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As I write this, a thunderstorm rumbles in the distance. My daylilies have begun to open, creating dots of color here and there in my gardens, teasing with what's to come. Cardinals, cedar-waxwings and red-eyed vireos are seen and heard around the yard. Our dock is out. A loon calls each evening at dusk. Our windows are open to the cool night air where fireflies put on a show and bats swirl overhead for their evening meal of mosquitoes.
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Normally, summer is the season I immerse myself in nature by wildlife watching, kayaking, and star gazing. I work on big writing projects and search out nature through my camera lens. Yet back at the end of May, my family was dealt not one, but three major health issues. When those diagnoses came crashing together, I felt frozen. Panicked. My writing muse fled. I found no joy in photography. I've traveled I-95 and 495 south to my sister and my mom in Massachusetts and back north to my husband in Maine more than I ever have. Updates on their tests and symptoms and care-giving either tumble one after the other in a tidal wave, or there's no new news for weeks. Neither of which brings the answers or peace I seek.
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Once school closed for summer, I looked at my overgrown gardens and the thirty bags of bark mulch we'd bought back in April. I spent a few minutes pulling weeds over here, and spreading bark mulch over there. Before I knew it, I was spending hours outside in the yard, phone in the house, calendar forgotten. Butterflies, dragonflies and grasshoppers made me pause with curiosity. Hummingbirds enticed me to pick up my camera again. And I slowly began to remember my own strategies for calling my muse back to work.
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Read on below to hear how I find my way back to being creative during stressful times. Learn about the projects I'm tackling this summer, and see some recent wildlife adventure photos from my time kayaking.
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Click my books below to learn more about Cooper and Packrat's wildlife adventures. They're perfect for summer days reading by the lake, on a campsite, by the campfire or under a tree in your backyard.
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Fun Facts!
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A Mallard And Her Ducklings
Aren't these mallard ducklings the cutest?
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Did you know that at only a day old, a mallard duckling can run, swim and forage for their own food?
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The brood will stay in the nest for about a month. When they leave it, they'll travel together with their mother, usually in a single file line. Sometimes mother mallards will foster orphaned ducklings if they're around the same age.
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Bonus Fun Fact! Check out the photo below! Mama mallard is wearing a band on her right leg. How cool is that? I didn't notice until I was back home editing photos.
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Mallards and other waterfowl are banded to help biologists learn about migration patterns, and to get population data and survival rates.
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Help! My Muse Is MIA!
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There are tons of reasons for a creative muse to go missing in action. Mine left when I had too many stressful things on my plate. I think she was a bit miffed when I couldn't hear her ideas over the worries rolling around in my head. One of my friends discovered her muse sneaked off when she became burnt out from working on too many projects at once. Life changes of any kind can cause our muse to slip away; happy changes like wedding planning or sad changes like losing a job.
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Take heart though! Wherever your creativity lies, whether you're a seamstress, painter, author, musician, D & D Master, gardener or photographer, a muse can be called back into the fold with time and patience. I'd venture to say there are as many different ways to tease back your muse, as there are artists and creators. Today, I'd like to share my process. Go ahead, grab a pencil and some paper to take notes.
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Step #2: Repeat Step #1. Do this as many times as is necessary.
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I see your eye roll! Don't unsubscribe just yet! Believe me, I get it. You think finding your muse has got to be a much harder process than that. While I forget my own strategies sometimes, I do believe it all comes down to this one simple step. Wherever you are, get outside. Choose your favorite activities that tend to be on the more quiet side.
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Why be outside and quiet? Because studies have shown that the great outdoors has a way of grounding us. Quieting our minds. Which will help us hear our muse.
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Still need some help getting started? Here are my favorite get outside, muse finding tips.
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- Put down the phone. Or at least put it on silent. I recently heard on a Mel Robbin's podcast, Overloaded, Exhausted and Ready For A Reset, that the average person will lose 20 years of their lifetime scrolling through social media. Yikes! Imagine how much writing/gardening/sewing/painting time we could accomplish! Your mind can't hear the buzz of the world if you're scrolling and focused on the next reel. Listen quietly, start with your own heartbeat, then tune in to the sounds around you. Breathe.
- My favorite outdoor activity when times are tough? It is sitting still with a cup of coffee on my front porch. I do not use this time to plan my day! (It's hard for me to stick to that!) Instead I listen with my senses, soaking up what's happening around me. I was doing this two mornings ago when I happened to hear a faint chirping over my head. Some grasses silently floated down into my lap from the peak of my roof. Looking up, I discovered a robin feeding her chicks above me. She had built the nest, sat on eggs, hatched them and I hadn't even known she was there!
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3. Mix it up! Work on a different creative project while outside. Painting, gardening, sewing, doodling, writing . . . mix it up! Your muse might be tempted back on a great, big, shiny new project. I come up with the best writing ideas while I'm shaping my garden and pulling weeds!
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4. And finally, take a walk. It's such a simple activity, we forget to pull it from our creative tool box. Leave the earbuds home. Purposefully search for all the little wonders along the way; mushrooms, grasshoppers, wild flowers. How many different shades of green do you spy? How many different species of bird?
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I do, however, use my phone to
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Please don't break up with your muse when times are tough. Putting aside our project for a time is not necessarily a "bad" thing. Nor does it mean we have to give up on our project. Your muse will return. Sometimes, it comes back like a tidal wave, taking you by surprise. Sometimes, they silently slip into your day as if they never left.
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Be still. Be open. And listen for it.
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July's Wildlife Adventures
I've only managed to kayak my own lake twice this summer and while it was heavenly to be on the water again, I didn't see anything of note. But I went on a lakeside writing retreat with fellow author Cynthia Lord, and hit the wildlife viewing jackpot! We couldn't paddle twenty feet on Lake Wassookeag in Dexter, Maine without spying cool wildlife behavior, such as the mallard mother with her chicks above. Our daily kayak trips were instrumental to my finding muse.
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I'd like to remind you of a fact I wrote about in my last newsletter . . . that the simple act of listening to the birds reduces cortisol, slows your heart rate and triggers calm. I've read that this happens because birds sing in areas where they feel safe, which triggers something in us to tell us we're safe. In turn, I believe this allows our thoughts to calm and opens our minds to our muse.
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Have a wonderful August! I hope you'll take lots of time for you and your creative projects. Once I hit send on this newsletter, I'm hopeful I can etch out time between upcoming trips to complete some writing goals before school starts. First, I need to rewrite my loon picture book. I've been given some great critiques from writing friends Mona, Liz and Cindy to help me along. After that, is a final read through on an older manuscript I've dusted off and rewritten at the urging of my agent. It's a middle grade magical train set mystery. I know! Sooooo different from Cooper and Packrat's adventures and the fire fighter mystery! But it does have wildlife . . . a giant spider!
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