Notes From Writer Summer Camp

Camp was very entertaining / Yes, the mattresses weren't great but who's complaining

Hi! Do you remember the last time we spoke and I was freaking out about going to the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop? Well, I got back a month ago, which means I’m just about due to write an earnest, overwrought post about it! If you want the TL;DR, it was amazing, like literally life-changing and I do not use that word lightly (okay fine, I do often use that word lightly, mainly about dip manicures or whatever, but in this case I am not. It really was life changing!) If you do not want the TL;DR, and instead want to hear why it was so amazing, boy do I have a lot of words for you!

Here’s a picture of my incredible fiction workshop group, the people with whom I spent many, many hours every day sitting in a semi-circle in chairs with little desks attached to them, and to whom I entrusted my most vulnerable work. Unclear why I appear to have no hands here.

The Kenyon Review Writers Workshop is different from other juried writing conferences—that is, ones you have to apply to and be accepted into—because its main focus is on helping you generate new work. Everything is set up meticulously to help you have a productive, generative, fun week with a bunch of people who have all come to do the same thing.

Every morning, for a week, we’d have workshop from 8:30am until 12pm, and at the end of workshop, our instructor would give us a writing prompt. Then we’d have until 8:30am the next day to write a single-spaced page in response to this prompt and print out twelve copies of it for the class. During workshop, each person would pass out their copies, read their work out loud—terrifying at the beginning of the week, old hat by the end—and everyone else would discuss it, offering feedback and suggestions. And then the whole process would begin again! Six intense days of this meant I wrote six different pieces—some intended to be part of my novel, some standalone pieces, and some beginnings of short stories—which was more productive, writing-wise, than I have been in a very long time.

Here is a twee little picture I took in the library on the first day, after I sat down to do my first assignment but before I realized that the spartan wooden chairs were not made to be sat on for more than three consecutive minutes and henceforth did all my writing in my room.

Here is another twee little picture I took in my room. Please feel free to make fun of the WEEDS I picked and placed in a makeshift vase in a sad attempt to prettify my desk. You may also make fun of the oil diffuser I brought because I knew I couldn’t burn a candle on campus but also couldn’t be 100% certain it wouldn’t smell of undergraduate feet. You may not make fun of the Trader Joe’s chocolate mints I brought for an in-room snack because those were a solid choice.

As for the campus itself, it was as beautiful as everyone said it would be. Look at the adorable bookstore!

This bookstore was open all the time and it sold everything. I came to treasure my evening ritual of wandering aimlessly around in here, with my friend Amy, deciding which flavor La Croix or bag of Haribo gummies to purchase. One night, I bought a microwave burrito and ate it at the desk in my room at midnight while I typed frantically with one hand in order to make the deadline for class the next day, and I was like wow, fellas, I sure am living the old college life! Honestly, nothing has ever made me feel younger.

Here is the dining room, which is giving “British boarding school” way more than the actual British boarding school I went to:

Here is the most amazing part of the dining hall, a cold brew machine that dispensed an unlimited quantity of free cold brew. What a time to be alive!

Here is the very pretty path I walked many times a day, from my room to my classroom and all over campus. It’s called Middle Path but I literally could not ever remember this name, despite it being the most basic and obvious name ever, and kept calling it Long Path and Main Path and Middle Walk and all kinds of other things that were not right.

There was also a lacrosse camp for teenage boys happening at Kenyon at the same time as the writing conference, and you have honestly never seen two more different groups of people walking along Middle Path at all hours of the day, it was amazing. Like, not to stereotype, but if there was a Venn diagram for people who voluntarily attend a writing conference and people who voluntarily attend a lacrosse camp, I feel like it would just be two empty circles next to each other.

[Okay, here’s where it’s going to get overwrought and earnest; don’t say I didn’t warn you!]

It’s hard to put into words why this experience was so incredible for me and I don’t want to sound gross and mushy when I do. But I think the main thing is that it was just really validating. By which I mean: I felt like a writer while I was there. It’s intimidating to go to something like this when you don’t have an MFA and you haven’t been published in any literary journals, and yet I never once felt looked down upon or out of my depth. I just felt supported and encouraged—not in a patronizing way, just in a “we’re all in this together” sort of way. I hesitate to use the c-word (uh, community) because it’s slightly cringe, but I really did feel a huge sense of community there, and I made friends that I hope I will continue to be friends with for a long time. It was like summer camp, but if everyone at summer camp has very strong opinions on Garamond versus Times New Roman.

The other reason it was so amazing was that it was so freeing. All I had to do, for the whole entire week, was write! Everything else had been either removed from the equation (children, work, errands) or taken care of by someone else (meals, coffee, the general shape of the day). As a person who feels constantly overwhelmed and overscheduled—who feels, as it were, at capacity—I cannot state how relaxing this week felt, even as it was super intense, even as I had to produce an entire page of decent writing in just a few hours every single day.

Because that was all I had to do! Every day after workshop ended, I had this sense of, like wait, hold up, I have this entire afternoon to myself? And all you want in return is a thousand words that I can write in my air-conditioned room with my sad little water bottle of weeds on my desk, sipping my free cold brew, wondering idly whether I’m going to choose gummy bears or gummy frogs tonight on my perambulation around the bookstore? Nobody needs me to return their email? Nobody needs me to figure out what we’re having for dinner? Nobody needs me to drive them anywhere?

None of these people needed me to drive them anywhere!

Anyway, my week at Kenyon was inspiring and eye-opening and supremely productive, and I feel so lucky to have been a part of it. What a gift it was, truly. Even while it was happening, I was sad that it was going to end. And now that it has ended, I’m trying to carry the momentum I built up there into the rest of my writing. I’m also not not researching industrial-size cold-brew dispensers I can have installed right next to my desk.