This month has been a lot of Overworked, Stressed Out, and Too Much. All those things in combination make it very difficult to have a productive creative life. Most days this month I met my minimum writing practice by the skin of my teeth, but I met it and, even on the days when I […]
I’ve recently been focused on mental health, and since I write all the time, how mental health relates to—and sometimes hinders—writing. While I’ve discussed many methods I use to maintain productivity and focus (and will be doing so again in a workshop on June 12), and ways to repackage and reevaluate my goals to keep […]
Whether pandemic, politics, or other difficulties have drained your energy and flattened your mental health, it can be difficult to create when you’re struggling with depression, anxiety, or another problem that messes with your executive function. I have absolutely been there. In 2012 I was diagnosed with situational depression, a decline I could graph in […]
Sometimes there is no sugar-coating life, and our best-laid plans crumble into failure. That’s what happened to me this past April after signing up for a writing boot camp at SavvyAuthors called One Scene a Day. I started the month with the best intentions of shoving my way through a huge chunk of my novel, […]
My writing life has been very scattered of late. While I still have writing time planned daily and I haven’t broken my streak (still at least 250 words a day every day, just like the last several years), what I’ve been working on has been haphazard. After I finished my last writing project in early […]
Sometimes you just have to admit you’ve reached the end of your rope. Which is where I am right now (and why this post is much shorter than usual). I’ve been pushing myself through deadlines, frustrations, responsibilities, dropped balls, anxiety attacks, creative blocks, and every kind of doubt known to writers. It’s not healthy! And […]
Woof. As far as months go, this one has been stressful. I’d like to claim it was good stress, the kind that causes me to dig deep and get things done, but mostly it was the kind that drains my energy and leaves writing time as struggle time. Other responsibilities, lots of piling work, emotional […]
The idea of a solo writing retreat has always intrigued me. I excel at self-directed work, and I’m fairly productive while working independently, but stripping away all my distractions and responsibilities to focus on creativity felt indulgent. Or more specifically, like something other creatives were allowed to have, and I wasn’t. (Spoilers: that is a […]
Writer’s block is the bane of writers. And even though some people claim it doesn’t exist, it is totally real. It shows up in the wake of poor mental health, exhaustion, overwhelm, doubt, and a hundred other things that can distract and deplete our creative energies and focus. If you’ve ever stared at a page […]
Unsurprisingly, I spent the majority of my writing time and thoughts in October looking ahead to National Novel Writing Month. As a municipal liaison (that’s one of the volunteers responsible for creating events at the local level), my focus tends to be on others, rather than on myself. I spend my time scrounging up volunteers, […]