Five Questions to Consider Before You Apply.
WHETHER you a re a parent or a professor, hold a nine-to-five job or spend most days doing something else entirely, there are many reasons for just about any writer to attend a writers residency. One of the most valuable among them is the chance to shift your schedule and your mind-set so that, for a week or a month or even just a few days, you can prioritize writing above all else in your life. In The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results (Bard Press, 2013), Gary Keller and Jay Papasan suggest posing one driving question in order to focus on what’s most important: “What’s the one thing you can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” For writers, a residency or retreat may be that one thing, offering an uninterrupted period of time during which writing is the most important thing each day, so that the rest of what we usually do becomes, at least temporarily, less necessary.
In addition to the practical usefulness of extended time devoted to writing, a residency can be a professional stepping-stone as well. Being awarded a residency is a valuable line on one’s résumé, a helpful experience to include in grant applications, and a good way to network and find a lasting community. Although many writers wait until they are well established to apply to high profile, highly competitive residencies like Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, or the Millay Colony, there are great reasons to seek out such opportunities at any stage of one’s writing life.
This story is from the March - April 2017 edition of Poets & Writers Magazine.
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This story is from the March - April 2017 edition of Poets & Writers Magazine.
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Literary MagNet
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