Postcards from Creative Residency

Textures from the week.

Trillium season is just around the corner, which means it’s a good time to commit to being a trilliumaire // What We Bring to the Table writing workshop with Kerri Anne starts next week. Sign up here.

Hello friends,

I’ve been at a creative residency this past week. Hosted by friends, the idea is fairly simple: we work on our projects over the day, gather together for communal dinner in the evening, then share what we’ve been working on, getting input and brainstorms from everyone else.

I am quick to forget how essential it is for your creative work to get this kind of feedback. It’s not that I don’t want it, or don’t think it’s important. I’m just bad at prioritizing it. So often it’s just easier to put your head down, crank away on your own, not ask for help. In those moments of working through an idea or a concept with someone else—the ones that get you to a new place you hadn’t expected or planned for—I am reminded of how much we need this collective creative web. The independent mindset really doesn’t serve us.

I love being around other artists and writers deep in their own projects. That energy is infectious. It feels radical to all be dedicating ourselves to making things, to bringing things into this world.

I haven’t looked at email all week, or much of the news. I keep thinking about how easy it is to fill our headspace with all of those things instead of our art, tell ourselves that somehow it’s more important. Perhaps because we’re always struggling against that nagging suspicion that art is somehow indulgent, not as necessary as all the rest. We’ve heard this message from society for so long, that even if we know it’s not true, it requires continual unpacking. Burn it with fire horse energy I say.

What I feel this week is a kind of realignment, more focused, more present. These last few days have slowed me down, given me permission to push the rest of the world aside for a bit, work on my book in a much deeper way than I usually feel is possible. Writing is thinking, and if you need to think you really do need the space and time to do so.

No links or anything this week, because I really have been diligent about taking some time offline. But I thought I would share some snippets from the week with you, the little things that caught my eye as I focused my attention to what was right in front of me. Little postcards from residency…

We celebrated the lunar new year together and I made a papercut for the table. The only visual work I made all week!

The water. Always the water and the daily morning swims taken with a good friend.

I spotted the first nettle of the season.

And an emerging rhododendron. The snowpack is incredibly low this year, it has been mild and dry. When I left my house last week, the daffodils were just starting to poke out. Too early. Too early. It all feels off. I try not freak out about it.

The golden light of afternoon sun shining through what I always like to call “a forest chandelier.”

Little trumpety lichens on a piece of driftwood. I like how they look like a little community gathering.

Daily routine. The feeling I always want to be able to bottle up and take with me through the rest of the day.

Thank you as always for being here. Keep making whatever you are making. It’s time well spent.

-Anna

ps: don’t forget that 100 #The100DayProject Newsletter starts tomorrow. Anyone participating? I guess I am making a personal commitment to at least start. Will report back next week.

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