The Worst Advice I Got in My (First) MFA, and More True Things About Writing

Plus Writing Residency Rejections and

You’re reading The Caffeinated Writer, where you will find articles on writing and publishing. Today I’m introducing a new section, Spilled Beans, where I say the things I normally only say after a drink or two in the Mission. Paid subscribers can listen to this post here.

I opened my email yesterday to discover that I’d been rejected from a particular writer’s residency program in the wilds of New Hampshire for the third time. Possibly the fourth. I first applied more than twenty years ago, when I had only published a few short stories in literary magazines, then again after I’d published my first story collection, then again (I think) after I’d published my second book. Then I got busy and had a baby and wrote some more books and forgot about writing residencies. Then the child went to college and the house was lonely and time opened up for the first time in eighteen years. So I applied again, and that’s how we get to where we are now, like that gorgeous song Mildenhall (If I ever do a list of my 10 favorite songs, “Mildenhall” will be on it).

Pretty much every writer I’ve ever known has been to this particular residency program, which may or may not rhyme with MacDowell. Every time you run into a writer acquaintance at a bar, or somebody who just finished their MFA yesterday, or somebody who just won a major literary prize, or somebody who is shopping around their chapbook about cicadas, they’re like, “I just got back from That Residency in the Wilds of New Hampshire, the one with the picnic baskets.”

The form rejection said, “We hope that this news will not discourage you from applying to The Residency That May or May Not Rhyme with MacDowell again after two years’ time.” I can’t be certain, but I think this rejection letter is nearly identical to the first rejection letter I received from them a quarter century ago, except that, as of 2020, they no longer use the word “colony,” and of course, this one came by email instead of in a SASE. You have to admire the consistency. Fortunately, last month I received news that I’d been accepted to a writing residency in Latvia, which is more my style anyhoo.

(It’s like that Lemonheads song: I lied about being the outdoor type. Cabins in the woods make me feel like I’m in an M. Night Shaymalan movie. I once did a residency at Hedgebrook on Whidbey Island, which is amazing, and which also has picnic baskets, but at night in my cabin in the woods I slept poorly; I kept thinking someone was trying to get in. I once did a writing residency at the Millay Colony, where we lived in a barn, but we all lived there together, so it wasn’t the least bit scary, except that time we saw a bear on the lawn when we were walking back from dinner in the main house.)