In her end-of-year blog post, Mary Carroll Moore says this is a good time of year to engage in a comfort period, a time to reflect on your creative life and figure out your intentions for the next phase. “Comfort is the time spent contemplating ideas, reading and researching, getting filled up with the inspiration that you’ll need to drive the actions,” she says. A rest period, combined with the will to work, allows Moore to access vision, the element that provides purpose and good goals.
Moore begins her vision inquiry by examining what works in her creative life, including what she loves about writing, where and how she writes, her accomplishments, and her supportive friends.
Next, she considers what she would change in the future or what she has wanted for her creative life that she hasn’t yet given herself. She asks what skills she needs to improve and what might make her writing more fun.
Finally, she considers how she will bring this vision to life, through reading, studying, shaking up her routines, or asking for help. “Obviously, customize this to your particular needs and interests,” Moore says. “You might already have one area of your writing life in perfect shape–be sure to spread the happiness of that through the first set of questions, then focus on areas that are less ideal.”
