This residency feels rather different than those in the past because I've come with a deadline. I've promised to deliver the revised manuscript just a week from today. I've been working on the revisions for the last three and a half weeks.
But suddenly I am panicked by the big calendar on my wall where I'm counting down the days--so many x's! The truth is: I have every single hour of every single day between now and then to write, but I can't write all day. I show up at my studio desk usually by 7am or 8am, and I tether myself to the chair, but then the good writing--the stuff that works--it comes in fits and starts. In the meanwhile, I have read, cut my split ends one at a time, stared out the window, killed many bugs, taken my morning and evening vitamins, taken secret naps. (No surfing because no internet.) Yesterday, I had to leave my desk--I walked only as far as the road, and realized I hadn't walked farther than the big house the whole time I've been here. I hadn't experienced the sky! I was rewarded with a beautiful sunset and then inspiration for a section that had confounded me. Sky, that's the key, it takes off the lid. It makes the words take off.
