Is it still a writing residency if I stay in my own home?

Fifteen years ago this summer, I packed my laptop and summer clothes into my little VW Cabrio and drove it across the Midwest to Nebraska City, Nebraska, for a four-week writing residency at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. Nebraska City is not a city — it’s barely a small town — but for my purposes, that was for the best. I had a book manuscript to finish, my second full-length collection of poems, and I needed time and space and quiet to think and work. I am easily distracted, especially by fun activities. I needed to be in a place where you could run the fun out in an hour or two, tops, if I wanted to meet my goal.

KHN was the perfect mix of structured and unstructured for me: an apartment with a kitchen in a small complex with a handful of other artists of all disciplines, a studio of my own to work in, and not much else to do but finish what I came to finish. (I recommend it!) Being a writer who has always had at least a full-time job, even during my MFA, and now teaching as well, I know how to fit my own writing around my paying work. And still there is some work that I am best at when I have longer blocks of focused time than what I can grab on weekends and early weekday mornings, and that residency gave me that time and space, for which I will always be grateful.

Back then I had two things going for me that led to that four-week residency — a rigorous habit of submitting myself and my work for evaluation (poems, grants, residencies, fellowships) and a job that gave me up to six weeks off, paid, for “study leave” so I could, say, go finish writing a bunch of poems in the voices of fictional circus performers. (A pretty sweet gig, I know.) These days I have a job that, while I have no shortage of time off available, endows me with more responsibility, making the prospect of taking four weeks off feel a bit daunting. I am also utterly out of the habit of submitting, preferring to put the time I have toward the work itself. And the long cycle of apply —> hold dates open on my calendar —> wait —> maybe or maybe not get in has had little appeal to me this year for a variety of reasons.

And yet I still have writing goals to meet, and I still need time and space and quiet to think and work. So when Drew planned a little vacation out of state with his best friend , I decided to take advantage of the time he was gone and the empty house to plan an at-home writing retreat with the goal of finally filling in the pages of TK TK TK in a particularly difficult chapter in my book.

I know how lucky I am. Not everyone has the luxury of having their living space and time all to themselves for five nights and four days as I did, especially while so many housemates and partners are working from home, and parents have limited-to-nonexistent care options for kids. There are also good reasons to try to go away for residencies at artist colonies once they return to being on-site, besides the CV boost from a selective fellowship: making friends and finding new artistic collaborators, for one thing. And some writers like a whole change of scenery or need to be the one leaving everyone else at home, so a DIY retreat at an airbnb or hotel could be a better option. (I considered it, but then decided I could save money and travel time and some hassle over pet care if I just stayed at home.)

If you can chase everyone including dependents out of your home (safely, lovingly) to stage a stay-at-home writing retreat, here are the things I did that helped me make the most of my time, and maybe they’ll be helpful for you, too, in turning your living quarters into a slacker’s productive at-home residency:

1. Clear your schedule. I took two days off work, started my retreat on a Wednesday promptly after work at 6 p.m. and ended it Sunday at bedtime. During that time, I committed to as little as possible: a quick well-cat vet trip for vaccines and an overdue cut and color for myself that I didn’t want to put off one more week. I didn’t go out with friends. Nora, our Boston terrier, stayed home with me, and I took her on daily walks around the neighborhood. That’s it. I needed less stimulus, not more, to get in my productive zone. I needed to get a little bored. If your goal is to get inspired, you might want to plan some inspo outings. As long as it serves the writing goal, it’s good.

2. So do give yourself a goal. My goal was a complete read-through of my manuscript so far, plus 20 pages or a finished chapter draft, and I am satisfied with what I achieved. Knowing what I needed to write about, and some — but not all — of what I needed to write gave me a focus so I didn’t fritter away my time on unrelated Netflix or internet, not that I abstained from TV or being online the entire time. My brain needs rest between work sessions, and I gave it breaks. But the whole time I was also aware of how precious time alone and unplugged from work is, and how easy it is for my time to get promised to other people and other commitments. I pledged to commit to my writing and my project instead.

3. Turn off as many outside distractions as you can. The world will try to intrude on your writing time and take it over. Do what you need to do to minimize distractions without sacrificing anyone’s safety, whether that’s turning off the wifi or setting a timer between glances at your phone or ignoring the group text’s spontaneous plans. I turned my work email and Slack notifications off, which is a big deal for me. Y’all, I closed my Chartbeat tab. I still took texts from family and close friends and even had some phone time. I’m not a monk, just a writer with a deadline.

4. Plan your meals ahead of time. Maybe y’all are fancy up at MacDowell getting your lunches delivered in those twee lil picnic baskets, I don’t know. (Could this be any more precious, omg.) But slackers like me who notice the application deadline every year right around the least convenient time to prepare are going to have to fend for ourselves. I wanted to keep takeout to a minimum, so I stocked up on just enough groceries ahead of time to feed me for the duration of the residency — no getting distracted by too many options — and did some light meal-prepping about 24 hours in advance. Maybe you want to cook a few big batch meals and eat off them the whole time? The freezer is your friend. It’s summer so I wanted light, easy meals I could assemble on the fly without much thought. So I cut up a bunch of fruit for breakfast yogurt/granola parfaits, and vegetables to be tossed in salads, defrosted a few items, prepped some items for cheese plates, and hardboiled some eggs. I made sure I had wine, beans to make French Press iced coffee, lemons for the water carafe, club soda, and mint gelato. I made a flexible plan and it kept me from staring into my fridge, devoting time and brain space to what I should eat. I only ordered delivery once, though I did imagine my takeout tacos arrived in a hand-painted wicker basket delivered by horse and buggy by Marian MacDowell herself. (Five stars to Marian!) If your creative process includes a lot of complicated cooking you rarely have time to do, though, by all means have at it.

5. Give yourself chore amnesty. When you’re in your own house, instead of a cute-ass cottage studio at MacDowell, and you are staring at a blinking cursor, it can be easy to think that you should just go ahead and organize that closet or deep-clean the bathroom sink or whatever while you wait for the muse to kick in. [I think — I mean I don’t actually ever think those things are easy and will go to great lengths to avoid them, but I know some of you are tidy like that!] I kept the kitchen clean, which was easy because my meals were simple to make. I took care of the dog and cat. I brought in the mail. It rained, so I didn’t even have to water the plants. Basically, for five nights and four whole days, I did the bare minimum for everything but my writing, and directed the energy I usually apply to everything else in life to the page. Again, I know I’m lucky to be able to do this. But once upon a time I would have filled my husband’s absence with as many distracting fun activities as I could, and idly wondered if I’d missed the deadline to apply for a fancy picnic basket residency again this year, so I’m proud of myself for prioritizing my work, and giving myself a compressed, dedicated block of time to get deep into thought like it needs.What am I reading now?

   1. Does Mary’s dress wave or sway?

   2. What’s she got in those pockets?

   3. You used to be able to get away with spoilers in movie reviews? (The Mercedes gag is a big deal!)