Strategies for Doing Your Best at a Writing Residency

I’ve been at this writing residency for almost a full couple of weeks.

It’s nearly time for me to go.

It can be hard to know how to handle a situation like the one I’ve been in. Usually, when I do creative work, I’m surrounded by my family. They’re cheering me on and putting snacks in my mouth so I don’t have to stop writing to put the snacks in. They’re reading along as I write, all of them reading the words I put down aloud in unison, in order to guarantee they don’t miss anything, any nuance. They help me hear the words in my head, by saying them out loud.

But I don’t have that here. In this place, I’m in my studio, by myself, having to rely on my own wiles to get by.

But, as I’ve learned, there are strategies you can put to use, to better handle a new situation like this.

Different people have their own ways of handling that predicament of being out of their routines but still doing the thing that the routines serve in part to prop up and keep going, the way all the little things you do throughout the day make possible the thirty, sixty, or 300 minutes you spend doing creative work. But I thought I’d share the things that help me.

The first thing I did last week, when I entered my studio, which is where I do the work I came here to do, was to write myself an encouraging message in big letters, so I’d see it every morning and be buoyed up by it, no matter how I feel when I come in.

This kind of thing can be really helpful.

You have to choose the right message. And that can be really tricky.

It can be anything you want, but the important thing is to encourage yourself without giving yourself a hard time. You don’t want to hang heavy expectations on yourself and commit sabotage.

With the right message, you can’t go wrong.

The second thing is, you want to have baby rabbits around. One will be enough, but the more the better.

This morning, when I was walking from the residence to my studio, I saw a baby bunny. I had to take a photo, despite how I was depleting its soul and shortening its lifespan by doing that. Sometimes you can’t help yourself in the face of cuteness.

If you look close, you can see a baby bunny, hiding in the shadow of the tree.

And wouldn’t you know it? When I tried to get nearer, so I could take a better photo, the bunny hopped into a tree, which I then realized had an opening in its trunk—which means there’s a whole rabbit family in there.

The rabbit hopped in there.

I can just picture what’s inside. The rocking chair, where Mama Bunny sits after her little ones go to bed. The patchwork blankets on their beds, the professional portrait of Grandpa Bunny, who was seized by a hawk last spring and eaten alive. Bowls of soup on the table.

What I’m talking about is inspiration.

There are so many things that can inspire you!

A cloud can be inspiration. There could be a robot that does it.

You could be inspired by the sound of the train as it rumbles past in the night. Or a sunburn you got because you don’t think about stuff like that when you’re looking to get inspired.

Anyway. All this talk of writing has made me hungry. So I’ll end with a photo of a breakfast I made yesterday, because I was feeling like eating the sort of breakfast I have at home, when I have my writing team with me, reading every word that I put down as soon as I write it and showing me every step of the way what it will sound like when my work finds its proper audience.

Happy writing, everyone!

Fake sausage, kale, cheese, and eggs: perfection!