Do Not Read This Email
Dispatch from my first writing residency
I’m back from my writing residency at Kylemore Abbey. I spent the week writing beside a baronial castle and these gorgeous mountains in Connemara. It was moody, windy, and the quiet felt so productive—really helped to clear my head.
Beyond the word count and time to read, I left the residency with this feeling of momentum for the new novel I’ve started. It’s about the dissolution of a gay couple’s marriage while the world is ending, and I found writing to be really propulsive with all these gray clouds and winds coming off the mountains. The grounds closed to visitors after 5, and it was just the writers and the nuns at that point.
I don’t have a conversation or reading list to share this week—I truly unplugged while I was there and will be back next week with something special. In the meantime, I have a couple pieces of advice for approaching the residency that others shared with me beforehand.
Bring a specific reading list: something you love, something in the same genre as your book, and something outside of it.
Download shows or movies in advance if you know you won’t have internet access.
Don’t get too hung up on productivity—be kind to yourself and let things happen as they do. The second day I found to be a bit of a creativity hangover after writing a lot the first day, and it was a good reminder to use the time to enjoy being in place too. Walking outdoors and reading were just as valuable.
Move social media apps on your phone. This one was huge for me. I moved Instagram to the furthest screen on my phone, so I had to think really carefully about whether I was opening it.
Delete email from your phone. This had to be the single best thing I did to set up the time I had there. I told my clients that I was going to be totally offline for this week and stuck to it. It was a helpful reminder for me that it’s okay to ask for these things, and most often people will be excited to hear about what you’re up to outside work, too.
Have you done a writing or artist residency? What advice would you add to this list?
Reference Section
I read a ton while I was away! Recommending Milk Fed by Melissa Broder and Fragments of Wasted Devotions by Mia Arias Tsang.
I also went to the National Leprechaun Museum in Dublin on another writer’s recommendation. The name is a bit of a misnomer in that it’s organized primarily around folktales and oral storytelling. I joined the Darkland night tour, which was so helpful for revisions I’m contemplating on my WIP—it got me thinking a lot about how Irish stories are told and what morals they convey surrounding sex and death (the guide said that in other mythologies, people love sex and are afraid of death, while in Ireland they’re “afraid of sex and love a good death”).
Of course, here’s some iconic wind…
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