If you’ve ever fantasized about spending a month in a "cabin in the woods" to write, you're in luck.
As part of Cabin’s 1 year anniversary, Cabin's very own Roxine Kee will be hosting a monthlong writer's residency in the Texas Hill Country this summer. The four lucky writers will participate in a one month intensive IRL experience from July 1-28, 2022.
Think of this writer residency as an IRL forcing function to stop procrastinating, get unblocked, and finally get that writing project/s out the door (with feedback and editing help!).
The writers will work together in-person at Cabin's Neighborhood Zero location outside Austin to put in their 1k words a day, take rambling walks in the Texas Hill Country, and live The Writing Life ™️ as a scenius.
The residents will be living and working out of the 4-room Container in Cabin's location outside of Austin, Texas. There's high-speed internet, ensuite bathrooms (!), a SAUNA, and of course, bags and bags of Noowave coffee to help you slip into flow.
We’re doing this because we believe that writing isn't a single-player, solo endeavour. As Packy McCormick wrotee in his essay "Conjuring Scenius", our best writing happens in multiplayer mode with others.
“Patrons of The Eagle and Child wrote three of the five best-selling fantasy series of all-time within an eighteen year period - The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and The Chronicles of Narnia. It is here, on Tuesday mornings, that C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and the other members of The Inklings of Oxford met to read, discuss, and critique each other's work.
The Inklings were so impactful on Tolkien’s writing that he dedicated the first edition of The Lord of the Rings to them, writing, “What I owe to them all is incalculable,” and singled out Lewis in particular by saying, “only by his support and friendship did I ever struggle to the end.”
This is also our way of giving back to the writing community. The idea for Cabin came from a collective of creators known as The Creator Co-op, most of whom met online in the Twitter writing community.
Because of this, we are running this residency for free! If you're 1 of the lucky 4, you just have to get yourself to Austin and we'll take care of the rest. :)
Because of the intensive nature, we're only taking on 4 participants for the July residency. Here's how you can apply and catch our eye!
Write & share a thread on Twitter explaining who you are & your project for the month.
Tag @creatorcabins #DAOsummer22 in the first tweet
Confirm that you are: able to attend for the entire duration of the cohort, and able to focus on the residency program.
If you have any questions send us a DM @creatorcabins or email us at retreats@creatorcabins.com .
We want to nurture an apprenticeship and collective within Cabin's creative community. This is an experiment towards transforming Cabin's Media Guild into a social space where creators can hone their craft amidst peers and mentors.
We look forward to seeing your application!
What: Intensive writer’s residency
When: July 1-28, 2022
Where: Cabins in the Texas Hill Country (~45 min outside of Austin, TX)
Who: 4 writers
Cost: Free
Yes! We’re offering a month of accommodations at the Cabin for free. Apart from that, there are a few personal expenses you’ll need to shoulder during the month:
Getting yourself to Austin, TX. If you’re flying, we’ll take care of rides to and from the airport.
Food, groceries, and fun. We’ll do weekly grocery runs so that the residents can stock up. We’ll go out for meals a few times a week to try Austin’s food trucks, good ol’ Texas BBQ, and American delicacies like pizza. We might also go for a few rounds of mini golf and disc golf at Dreamland in Dripping Springs (among other shenanigans).
A rental car (optional). There’s plenty of free time, so if you plan on doing any solo excursions or drives outside of the scheduled residency, then we recommend renting a car.
Apart from these personal expenses, the accommodations, workshops, and the residency itself are free!
If you don’t count goodwill and lifelong friendships as “strings”, then no. There are no strings attached.
It’s not. This is what our community does. :)
You can read about our host Roxine’s own experience as a participant in a previous cohort of the residency. You can also learn more about other residencies we've run on the property, like our DAO operator residencies and our Cabin retreats program.
Previous creative residents have written screenplays, lyrics, longform essays, and blog posts. Here are 3 concrete projects you can start and finish within the month:
Challenge yourself to publish 1 blog post a day (this is what previous resident and incoming host Roxine did)
Write and publish 2 longform essays over the month, while receiving feedback and edits from the residents and the contributors of Cabin’s Media Guild.
Go through a writing course you’ve been meaning to take but never found the time for, like David Perell’s Write of Passage or Ship 30 for 30.
As long as you can finish the project by the end of the residency, we’d love to hear what you’ve been working on.
Once the residents have finalized their commitment, the host will organize workshops and speakers, depending on their needs. Here are some workshop ideas the Cabin hosting team has thrown around:
How to distribute and promote your writing without doing 2x the work
How to publish quality work consistently, without burning out
How to interview, research, and write like an investigative journalist
How to use research and data to strengthen your writing and make your case
How to produce a first draft in 2 hours or less (consistently)
The residency will be as intensive or laid back as the participants want. The host and Cabin will find a happy medium for everyone!
Of course! Most of us can only write for a maximum of 4 hours a day. Even with a few workshops scheduled during the week, this leaves a lot of time for trailbuilding, building campfires, hiking, chasing waterfalls, and gazing at stars as a group.
If you choose to rent a car during your stay, you’re also free to take off on your own to write in a quiet café in Dripping Springs, climb the Enchanted Rock in Fredericksburg, or enjoy the white noise in the Central Public Library in Austin.
We recommend participants focus full-time on the residency for best results. But if you have a (remote) job and you can still be present and put in your 60-90 min of writing per day, then by all means still apply!
Bottomline: Just apply! If you’re accepted, then we’ll work out the details with you.
While we’d prefer that residents be making the transition from web2 to web3, we’re prioritizing commitment to the craft over what you write about.
Again, just apply! We’re mainly looking for committed writers with a clear definition of done for their project.
Our ultimate objective is to help those writers get to that stage by the end of the month.
Jonathan Hillis
