There are no days more full than those we go back to. ― Colum McCann

Jemiscoe Chambers-Black—For many of us, the week-long residency at the Mountain View Grand Hotel in Whitefield, NH is something that we cherish. It’s a magical place, a retreat, where like-minds enjoy being away from the pressures of adulting, and rather, focus on nothing but their stories. Because we feel so strongly about our time together, we here at Assignment decided to ask some of the current MFA Candidates, the alumni and faculty what they missed, learned and loved about past residencies.

After attending three residencies, I can say with certainty that what I’ll miss most after my fourth residency week in January are the people. I’ll miss leaving the rest of the world behind to spend a week in the company of writers, people who intrinsically understand the challenges and rewards of practicing the craft of writing. I’ll miss the opportunity to dig deep into short stories in morning workshops. I’ll miss the chance to learn together from visiting agents and editors. I’ll miss the student and faculty readings. I’ll miss it all, but the community fostered by the staff and faculty—and my fellow learners—rests at the heart of what I love most about residency. ~ Margaret McNelis

My favorite moment of every residency is the Friday night slideshow. I’m always touched by the photos of students learning, writing, sharing, and enjoying each other’s company. The thoughtfulness and joy on everyone’s faces reflect the magic of residency. You can see the shift in photos taken early on in the week, to those taken toward the end. Friendships have been made. Confidences have grown. Dreams have been born. And cohort bonds have all become stronger. Plus, there’s always at least one cute alpaca pic. ~ Jo Knowles, Faculty

My family called my first week of residency, worried I’d careened off a mountain on my drive up after they didn’t hear from me for days. I told them I’d found my people. I couldn’t remember going to any other gathering where everyone else was just as passionate about the same thing as me. It just felt right. ~ Eric Beebe

The Mountain View is dead quiet at 4am. We walk the silent halls, my coffee cup is stained purple with red wine and his smells of cinnamon whiskey. We pause in front of a painting of hunting dogs.
“It’s weird how every floor has the same pictures,” I say.
“They’re not exactly the same,” he says. “The painting on the second floor has twelve dogs. This one has eleven.”
We rush down the stairs.
“See," I say, not sure if I'm victorious or disappointed. "Eleven." ~ Sarah Foil

When I think about the four residencies I attended, the thing that sticks out most vividly is the mornings: 28 in total. Leaning over to the personal-size coffee maker (that I brought to every Residency) on the nightstand, flicking it on, and slowly coming to and watching the light slink across the walls and ceiling while my favorite coffee from home-brewed, making my room smell like morning. Then, sipping the dark roast with a billow of half and half, gazing out the windows at the sunshine-yellow clapboards of the Mountain View Grand, and around the room, which I set up just how I like it, reviewing the day’s schedule. Each morning, the cusp of bringing new learning into my mind and spirit. Each morning, looking forward to strengthening friendships with other writers. Each morning, giving myself permission to take my writing as seriously as everyone else already did. ~ Shawna-Lee I. Perrin

My favorite memories from Residency all center on how we, as colleagues, pushed one another to continuously perfect our writing and to hone our work into stories that deserved to be read. One semester, after having my piece workshopped, a colleague approached me for a personal discussion of the work.
“How do you come up with such creepy material?” she asked.
“I have no idea,” I said. “But I’m glad it made you feel creeped out. It was supposed to.”
“I was creeped out,” she said, “but it was the wrong kind of creeped out. It was the I-don’t-want-to-read-this-anymore creeped out, not the wow-this-is-wrong-that-I-enjoy-this-stuff kind of creeped out. If you want to hold your readers’ attention, work on making your material more subtle and more complex.”
Every word I’ve written in the almost two years since have been filtered through this piece of advice. ~ John Will

One special pleasure was the peer workshop group I shared with Lydia Peele. It was a mix of nice personalities and uniformly strong manuscripts. All such workshops provide to their leaders a mix of don't-do-that and yes-do-this in the storytelling, and it was great fun, over and over again, to find so many beguiling examples of yes-do-this. ~ Richard Adam Carey, Faculty

I call the top moments in my life: "Patronus moments." It's lame and nerdy as hell, but I think of them whenever I'm really sad and I need the extra boost of remembering a better time. Expecto Patronum is actually Latin for "bring out my protector," so it felt appropriate both for me and the other characters in the Harry Potter universe. These moments include bid day in my sorority, when I got my littles, my time in Budapest, the Twenty One Pilots concert, Leadershape, and now: residency.
I'd cried for an hour when I first got the letter from Lisa telling me that I'd been accepted into the program. I don't have the words to explain the amount of shock and gratitude I felt, but I knew it was one of those rare moments where I'd get a taste of what it means to finish first. Residency exceeded any possible expectations I could've dreamed of and more. I'm surrounded by a group of wonderful, inspiring, dynamic people who all share a love of what matters most to me: writing. It's such a wonderful program, and I couldn't possibly praise it enough. At least I'll have the next two years to try. ~ Morgan Green

Every time I return home from a residency, I miss that insular feeling of being holed up 24/7 with other writers and lovers of books. I relish forgetting about the rest of the world, even as we think and write about our concerns for its fate. I love the deep immersion, the thinking and talking only about our craft. What a gift that is. And really, now that I've experienced it first as a student, then as faculty, I can say it is a necessity. ~ Amy Irvine, Faculty

Strangely, what I liked most and what I liked least about Residency are the same thing: Peer Review. It was painful. Being the newest of the bunch, I was scheduled at the end of the week, so I could get acclimated before entering “the box.” I’d come to the program because I needed help with my writing; I was stuck, but couldn’t figure out why. As I participated in my classmate’s peer reviews, something in my mind began to gel until I realized what I was stuck on. I write a great nonfiction landscape, but it’s just that—a landscape. It’s sterile and devoid of emotion because even though I’m in the story, I’m absent. I write around me rather than in me. When my turn in “the box” came, my mentors and peers were wonderful, and the overall theme was that my story was missing in my writing. I realized that either I needed to open up and expose myself and my family, or I needed to switch to fiction. I was overwhelmed with the fear of being vulnerable. When I came out of “the box,” I didn’t think anyone was more surprised than me when I started crying and couldn’t stop. It was a painful experience, but it was also a week of growth and insight. And as scary as it is, I’m sticking with nonfiction. ~ Debi St. Jeor

Amy Irvine-- It's the 50th anniversary of the first printing of Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire—the book that etched indelibly into the American imagination the fathomless ocean of red raw lands in southern Utah. For the occasion, I have been commissioned to write a work that takes measure of Abbey’s near-prophetic concerns. Writing in the early sixties as a backcountry ranger in Arches National Monument (it’s now a full-blown national park), the Pennsylvania-born anarchist already believed that population, industry, and tourism were unsustainable. In his words: “growth for the sake of growth is a cancerous madness.” But even Cactus Ed could not have imagined just how aggressive and malignant that cancer would become—that the latest presidential administration would eviscerate two of the nation’s newest national monuments (also in Utah), and turn the Department of Interior, which is mandated to preserve the wilderness character of such lands, into the Department of Industry.

It’s easy then, to don the shroud of Abbey’s misanthropy (“I’m a humanist; I’d rather kill a man than a snake.”), to embrace his privileged solitude in the wilderness. Indeed, a more acute case of Ivory Cabin Syndrome there never was. For Abbey writes about his solitude as if he didn’t have a wife and kids in the wings. And the name he coined for Arches? “Abbey’s Country.” As if he had forgotten that the whole place had been stolen once from the region’s Native Americans, and then again from Mexico.

But we live in a far more crowded world now, and we cannot afford to hate the whole of us. So I’m trying to write the thing that takes on Abbey’s sneering, bigoted individualism with a more inclusive and communal approach to defending public wildlands. Which isn’t easy, when you’re the kind of person who prefers scorpions and quicksand to family reunions and neighborhood potlucks.

But I’m trying.

Lydia Peelle-- Many years ago, a friend recommended The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp. Actually, that's not quite an accurate statement. When she heard I hadn't read it, said friend immediately put me in her car, drove me to the nearest bookstore, bought the book (in hardcover!), and handed it to me, saying, "I'm not going to tell you anything about it. Just, read it." How's that for a book recommendation? And I am forever grateful to my friend for literally putting this book in my hands, because it is one I turn to all the time.

Creative thinking, as Tharp reminds us, is no magical mystery. It is in fact a habit to be cultivated and sustained, and in this book Tharp shares the techniques, exercises, and rituals for creative work that she has developed in her long and successful career as a choreographer - techniques than any artist, working in any genre, can practice and benefit from. The ideas in this book are a wonderful reminder of mind-body oneness. And, they're fun! Here's one: get up out of your chair, step away from the writing desk, start moving your body and, and, as Tharp puts it, "Do a Verb." What will happen? Who knows! I love this book for the way it shakes up my "writer" brain, and I love to recommend it to other writers.

RESIDENCY RECOLLECTIONS

Faculty Picks: Abbey, Tharp