A Mother-Friendly Writer’s Residency
How can you keep up with your creative work amidst the responsibilities of day to day life?
Summer Brennan, the woman behind “A Writer’s Notebook”, is no stranger to life’s obligations, tasks, and distractions, and how these things tend to take precedence over creative work. This results in the feeling she too well describes: “I am worn out. My focus is waterlogged. My discipline is shot. I am a puffy little animal. A loaf of day-old bread forgotten in the rain. A defeated sock.” Each of us has obligations that force creative work to take a back burner, which then results in a lack of practice and a lack of discipline when we do finally have a chance to sit down to create something. This is even harder to do when we can’t escaped those obligations, because it creates a feeling of growing dread that while we sit down to work on something creative, our chores, family, and work are looming and wondering why we aren’t dedicating our time to them.
This is why artist residency programs exist, of course. I was first introduced to them through my professor, who spent a month in the countryside in France with her husband, fully funded, both spending their days immersed in their creative work. Lissa taught me everything I know about the world of professional creative writing—it was her influence that got my first essay and poem published in literary journals, her wisdom that gave me a love for creating print magazines (as we hope, one day, this one will be), and her encouragement that has kept me confident about my work to this day. She and her husband are fully immersed in the literary world (he is a current recipient of one of the highly coveted Jerome Foundation grants), and yet they too have since become parents and no doubt have found it far less plausible to disappear for months at a time to work in the peace and solace of various residency programs.
This is where Brennan’s guide to a DIY residency becomes so valuable. Rather than yearning after a residency she cannot attend, she created a system for herself to allow for an at-home residency in which she could find peace, focus, and inspiration. After polling her twitter following, Brennan created the following list of requirements for an at-home writer’s residency:
Create a container
Minimize outside responsibilities
Reduce distractions
Pamper myself
Prepare
Her article explains each step well, and was just what I needed to switch into a productive mode at home. This has driven my productivity rate higher than it has been in years. Her fifth step, “Prepare”, is one I have been remiss to incorporate in my writing habits, and it is the one I’ve found great delight in incorporating into my routine this summer. The work at the forefront of my endeavors is a collection of short stories, all of which are connected by the same theme (festivals of the church year). While I have drafted the occasional story for this collection since 2019, it was not until this summer that I performed the simple task of compiling a list of each story idea, synopsizing them, and organizing them for future drafting. This process took an abstract project and turned it into a set list of thirteen stories about thirteen sets of characters who are all easily referenced on a set page. Unsurprisingly, this has turned abstract pondering into active drafting, and six of the stories are already drafted on paper. In preparation for these stories, I’ve also been reading George Saunders’ book A Swim in A Pond in the Rain—one that will deserve a thorough review here once I have finished it, and one that ought to be on every author’s shelf. I have a running list of techniques from each story Saunders includes, and these too have made me far more prepared to write than I have been otherwise.
Although I have yet to have a fully structured residency here at home (a goal I have for September), Brennan’s article has made it possible for me to find four hour stints of productive writing time uninterrupted, and it is mainly thanks to her article that I have confidence that my goal of a completed manuscript for these stories is possible by the end of this year.
Community and encouragement are also great motivators for me in writing, and that brings me to my question: would you benefit from a DIY Residency? I’ll be setting up parameters for a residency this September, and I’m happy to host a daily check in with anyone who wants to participate along with me, and supply encouragement and discussion. If you want to join me and get back into the discipline of your art, send us an email (mirabiledictumag@gmail.com) and join me for a week of creative focus.
I’m possibly interested!