More on how to write a divorce anti-tragedy
Red State Blue Balls #24
Today’s post builds on last week’s, so you might want to read that first:
I spent the first week of August in a writing workshop at the Fine Arts Work Center (FAWC) in Provincetown. I’d never been to Cape Cod before, but I felt right at home my first day there. Having grown up vacationing in seaside towns all along Florida’s coastline, from Panama City in the Panhandle to Sanibel and Captiva in the Gulf to my grandparents’ house in New Smyrna Beach, I know my way around a beach town, and P-town, for all its northernness, is a beach town.
Provincetown is known for its robust and overlapping gay and artistic communities. Alongside museums, galleries, studios, street artists, and drag shows, FAWC is a pillar of P-town’s artistic ecosystem. The center hosts seven-month residencies for writers and visual artists from fall to spring and week-long workshops throughout the summer. My workshop, led by poet, memoirist, and photographer Abeer Hoque, was on writing a personal statement (sometimes called an artist statement or statement of purpose), a common component of applications for grants, residencies, and MFA programs.
In general, words aren’t hard for me to find. This has been the case with both with my first book and my current memoir project. While sometimes I don’t want to write, it’s never because I can’t write. I’ve never really had writer’s block.
It’s a different story with these application statements, though. Writing about writing: that’s hard for me. I hoped Abeer’s workshop would help me break through. By the end of the week I wanted a draft of something I could use for applications to programs that would give me time and space to finish my memoir.