Image: Kurt Vonnegut is one of the many writers from Indiana. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Writers_from_Indiana
Writing retreats can be expensive and difficult to schedule. How can busy parent-writers arrange to attend a reasonably priced writing retreat when her partner is free to care for her baby? Shasta Grant and my answer was to build the retreat ourselves. A do-it-yourself residency isn’t a resume builder, but the time to write – and friendship – can make all the difference.
Memoirist and fiction writer Shasta Grant set up desks for us in her Indianapolis home and we wrote morning to evening for five productive days. We discussed our projects, her memoir and my poetry manuscript, when taking meal breaks and walks.
I met Shasta Grant during our first days as students in Sarah Lawrence College’s MFA program. Since graduating, we’ve continued to write, become mothers and teachers. She’s now living in Singapore with her family while I’m in D.C. We are rarely on the same continent, but we share work and discuss writing electronically. Having a writing friend like her is invaluable as we receive acceptances, rejections, experience time management issues and have craft or publishing questions.
Our sons stayed home with their dads while we wrote. I video conferenced regularly with my son and husband, and missed them both terribly. I tried not to worry too much about my son and feel guilty, but rather focus on my work. I can’t thank my husband, or Shasta (or her family), enough for making this happen.
Writers write. Take the time and build the residency you’re looking for. Consider how long you’ll write each day, how much time you’ll spend socializing, if you’ll workshop each other’s writing or follow writing prompts together. You might also discuss costs (housing, food) and how you’ll divide them. If you build a solo-residency, decide how many hours a day you’ll write and set a schedule to keep yourself going. (After all, part of a successful writing group is the positive peer pressure; you can offer that to yourself with some early goal-setting.)
For more on building a residency, poets Elizabeth (Betsy) Kudlacz and Shradha Shah wrote about their do-it-yourself residency here on my blog. You might also be interested in Moira Donovan’s discussion of her writing group.
To help with childcare and other writing related costs, you can apply for grants from the Sustainable Arts Foundation or their fellowship for parents at the Vermont Studio Center, Pen Parentis, a writing organization for parents, is a good place to visit for more support and their fellowship for writing parents. Dr. Bellinger offers additional tips and links on my writing coach blog.
What other resources do you recommend?
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Chloe Yelena Miller lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and son. She is the author of Unrest (Finishing Line Press). She blogs about intersecting roles at Woman Mother Writer (http://womanmotherwriter.blogspot.com).
