When I started thinking about how I would make some changes in my personal and creative life, I started with the first necessary component: scheduling. I knew several things, up front, and I began to plan accordingly. First, making changes in our lives that have measurable, positive effects almost never happen accidentally. Once I came to a point of saying, “Something’s gotta give,” then I needed to be INTENTIONAL about my actions. Further, those actions have to be a part of

As I mentioned early in the week, I hit a creative wall in the second quarter of 2013. Things weren’t happening, for me, and as the transition into Summer came around, I knew it was time to re-charge the process. We all know, on some level, that if we keep doing things the same way we’ve been doing them, we’ll continue to get the same results. When things are going really well, that’s a good thing. Keep plugging along. Keep drawing on those reserves until they give out. But w

It is easy for me to rack up a list of “some day” items. Some people call it long-term planning, and others call it having a “bucket list” mentality. Whatever term you use, I’m prone to have a list of “hope to/want to” things when it comes to my creative life and my personal life. Some Day I’ll MFA In my 20’s and early 30’s, one of the big “some day” things on my list was to get my MFA in creative writing. Even as I bounced around from classroom teacher to law school applican

Yes, I know it is already the 7th of January, and whether or not I like it, the new year is in full swing, but when you are married to a teacher (and do a fair amount of teaching and subbing, yourself) things don’t get “back to normal” until the school year re-starts. So, today is my New Year’s Day, at least as my writing life is concerned. Set Goals that YOU Can Control Last week I opened a new Pages document and began listing the things I wanted to accomplish with my writin

Late last week, the computer models (all six million of them) were projecting that the tropical storm named Isaac would spend the last part of the weekend and the beginning of the week pounding one side of Florida or the other as a large, rain-laden hurricane. We live in an area that is Evacuation Zone Five, which basically means we won’t face a mandatory evacuation unless a Really Big One is closing in. Part of our own planning, though, is to evacuate if a storm sized catego

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-766" class="size-medium wp-image-766 lazyload" title="calendar" src="https://ericswyatt.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/calendar.png?w=256" alt="" width="256" height="300" /> The writing calendar I devised for my final semester. Earlier versions were similar, with more time spent reading the texts assigned for the semester. One of the way’s I’ve used to track my writing–as a general source of information for me, and as a self-monitoring d

Last week I blogged about having a group of fellow writers (or other creatives) with whom you periodically “check-in” regarding the status of your work and creative life. I currently have several outlets for this sort of communal interaction: My local writer friends, who I meet with monthly and converse with on-line, regularly. Non-local Twitter friends, including a weekly Tweet Chat group. Former Queens University MFA classmates who have formed a Facebook group, as well as m

I knew it before I graduated. I even talked about it in my graduating seminar presentation. The post-MFA writing life is difficult. As I sat on the porch with a cup of coffee and my daily free writing notebook, I wrote these words. “Too many choices. That’s where I am. Too many options without urgency to focus on any one thing. So much on my mind, it’s like a 1,000 piece puzzle with no corner pieces, no edges, no picture on the box to reference.” I am a bit overwhelmed and un

I love this time of year. From a traditional, spiritual standpoint, we’re reaching the end of the anticipation of Advent and we are entering the hope of Christmas. From a seasonal, naturist point of view, we have reached the “darkest night of the year” and from this point on, the days, which have grown depressingly short, will lengthen and more sunlight will be with us. From a personal perspective, I’ve had the privilege of spending the last two weeks with my aging grandfathe

My initial post about the pros and cons of an MFA has continued to draw a lot of traffic to my blog, which tells me this is one of those topics that people are consistently interested in. (No, you don’t have to be a social media guru to figure that one out…) I’ve received a number of comments on that post, and also, several potential MFA students have emailed me with questions and asked for some advice about pursuing the Creative Writing masters-level degree. Let me give you

Warning: This installment of the Three Minute Writer is more like four and a half minutes long. I’ve talked on the blog, here, about finding a creative rhythm and giving yourself the energy and opportunity to seize on your creativity. In this video blog, I begin to describe a simple method for beginning to take control of your creative life. [su_youtube url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxPUWZSsPHE”] You can check out other episodes of the video blog on the vBlog recap page

People ask about my process when they find out I’m a writer. “What does that look like? Do you sit at the computer all day?” Yes. Some days. But not most. I think it is a question people ask because they want to know if “writing is for them”, but the truth is, the process is different for every person, and often different between projects. I thought I would talk a little bit about process today, first in general terms and then more specifically. General Fiction Process Genera

This is one of those blog posts that may be more for my own benefit than it is a post for you, the reader. (You can read it, though. I wouldn’t want to scare you away!) There are several ways I try to keep track of my writing and writing-related activities. As I’ve written in the past, I think planning and tracking (and here and here) and being intentional about what I’m doing as a writer is a key component to, you know, actually WRITING rather than wasting my days playing Wo

Strategic planning. Sounds stuffy. Like it comes from corporate America. Like something that is the polar opposite of creativity and the freedom to write. Right? Hardly. It seems to me that there are any number of writers (even some I consider friends) who bristle and balk at any mention of structure or planning or even the slightest hint of purposefulness. A practice like “strategic planning” is the antithesis of creativity, they might say. But, I’m not so sure. I’ve done so