I spent the past week at the Wildacres Retreat in the mountains of western North Carolina enjoying the wonderful gift of a writing residency.
I had my own beautiful cabin where I spent hours every day writing on the screened porch. I walked in the woods and saw a doe, a turtle, a wild turkey, a scarlet tanager, and a blue-tailed skink, which sounds made up but isn’t. I enjoyed meals and conversation in the lodge with the Wildacres staff and two other “cabin-dwellers,” both writers like me.
I also enjoyed sounds of flute and saxophone that drifted down to my cabin from the Retreat above. During the week of my residency, Wildacres hosted flute and saxophone master classes, culminating in a concert Friday night, which I was lucky enough to attend. The whole concert was wonderful, but I was especially impressed by the New Century Saxophone Quartet which played “O Northern Star,” written by the Tenor Sax about Wildacres. You can see a video of them performing the song at Wildacres here.
A writing residency is a miraculous thing. It is time and space, both valuable commodities for any writer. It is also faith. Because residencies are competitive, being selected means a committee of smart people who care about art assessed my application and decided they believed in my work. This faith makes it possible to use the time and space well. One of my fellow cabin-dwellers said on arriving, “If I can’t write here, I can’t write anywhere.” But it’s not just the inspiring place and the gift of time that matters. It’s also the fact of having been chosen to be in this place.
So what did I do with my time? I worked on a middle grade novel called (for now) THE OATH STONE. It’s about facing fear and finding the stories in remnants from the past. While at Wildacres, I wrote the last third of this book, and then went back and revised the whole thing. It’s ready now for my critique partners and a first round of readers.
And I’m ready for my next project. Thank you Wildacres for time and space and faith. I hope I fulfilled your expectations. You absolutely exceeded mine.