Reading this essay about writing retreats and Heather’s posts about her ongoing writing residency at the Banff Centre…I have to say, I’m more than a tiny bit jealous.
Man, I wish Steve Martin had helped pay for my high school’s plays!
Okay, that’s not entirely true. I never actually went to any of my high school’s plays. I did see some really decent productions of Grease and Damn Yankees when I was in junior high, though.
Seriously, the head of the (elected) Republican party doesn’t even know why Greenland is called Greenland. This goes beyond the global warming debate; this is fifth grade social studies he’s failing there.
I gleaned some very good advice from the two writing bigwigs I had dinner with (the Banff Centre helped to set it up for me – another reason I am indebted to them). Their take on writing and working was that it could be done, but that you couldn’t expect to have a very full social life as well. Writing and everything else – not so very possible without shirking something…giving up television, for example, or evening workouts at the gym, or dating.
They did also suggest trying to find ways to ‘buy time.’ Negotiating a sabbatical or banking time off and taking a few weeks in a row for writing, and going an arts centre or a writing retreat of some kind.
It was a bit of relief to hear it. I’ve always suspected that it’s possible to write and work full-time, but to hear it from people with sixty or so years of writing careers between them…made it seem a little more possible.
So it’s just as well that I’ve got all those cats. Evidently there’s an excuse for my lack of a social life. 🙂
I think, like all things, it’s about finding a balance — finding time and sacrificing other pursuits, but stopping short of becoming a complete recluse.
Or wearing Kleenex boxes for shoes, a la Howard Hughes. That should be the stop-short point: would Howard Hughes do this? Yes? Then no. Don’t do.
Exactly. Even noted recluse Thomas Pynchon has a family, friends, a life.
I gleaned some very good advice from the two writing bigwigs I had dinner with (the Banff Centre helped to set it up for me – another reason I am indebted to them). Their take on writing and working was that it could be done, but that you couldn’t expect to have a very full social life as well. Writing and everything else – not so very possible without shirking something…giving up television, for example, or evening workouts at the gym, or dating.
They did also suggest trying to find ways to ‘buy time.’ Negotiating a sabbatical or banking time off and taking a few weeks in a row for writing, and going an arts centre or a writing retreat of some kind.
It was a bit of relief to hear it. I’ve always suspected that it’s possible to write and work full-time, but to hear it from people with sixty or so years of writing careers between them…made it seem a little more possible.
So it’s just as well that I’ve got all those cats. Evidently there’s an excuse for my lack of a social life. 🙂
I think, like all things, it’s about finding a balance — finding time and sacrificing other pursuits, but stopping short of becoming a complete recluse.
Or wearing Kleenex boxes for shoes, a la Howard Hughes. That should be the stop-short point: would Howard Hughes do this? Yes? Then no. Don’t do.
Exactly. Even noted recluse Thomas Pynchon has a family, friends, a life.