Tool: Writing Residencies
For those of you who don’t know, a writing residency is time away from home in an environment free from most distractions (I mean, we bring our phones and computers, but that’s hardly the fault of the residency) to knuckle down and get words on the page. In my experience, this is particularly useful when you hit a bump in the road and are having a hard time focusing. It helps you to remember that, at least in some ways, writing is your job, and you are no more entitled to “writer’s block” than your plumber is to “plumber’s block.” I always need this push to get past the research and into the writing part of a project, because there is always more research available.
My friend Penny and I are here for a much belated shared residency. We’d originally planned this for March 2020, but I had to back out at the last minute when my father died. The director, Sandy, graciously allowed us to put our visit on hold and, what with the pandemic and all, this was the first opportunity we’ve had to get away for a week of work at the same time.
We’re sharing the colony with two other writers; a young man writing a memoir about marathon running who is in the house with us, and another man who is staying in a stand-alone building whom we haven’t seen beyond a greeting when he first arrived. Out the window of my room, I can see a pasture with horses and, beyond that, some rolling hills and—today at least—a very blue sky. We’re a good twenty minutes from anything, which makes it easier to stay at our desks and write. And that’s what we’re here to do.
Today is our first full day, and I’ve already gotten about 1200 words written toward a new essay for the collection. It’s taken me about four hours of writing to get that far, which always puzzles me. My speed in writing this newsletter, for instance, is about four words a minute (or roughly 400% faster). I don’t know why writing takes so much longer when it’s “writing.” (Do you? I’d love to hear your ideas!) But even though “writing” is slower than, well, writing, it’s still faster here than at home, where I was managing about 300-400 words on a good day, and none on a bad one.
Some of that is because there was so much else I could be doing at home; laundry or cooking or laying on the couch watching Netflix, for instance. Here, it’s terribly quiet and anything I might do that isn’t writing might also bother the other people in the house who are writing, and my mother raised me to be too polite to disturb them by being noisy.
But mostly it’s because I’m very aware of the privilege of being able to take a week away to get more work done, and the absolute affrontery of having that privilege and squandering it offends even me. I just don’t want to be that person. So when I think, “Oh, I’ll just plug in my headphones and watch a little TV” or “maybe I’ll drive into town and look around to see what’s there,” it’s pretty easy to stop myself. Much easier than it is at home. The time here is a palpable, measurably commodity in a way that it just isn’t in the place where we live our day-to-day lives. So if I waste an hour, I’m aware that it’s a waste. There’s nothing here that needs doing except the work.
Of course, there do have to be breaks, if only to clear our heads. So Penny and I have meals together, and after lunch today we gave ourselves a half an hour to be inspired by listening to a reading by one of our favorite essayists (and my PhD advisor), Dinty W. Moore. But then it was back at it.
I’ve been here once before, and during that time I was able to to turn several months of research into the three related essays that made up my Fallout 76 video game writing project. I also went home with a renewed understanding of how to do the work of writing, a thing I seem to forget during each stretch of research.
How do you keep yourself productive, friends? How do you transition between researching the thing and writing it? What tips do you have for those who can’t take the time for a residency (as so many writers can’t), or for those of us who want to keep the productivity going once we return home?
Lucky you! Good luck xoxoxoxox
Nose to the grindstone, mine child!