Five Things to do at a Writer’s Residency

And One Thing to Avoid

One

Work on the novel your agent probably didn’t want you to work on. The one she said might need substantial edits to get it publishable. Put your all into this novel, both out of faith and out of spite. Change the setting to be where your residency is. Change the characters to fit the people around you. Research the flowers (forget-me-nots, fireweed, lupins). Take pictures of the grasses and trees, writing about each leaf in detail, how the prickly Sitka spruces rage at skin, how the sage brings multi-colored butterflies to your porch. Write every excursion into your novel. Make fact fiction and vice versa.

Two

Make friends with the animals who are guests at your residency. Especially the dogs. Herd them into a group and lead them, with a singsong voice, to the river. Toss rocks to them once they wade into the glacial runoff, watching as they bite at the air, missing their target every time. Bite-miss-bite-miss. Encourage the oldest of the dogs to play, even if the half wolf in her can never fully understand the meaning of that word, even though her eye-paw coordination is rapidly fading. Toss them sticks. Sit on the tree stumps and watch them fling water from their coats, the Alaskan mountains rising behind them, cold clouds obscuring the snow-capped peaks.