VCCA and other Residencies Wiki

I’m currently at VCCA (The Virginia Center for Creative Arts) in Amherst, Virginia, working on my second novel and a couple of short stories. The idea of a residency is to allow writers (and other artists) to take a break from their everyday responsibilities and focus on their creative work for a concentrated period of time. This works extremely well, except for the wireless internet. The other day when I was not getting anywhere on my novel I realized I was wasting a lot of time online. Then I decided, since I wasn’t getting anything done anyway, I would create a wiki for writing residencies.

A wiki (like wikipedia) is a crowdsourced information repository–a website that can be edited by anyone. If you’ve ever been to a residency, please add your .02 to the listings there. There’s also a discussion page for each residency program, in case you want to start an argument.

Writers’ Residencies Wiki

 

James River Writers’ Conference 2011

Spent today at James River Writers’ Conference. Highlights:

  • First page critiques with literary agents Michelle Brower, April Eberhardt, and Becca Stumpf
  • Short story panel with Leona Wisoker, Michael Parker and Belle Boggs
  • Imagery and language panel with Kathleen Graber, Lucia St. Clair Robson and Irene Ziegler
  • State of the industry talk by agent April Eberhardt

I will try to find time this week to report more fully about what I learned from these panels. Looking forward to day 2.

I’m staying away from the silent auction. Last time I was near one I discovered that alcohol causes reckless bidding.