How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.  ~Annie Dillard

This quote, from the FundsforWriters newsletter on November 26, 2021, reached me toward the end of a one-month writing residency. Dillard’s words helped me understand why I had found my weeks at the residency so worthwhile: because this brief period of time proved to be the exception to her otherwise true insight.

Many of us, including myself, work hard to fit writing around the daily grind. My grind includes a day job, a family, pets, household maintenance, garden maintenance,  friendship maintenance, and self-maintenance. I am not complaining. I love my grind. As a deadline-driven woman, I often find it helpful. If I have a meeting at nine o’clock, for instance, I will get my word count in before that Zoom alert blooms on my screen. Meeting postponed for an hour? Reaching my word count will stretch out until ten a.m.

But doing some types of writing requires in-depth, sustained attention rather than the rapid-fire rhythm of deadlines. I have been working on such a project, which I call Asking After Alice. It is the story of someone in my family who spent her whole life institutionalized because she had Down Syndrome. No one other than her parents even knew of Alice’s existence for almost half a century.

I have been trying to piece together her story. I have amassed piles of notes, lists of resources to consult, and pages of interview transcripts. Making order and sense out of the material and considering how to construct a compelling narrative required more concentrated time than I ever had available. I continued to write other things, but not the story of Alice.

I had read notices about writing residencies or retreats in FundsforWriters and wondered whether investing the effort (and sometimes money) to apply for one would be a smart move or a form of procrastination. Even in the event I succeeded, how could I schedule time off work and negotiate the logistics around leaving home? So many barriers.

But with the encouragement of a supportive partner and an understanding work supervisor, I took the plunge. I am so glad I did. I got accepted for a three-and-a-half week stint as a resident at the Wassaic Project  (https://www.wassaicproject.org), located in an idyllic rural hamlet in upstate New York. Wassaic mainly caters to visual artists, but includes a smattering of writers.

There I spent my days writing and thinking about writing, and reading and reading about writing. And more writing. The Wassaic Project provided studio (desk) space and a private room in a large house shared with two other women. Each of us prepared our own meals, bar occasional gatherings. My session included seven residents—a smaller number than normal, due to the covid pandemic. The project’s director arranged occasional talks by visiting artists—and, for me, one writer– followed by optional ‘studio visits’ involving one-on-one consultation and critique. My time with author Ashley Mayne proved one of the highlights of the month.

But most of the time, I sat at my desk, index cards splayed around me and my laptop computer front and center. I wrestled with the parts of my project that had for so long needed full, deep attention. While I did not finish my entire book in those few weeks, I accomplished what I wanted. When I packed up to leave Wassaic, I included in my virtual luggage a book-shaped thing, still ragged and gap-ridden, but book-shaped nonetheless. I felt like a proud mama.

Now I am home in Toronto, again spending my days as I spend my life. I am back to the grind. But now part of my grind is completing a book. For me, investing the time and effort to temporarily leave my life behind brought exactly the payoff I needed.

BIO – Leslie Carlin is a writer of fiction and creative non-fiction. Her work has been published in newspapers and literary journals including the Baltimore Review, Reed Magazine, the Ocotillo Review, and the Toronto Star. Leslie maintains a blog called Travails of a Transatlantic Transplant in which she writes about being an American from California who moved to Canada from England. Learn more about Leslie at www.LeslieCarlin.com.