To be honest, I’ve been pretty down for the last week or so. As I’ve shared before, I have been teaching Legacy Writing classes via the Lifelong Learning Academy here in Sarasota-Bradenton. It is a great opportunity for me to share some of my knowledge about creative writing and meet some really great people. The most recent academic quarter, I had a class filled with writers who had taken earlier classes with me and were eager to keep their writing momentum moving forward. T

Yes, this will be a little whiny. Sorry, in advance. My wife, Cami, came home from a five-day cruise last week with three days left of Spring Break. We had planned to go to the beach, go explore a state park, and maybe even try to get a sailing or kayaking day in. Instead, she progressed from “sniffly” to “blah” to “feverish” to “asleep for 14 hours straight. She was feeling well enough to go back to work on Monday, but by then, my allergies were starting to kick in. I’ve bee

Just a quick note to say a hearty “thank you” to the fine folks at the Lakewood Ranch Women’s Club meeting tonight for listening to me talk a bit about Legacy Writing and sharing our life in words. I had a wonderful time. For any of you in the area, be sure to check out their website. #lakewoodranch #florida #womensclub #bradenton #legacywriting #sarasota

One of my Bradenton-Sarasota writer friends, Juli C. Hilliard, recently wrote an article about individuals who want to leave a “Legacy of Words” by writing their personal and family stories and preserving them for children, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews. <img class="size-medium wp-image-1181 lazyload" title="Screen Shot 2012-11-17 at 10.54.08 AM" alt="" src="https://ericswyatt.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/screen-shot-2012-11-17-at-10-54-08-am.png?w=230" height="300" width

Just a quick note today to tell you that if you head over to my friend and fellow-Floridian Marni Mann’s blog, you’ll see info on how you could win a copy of her just-released book, Scars from a Memoir. Scars is the follow-up to her first novel, Memoirs Aren’t Fairytales. (In case you missed it, here was a guest blog post Marni authored here on my blog back in March.) I will be featuring an interview with Marni, right here, on Friday. Stay tuned!! #marnimann #writer #florida

I realize I’ve had several new followers/readers of this blog, lately. Not only do I appreciate you stopping by, reading, and liking my posts, I am thankful that every month more and more of you come along for the ride. It’s a sleepy Saturday here. We have this thing in the Sunshine State, called the Rainy Season. It’s nothing compared to, you know, mid-west winters or anything, but when you’ve become semi-addicted to almost-constant sunshine, these gray, drizzly ones tip you

<img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-889 lazyload" title="inres" src="https://ericswyatt.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/inres.jpg" alt="" width="180" height="135" />Recently, I received word that I would be teaching two writing classes for the local (Sarasota/Manatee County, Florida) Adult and Continuing Education program. I proposed a Fiction Writing Basics class (self-explanatory) and a class called, Leaving a Legacy of Words, which focuses on writing a personal or family

A few months ago, several about-to-be MFA graduates talked about where our post-MFA search for income might lead us. Teaching: Teaching creative writing is something most of us would like to do, including me. I love the idea of passing on some of the knowledge I’ve gained about writing fiction. Teaching in an institutional setting or one-on-one would be great. Publication: This is our goal, obviously, but the financial reality for most of us is that publication, when it does

I recently began offering my services as an independent writing instructor in the Bradenton and Sarasota (Florida) area. (Though, I could easily be convinced to do the same thing via Skype or other on-line venue.) Anyway, I posted my information on Thumbtack, an online portal for finding reliable, trustworthy local services. You can see my ad, here. If you are a regular reader of Stories I Read, Stories I Tell, and you have found my blog helpful, inspirational, or otherwise b

We had company for seven days last week. It is part of living in Florida: People want to come visit. (We’ve had more visitors in two years living in Bradenton than when we lived in Muncie and Kokomo, Indiana, where we lived for ten years of our post-college married life.) When company comes, I try to plan ahead, especially with the blog. Last week, for example, I posted three blog posts which I actually wrote more than a week earlier. I scheduled them to appear last week, eve

<img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-758" class="size-medium wp-image-758 lazyload" title="gptoday" src="https://ericswyatt.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/gptoday.jpeg?w=225" alt="" width="225" height="300" /> Grandparenting Today magazine recently featured an article by Dr. Heidi Moore which mentioned my Legacy Writing course as part of a look at the kinds of legacies grandparents can leave behind. Dr. Heidi Moore–who spends her time balancing her writing life with her dut

If you are like me, and I’m not assuming that you ARE, you’ve read–at some point in your life–a self-help style book about finding your “calling” or identifying the “work you were made to do”. All fine things, really: There is a lot to be said for doing work that brings you joy and helps you identify as a part of something bigger than yourself. Inevitably, the self-help folks have you do something like this: close your eyes and imagine the PERFECT day. What would you do durin

I had big plans for the summer. I really did. After I left the May writing residency at Queens University of Charlotte, this is what I planned to accomplish: Deep revision of the first 1/3 of my novel (Chapters 1-5 as it now stands) Finish first draft of the second 1/3 of the novel (it is about 80% written, but needs a lot of work, and a lot of “connections” work…) Edit and finish two short stories workshopped at the May residency and ready them for submission to literary mag