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Tag: writing residencies

  • 5 Lessons I Learned at My First Writing Residency

    5 Lessons I Learned at My First Writing Residency

    In January, I packed my car and drove 12 hours alone from Florida to North Carolina. This was not a typical road trip, but I had plenty of soul-searching planned: I was headed to the Penland School of Crafts, a bustling art school nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

    As I embarked on my first writing residency, I knew I’d be joined by artists from all over the country seeking a focused period of independent work. I was ready — or so I thought.

    I had packed and repacked the car. I had checked out helpful library books for research. I had acquired plenty of snacks. I had obtained not one, but two new notebooks waiting to be filled with the fresh inspiration that was sure to come.

    What I didn’t expect was to feel like a fish out of water, as the only writer attending during my two-week session. Being a lone ranger wasn’t a big deal. But I had no other writers to turn to for perspective, or for a boost of encouragement. It was up to me to forge my own writing path.

    I made the most of my time at Penland and returned feeling accomplished. But I also learned important lessons about planning for writing productivity while you’re away from home.

    1. The first few days will probably be a wash

    Anyone who’s sat down at their desk and waited (and waited…and waited) for words to come knows the anxiety of not being productive enough during a writing session. This gave me some anxiety as I embarked upon my first residency.

    A friend advised me to give myself a few days to settle in, both to my surroundings and my temporary writing routine. Of course, someone doing a shorter retreat or residency may not have the luxury of spending a half day importing their chapters to Scrivener, or avoiding writing by reading a book on Cold War-era bunkers, as I did. But I was grateful to have the first few days of my stay to putter around and get comfortable, not only with my space but with myself, and no other tasks to complete but writing.

    Tip: Plan a few low-energy tasks to get you started in the first few hours or days of your residency. A valuable way to start your stay may be to read over the work you’ve already done, to remind you why you’re here — and what needs work.

    2. It’s good to have goals

    Here’s where my strategy of “ease into the residency!” has its drawbacks.

    Working in a residency for primarily visual artists meant it was easy to say, “Hey, what did you make today?” to a fellow resident, and be shown beautiful works-in-progress at a moment’s notice.

    When they turned that question back to me, asking, “What did you write today?” I would chuckle half-heartedly and give them a big toothy grin. Then I would change the subject.

    I didn’t always have something to show for my day of work.

    In my first week of my residency, my major accomplishment was figuring out the emotional catalyst for my entire story, and summarizing it in a paragraph. It was a huge accomplishment for me, but on paper, it didn’t look so massive.

    My colleagues were still excited for my progress. But because I didn’t set any goals before I started my work, I couldn’t truly gauge my progress during this valuable time.

    Tip: Make a work plan, however minimal. Whether it’s a set of chapters, a character development arc, or research for technical aspects of worldbuilding, you’ll want to be able to look back on your time and say, “Yes, I did (at least part of) what I set out to do.”

    3. Distractions are everywhere

    It’s natural for others to be curious about your work at a residency, and it’s natural to be curious about theirs.

    But it’s easy to let those side conversations about your work, your life back home, your pets, and that one city you visited once derail your productivity.

    An artist at my residency referred to procrastinating as “chasing squirrels.” Everyone did it. Some of us more than others. If you let distractions like conversations, social media, and fiddling with the coffee pot take over, and you’ll wonder where your day — or entire residency — has gone.

    Tip: Set a writing schedule, even if it’s as simple as working two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon. That way, you can protect those hours — and let distractions run rampant outside those limits without feeling bad.

    4. You will hit a wall

    Right when you think you’ve hit your stride and it’s going to be nothing but multi-thousand-word writing sessions from there, you’ll hit the wall. Stuck. Burned out.

    It happened to me: I started my second week of residency with a super-productive day where I wrote several pivotal scenes in my work in progress. I felt like I was on top of the world.

    Until the next morning, when I sat back down at my desk and…nothing.

    The cure? A 90-minute hike on a cold, but sunny day fixed me right up. I knew I needed to clear my head, and when a fellow resident volunteered to keep me company along the path, I happily took her offer. Leaning into this opportunity for distraction helped me reset my brain and sit down at my laptop with clarity and confidence the next day.

    Tip: Accept that even in a special environment, some days will be more productive than others. Embrace the ebb and flow of your residency and listen to your body, mind and surroundings along the way.

    5. Make a work plan before you depart

    Your residency might feel like a rush of creativity and uninterrupted writing. But you can’t take it with you — at least, not in the same form.

    When I returned from my residency, I chatted with my mother on the phone, who asked if I had a productive trip. Then she said, “Now you’ll have to keep up the momentum.”

    Again with the half-hearted chuckling and toothy grin she couldn’t see through the phone.

    I didn’t have a plan. In fact, in the month after my return home, I wrote zero additional words. I did zero additional plotting. I felt inert, sluggish back in my surroundings, with a day job to attend to and errands to run.

    The momentum of a residency is hard to replicate for writers who don’t typically get time and space to write.

    Tip: Before you depart, make a plan for how you’ll continue writing when you return home. Sure, maybe life will require you to tone it down from 2,000 words each day to 500 three days a week. But setting expectations for yourself will help you feel motivated to follow up on your residency-facilitated burst of creativity.

    My lessons might seem obvious to someone who has taken writing trips before. But for a newcomer who loves planning and reviewing agendas, I felt overwhelmed with lightbulb moments. Of course it takes planning and preparation to make the most of your time — just like writing at home.

    Now, it’s a matter of applying those lessons as I daydream about my next residency.

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  • 5 Tips for Applying to Writing Fellowships and Residencies

    5 Tips for Applying to Writing Fellowships and Residencies

    If you’ve ever applied for a writing residency, retreat or fellowship, it sometimes feels intimidating to know your application is lumped into a pile with highly accomplished and well-established writers.

    As a young writer, the application alone was a big enough barrier to scare me away from life-changing opportunities and thinking ahead in my writing career. For many writers like myself, it’s easy to fall into a hole of self-pity and invalidate our own personal achievements.

    Luckily, the application process doesn’t have to be this way.

    To learn some strategies about applying to residencies and fellowships, I reached out to a handful of writers who have been accepted to and completed prestigious opportunities. Here are their tips.

    1. Communicate clearly in your application

    Mailee Hung, a 2017 Bitch Media Writing Fellow, stresses the importance of effective communication in your letter of intent.

    Your statement should “clearly outline what your project is, how you’re going to do it, [and] why that particular residency/fellowship is the best venue to do it in,” she says. “You need to state your claims early, if only to show that you’ve thought about it seriously and you know how to build an argument.”

    Overall, you need to be ready to sell your best self.

    Articulate why your work is particularly unique and special. Poet and former Artist-In-Residence at the Everglades National Park Miriam Sagan even recommends addressing some weaknesses.

    “I heard through the grapevine I was once rejected for a residency because I asked for ‘too short” of a stay,” she explains. “From then on, I addressed my need for short stays directly.”

    2. Understand your needs

    Poet and teacher Laura Wetherington, who participated in residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and the Centre d’Art Marnay Art Centre, recommends writers begin their program search by identifying their own artistic needs because, as you’d expect, programs can be very different from each other.

    “Are you looking for a place to collaborate with other artists and feed off the collective energy, or are you looking for a solitary, quiet situation?” She says. “Do you need the internet, access to the post office or to bring a bunch of books with you?“

    Knowing the answers to these questions will strengthen your statement of intent, because it provides you with a stronger connection to the program and its accommodations.

    3. Go abroad

    Sagan has completed more than a dozen residencies and fellowships, both domestic and abroad.

    She says international residences are far less competitive compared to those within the United States.

    “[International programs] cost about the price of a Motel 6 daily or less and tend to be government subsidized,” Sagan explains. “If you need funding, look at short-term Fulbrights for artists and other exchange programs. Look at your city’s Sister Cities too.”

    For potential funding opportunities as a Philadelphia-based writer, I can look into my city’s affiliate Sister Cities, which include Tel Aviv, Israel; Florence, Italy; and Aix-en-Provence, France.

    4. Fundraise as needed

    “The slightly funded residencies are much more competitive,” Sagan explains. “Go for unfunded ones as well.”

    Sagan recommends pursuing crowdfunding if you’re pursuing an unpaid residency and all other funding opportunities fail. “A GoFundMe campaign can get you anywhere,” she says.

    She also adds to keep your expenses as low as possible. Minimize your luxuries by cooking on a budget rather than eating out, for instance.

    Also, remember to maximize your time and use it to the fullest if offered the opportunity. Take advantage of the financial investment (especially if the program isn’t funded) you’re making.

    After all, it’s unlikely that you’ll fit that much writing into your regular schedule without a residency or fellowship.

    Think about what you can do with sustained time that you can’t do on your regular writing schedule, and prioritize that,” explains Gemma Cooper-Novack, a writer with a CV of over six residencies including the Betsy Hotel Writer’s’ Room in Miami, Florida.

    5. Just do it

    But most of all? “Don’t get discouraged!” Mailee adds.

    Most writers will be too intimidated to even consider applying. Slap on some imposter’s syndrome and the application process becomes a nightmare. However, it’s important to just do the thing and at the very least submit an application.

    The worst that could happen is, well, you won’t get an offer.

    “Some of my most devastating rejections have led me to make the best decisions of my life,” she elaborates. Apply to anything you’re excited about, and know the value of your own work. There are a lot of reasons for rejection beyond “you just weren’t good enough.”

    Plus, applying to programs gets easier over time.

    “If it’s at all possible, I strongly advise taking the first residency you’re accepted to, even if you have to put down some money, get into one however possible,” stresses Cooper-Novak. “I do think that after I got my first residency [at Can Serrat in El Bruc, Catalonia, Spain)], other residencies started to look at me more closely.”

    As you can tell from these writers’ advice, applying to a residency and/or fellowship doesn’t have to mean beating imposter syndrome. The process may still be a little intimidating, but not so much that it prevents you from actually submitting your application.

    Take it from the experts: apply and apply again until you’re accepted.

     

  • Beyond Productivity: What to Expect From Your First Writing Residency

    Beyond Productivity: What to Expect From Your First Writing Residency

    Everyone knows the benefits of writers’ residencies.

    The greatest of all might be your manuscript rapidly expanding in a frictionless work environment — one free of a job or of friends texting to meet up.

    You find pockets in the writing day that you never knew existed: The hours after dinner when you can hammer out another page; the early morning hour when you turn a sentence over in your mind without worrying about being late for anything.

    Productivity. It’s what we all want, and what most residencies promise. Tell your friends at home that you’ll be gone, compose a vacation reply, turn off your phone, and experience the true size of an afternoon.

    But even though it’s what we most crave out of residencies, productivity is not why we go. If it were, you’d just rent a cottage on an island in Maine or a cabin upstate. Better yet, you could save money by staying home and spending your vacation days in the basement of your local library.

    The real reason we go to residencies is that they jolt us out of routine and familiarity, which often frees the mind to perform more creatively and sharply on the page.

    What happens when we step away from the computer is the reason we spend our time camped out with a bunch of creative strangers. The unexpected benefits — the stuff beyond page count — is the good stuff.

    One residency doesn’t fit all writers

    Those unexpected benefits vary from residency to residency.

    Choosing the right residency is mostly about the experience you want. There’s the rural, the urban, the large, the small, the ones with three sit-down meals a day, the ones with readings, with workshops and without, the ones with no required events, the ones with a lecture series, the ones with visual artists and musicians, the ones with only writers, the ones abroad, and the ones two towns away.  

    You might find yourself nearly alone for a month in the mountains, or holed up for a week in a fancy apartment in a city. You could lose yourself in a new country.

    If you go to the large Vermont Studio Center, for instance, way up in northern Vermont, you have the opportunity to ponder a plotline or character while walking on a mountain trail. You might listen to a fellow resident’s reading in a historic performance hall and discover a new way of thinking about your own work. You might make friends with a painter or sculptor over after-dinner tea. You might take up figure drawing in the mornings or begin meditation.

    At the tiny Lighthouse Works residency on Fishers Island, you’ll fill the hours when you’re not writing with fishing and swimming at the beach, or spending the night shooting pool down in the local pub. At Hewnoaks residency, in a lakeside town in northern Maine, you might cure writer’s block while canoeing, paddling along miles of lakeshore, listening to the echo of loons’ calls.

    You create a day that scaffolds your writing hours, rejuvenates you and productively repositions your thoughts.

    Offline time is key to a successful stay

    This year, when the owner of a 105-year-old hotel on Cuttyhunk Island — an island off of Cape Cod with a year-round population of 18 — asked if I wanted organize a writers’ residency, I knew I had the chance to offer people an experience with a high premium of those unexpected benefits.

    The island is all salt-stunted trees and windswept fields, with an oyster pond on its western side. The town that exists there today looks not unlike it did in the 19th Century: that fishing-town feel towns farther up the Cape used to embody.

    It’s the type of place I imagined writers could wander and think. There’d be evening swims at the beaches, bad cell-phone service to snuff out Facebook and Instagram, and 360 degrees of ocean.  Any writer who’s spent time on an island will know that it catalyzes a potent brand of focus.

    As I welcome the first residents this summer, I’ll encourage them to work hard on their writing projects, but, more importantly, to shut the computer every once and a while for a long walk, to sit on the porch and read for the afternoon, or to spend an extra hour at the dinner table, engaged in conversation over a few cups of tea before bed.

    You know—the stuff that you can’t do in the basement of your town library.

    Making the most of your residency

    Ready to pack your bags and attend your first residency? Before you dig out your suitcase, here are a few tips for making the most of your journey.

    Research the residency and area before you go

    Write up a list of things you want to do besides writing. Check them off during your visit. Depending on the huge range of residencies (from New York City to Wyoming wilderness to coastal New England to Estonian countryside), activities could include:

    • Canoe for a day
    • Spend a day hiking through the hills
    • Go to one morning of life drawing
    • Go to yoga every morning
    • Go swimming every evening after writing
    • Go snowshoeing at least once

    The list, really, is endless, depending on season and location. Try to write down at least five activities to try.

    Don’t burn out

    You’ll be facing hours upon hours of free writing time. Don’t feel guilty for taking a “day off.” Don’t burn yourself out — doing so will kill your creative drive.

    Be spontaneous

    When another resident asks you to join him on a walk, or bike ride, or swim, or a drink at the pub, do it.

    Unless you’re in the middle of a brilliant paragraph, you’ll be happier, ultimately, for taking advantage of spontaneous adventures.

    Set reasonable goals

    Have a project in mind, and focus on that project. Don’t work on a thousand things — you’ll only get frustrated, and you’ll squash any chance for exciting stuff to happen beyond your writing desk.

    There’s always more to work on, and more to write. Accept that, and then let it go.

    Know the residency

    Is it a retreat, a workshop, or a conference? Some programs listed as “residencies” don’t actually give you much time to write. Take a look at the schedule, and adjust your expectations accordingly.

    Is this a time to listen to lectures, to absorb, or a time to increase page count? Surprisingly important: Do you have to cook your own food? Having meals provided for you frees up much time and mental space.

    Have you attended a writing residency? What other tips would you give to first-time attendees?