” which is sort of ironic since it usually interrupts my precious morning writing “flow.” I’ve written before about the Confidence of Quiet that spans both yoga and writing, but today I want to try and capture the commonalities between diving deep into body and mind.

For the first few minutes of class, I’m usually a bit out of sync; the people around me are just starting their day, while I’ve already logged a few hours of work. But we meet each other (and ourselves) where we are, and once we settle in it doesn’t matter what happened before class or what will happen afterward. “All that matters,” our teacher tells us, “is this breath.” As I focus on breathing and feeling rather than thinking and world-building, it’s like putting my head underwater; the shiny external distractions that pummel me the rest of the day are drowned out.

Besides a great physical workout that both strengthens and stretches, my focus is also stretched and strengthened by the chance to disappear into myself. I don’t worry about anything—what time it is, what’s coming next, who might be emailing me on this workday morning. When class is over, I come out of my trance wondering where I’ve been, and yet energized with ideas I didn’t even know I was thinking about. What a gift.

When I get back to my desk, writing also rewards that deep dive into the unknown. Exploring the hidden depths of a story means following trails that might not lead anywhere—or might just reveal a key conclusion. When I let my characters dig into their own feelings, it might be painful (for both of us), but it always leads to my best work.

Diving deep gets easier with practice. It’s almost as if I’ve grown gills that help me breathe in this strange underwater world, where all of life’s shiny distractions assume their proper perspective.

And now, if you’ll forgive me, it’s time for yoga class.

For more info or to join a class, visit The Island Heron.

Muse Meets Snipe: April-versary

Last weekend, I competed in the Snipe Pan Am Trials off Fort Lauderdale, FL. Fresh breeze, salty swell, hot sunshine—my hands are still sore from trimming the mainsheet. With four days of practice leading up to a three day regatta, it was a rare opportunity to get a little bit faster each day—and also, just in case this isn’t already obvious, a fully absorbing, brain-consuming, ton of fun.

Sunshine, wind, and waves: Fort Lauderdale is a sailor’s mecca. Photo courtesy Tom Rogers Pix

But as each busy sailing day wound down and I let my tired mind and body finally relax, I found my thoughts wandering north to Boston, where a very different learning opportunity was taking place.

Musing on The Muse

Last year, I spent the first weekend in April at Muse and the Marketplace, a writer’s conference that combines writing craft with the business of getting books out to readers. (Read April Confluence for more detail.) I made several new friends and learned a lot about where my fledgling manuscript might fit into the world of publishing—and most importantly, met my agent, April Eberhardt. Last Thursday morning, the day before both the Pan Am Trials and Muse 2019 began, I sent April an email wishing her a happy “April-versary.” She agreed it was hard to believe we’d met “just a year ago—we’ve accomplished so much since then, with many more triumphs ahead!”

Truth is stranger than fiction

Last year, over the four months between first connecting with April in an almost electric, visceral way at Muse 2018 and finally signing a contract, I learned that her husband was an avid sailor. Through a mutual friend, we eventually figured out that he’d delivered the same boat back from Hawaii that my husband raced there in 2012. (If I included such a coincidence in a novel, I’d be accused of adjusting facts for convenience.)

Shared Passion

On the surface, a writer’s conference and a high-level Snipe regatta wouldn’t appear to have much in common: inside vs. outside; Boston vs. Fort Lauderdale; cerebral vs. physical. But what I realized on the long drive home from Florida was that both include the same key ingredient: shared passion. My sailing friends would find Muse boring (stuck inside a crowded hotel, talking about writing craft and how to sell more books!). My writing friends would have trouble just rigging a Snipe—never mind navigating out through the crowded Port Everglades into the Atlantic, and hiking hard for three hour-long races.

Luckily, my life includes the space for both, and it’s rare that I have to choose between sailing and writing. I’m very glad I had the chance to learn so much about Snipe sailing last week… but I do wish I could’ve also sent my muse north to celebrate my April-versary in person. Next year!

Thanks to Tom Rogers for capturing the sailing action in Fort Lauderdale. See more at Tom Rogers Pix