Colony Westward Ho

I keep telling my friends how great my experience at MacDowell was and how I wish I'd known about colonies years ago. And I've presently applied to four - Jentel, Ucross, Yaddo and VCCA. Two of them are in Wyoming, hence the title of this post, and I have high hopes since I would dearly love to spend a month this summer out west.

But the point of this blog is something that hit me when I was encouraging my friend Jennifer to apply to a colony. I was giving her the obvious reasons - uninterrupted time to work, the chance to meet other artists, a sort of geographically-induced focus - when it hit me that I am always slow to confess the thing about colonies that mattered the most to me. I was respected there. The colony formed a boundary around me and the real world and the tenacity with which they held that boundary showed me that I should do this for myself, that I should value my time as much as MacDowell does, that should take my work (even my unformed work) as seriously as they did.

Bottom line is that being in a colony made me feel the way I thought being published would make me feel. It sounds ridiculous but on some very sub-sub-subconscious level I think I thought getting an agent and selling the book would be more like crossing a personal Rubicon. I assumed it would make a bigger impact on my life, maybe even be a life-changing event, and that even if publication didn't leave me richer or more famous or much successful in some societially-recognized way that I would feel different inside. That didn't happen and I pushed the disappointment down. (Not too far down, as my friends would attest - it kept popping up like a beach ball in a pool.) But I did try to push it down.

Ten months later I went to MacDowell. I wasn't expecting much beyond time and I was grateful for that. But when I got not just the time but the sort of emotional boost I hadn't gotten the winter before it took me a couple of weeks to even realize what was happening. I'll say it again - being in a colony made me feel like I thought getting published would feel. It made me feel like a real writer.

I'm sure a more dedicated artist and a better person wouldn't need any outside support at all. Yeah, right. We all need support and that might be the single greatest thing a colony gives us. Right now I am waiting to see if any of the four come through for summer. I have a book that needs focus. And I have emotional well which, while not bottomless, does need to be replenished periodically. So wish me luck. And if you're reading this, apply somewhere. It's one of the few things you can do to take your creative fate into your own hands.