Dispatch from Vermont Studio Center

view of the kahn studios from my vsc studio at night

11:21pm. 11 degrees Faranheit, windchill of 3 degrees. From inside my writing studio I can hear the wind whooshing and whistling through this valley. The river froze over a few days ago, and I suspect it will stay that way until I leave. I've been here at Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT, since January 5, and the river, which I can watch from my studio window, has been a constant companion and fascination. We've had a polar vortex and a thaw and another vortex, and the river has slowed and quickened, melted and hardened, flowed and frosted. This river, called the Gihon, is quite small. I suppose it's not much bigger than some streams, but it's made for an engaging view. I love that it keeps changing. I had no idea I could come to feel so deeply connected to a river. I'm more of an ocean girl, you know, but I've been pleasantly surprised to find myself so enamored of another body of water.

Yellow light spills out of the windows of an artist's studio in a building across the river, making patterns of tree shadow on snow. I can see the smaller branches waving in the wind, and the larger ones start to bow when the wind reaches a whistle pitch. The artist in the studio across the way has painted the walls yellow and filled one wall with a huge red and white paper creature, a serpentine design that reminds me of a Chinese New Year's dragon from here. I watched it take shape over the last few weeks, and now I'm watching it change shape. She must be dismantling or rearranging it. It seems to change at least a little bit every few days, like the river.

After tonight, I have only four more full days here. Before I arrived, a month felt like a long time to be at an artists and writers colony. I wondered if I should have signed up for two weeks instead. Now I'm wishing I had another week or two here. I've written and done good work during this month, but I wish I could do more. Still, I keep reminding myself that the end of this month and the end of this writing residency doesn't mean the end of my writing life. It feels, in many ways, like just the beginning of its next phase.

{p.s. I've been posting lots of photos from my adventures here over on Instagram. You can follow me (thewordcellar) or see my photos online.}

{p.p.s. I haven't made a Big Official Announcement yet, but if you're read this far, I'll let you in on something: Registration for the next session of Write into the Heart of Your Story is open! This 2-week online course will run Feb. 14-28, and it's all about moving your writing beyond "what happened" and into "what matters." And at $29, it's kind of a steal, if I do say so myself!}

January Thaw (a prose poem)

river through the window screen

In between writing and revising essays during my month here at Vermont Studio Center, I've been writing little prose-poemish nuggets. Here's one I wrote last week.

January Thaw

The river has a false bottom made of ice. It looks murky brown, like semi-solid silt, as though you could stand on it, the icy water around your calves. But the submerged ice would give way as you tried to put your foot down. Down you'd go, to your hips, your shoulders, your ears. Maybe deeper. I don't know how to gauge depth from the surface. Not many of us do. This is why we assume or argue, why we end up in over our heads. When the river freezes and snow falls, it's hard to see where the banks end and where the water begins. It's a different story over on the other side of the bridge: fast moving falls and huge sheets of ice a foot thick wedged atop ice chunks, like a continental shelf washed upon cold boulders. Over there, there's no mistaking the danger.

Writing Process Revealed

red mill, vermont studio center

I've been at Vermont Studio Center for one week as of today, which means that I'm one-quarter of the way through my writing residency. I'm not writing tons of words each day, but I am writing so very much more than I have been for a long time. I'm starting to sink into my writing life again, and I'm happy about that. The other day I felt fairly glum about a new piece I was working on, until I realized that I had simply hit a slump that shows up in my process.

This new essay, like many that I write, started with a confluence of a visual and a sentence. (In this case, the view out my studio window and the line, "The statue is closer today.") From there, I was hooked into a general landscape and some meanderings thoughts about what it evokes. I immediately sensed some metaphors that might crystallize, but I was careful to not hold too tightly to them too early, since they might morph along the way.

I wrote a bit about what I saw and thought, and then I did some research about the local landscape. This led me to additional research about the names of things, other local landscape features, and so on down the rabbit hole. As I gather all of this information, I sense connections and a resonance among all the pieces, but I'm still not sure how it's all going to fit together.

Then I went back to the writing and started adding in bits from my research. At this point, I hit the boring and cumbersome phase of the essay. It's at this point -- when I have a bunch of information and some half-formed thoughts about what that information means -- that I'm often tempted to give up. This is the phase of writing when I am sure nothing will come of it.

But this week I realized what's happening on a deeper level during this boring and cumbersome phase: I'm integrating the information I learned in my research into my mental foundation. I'm taking facts and weaving them into my own personal knowledge base. Part of the way I integrate these into my mind is by taking notes (during research) and then writing really boring paragraphs that paraphrase what I've just learned.

Realizing what was happening at this part of the process has been a revelation to me. It helped me to realize that I'm not failing or coming up against a wall. Instead, I'm simply integrating new information into my knowledge bank. And once I have that new data in place, I can use it to write something much more interesting and evocative.

So what I did this time was leave my Word document full of boring research-driven statements, and switch over to Ommwriter to start a new draft of the essay, one that uses my new understanding and begins to build an atmosphere and experience around my original visual and sentence.

In between writing, I've been doing more research, taking notes on this and that, all of which might join the essay. Very likely, I'll research stuff I don't need, and very likely, my first draft will include stuff (facts, thoughts, descriptions, and metaphors) that don't end up in the final draft -- or they might end up in there in drastically different forms.

I've heard painters say that every piece goes through an ugly phase. The ugly phase in my essay-making process can be disheartening. But seeing the process for what it is -- a process with different components and phases -- is helping me to move through the ugly phase and beyond it.

I can see now that this process (initial visual and idea; first bits of writing; research; integration; deeper writing; more research and integration; deeper writing, etc.) is how I've written most of the essays in the collection I've been working on for a few years now. I'm not sure why the process finally took shape and revealed itself to me, but I'm glad that it has. It will now be interesting to notice if this process holds, or if it changes for future essays.

Recalibrate & Create

my studio space at vsc

There's a frozen river outside my window, but inside I'm toasty warm and aglow with possibility. Today was the first full day of a month-long writing residency at Vermont Studio Center. I allowed myself to ease in. This morning I wrote a few email messages, some social media updates, and several journal pages. After lunch I dozed off in the faded hunter green wingback chair next to the floor to ceiling window that overlooks the river. I thought maybe the day was a lost cause for writing, but after my mini-nap I felt a blessed clarity and animation of the mind, and I wrote 1,052 words of something new. They might be the start of a short series, or they might just have been some warm-up exercises. Either way is fine by me. I haven't been writing much for many months, and this time is an amazing opportunity to sink into stillness, to listen for the stories that want me to tell them, to tend to nothing but my own personal needs and my work. I am not taking this gift lightly, no-siree-bob.

Last night, during the welcome dinner, one of VSC's founders gently prodded us all to abandon the struggling artist motif, should it arise while we're here. He said (and I paraphrase): There are 7 billion people on this planet, and the vast majority of them don't care about what you're doing here. And given that half of them are struggling to have enough food and water and to stay safe from all manner of war and dangers, having three meals a day and a studio space to work in a safe place is a pretty good deal. So if you start to judge yourself or your work harshly, take a step back and recalibrate.

I think this whole experience is going to recalibrate me.