In many cases, that strange magic of the in-between, combined with the intimacy of submerging so fully in an artist’s material life, seems to affect residents in unexpected ways. Writers frequently report newfound clarity and insight, as well as productivity that takes surprising forms.
At Hemingway-Pfeiffer, residents “seem surprised a lot of times by how rewarding that workshop is,” Long says. At Millay Arts, Nicholas finds it “fun to watch people coming in who have a set objective of what they want to accomplish from their time here, but they end up having paradigm shifts.”
And despite Choi’s discomfort with her surroundings at the McCullers Center, her experience there figures significantly in The Wanderer’s Curse, forthcoming in 2025 from W. W. Norton. Before she arrived a friend advised her to be gentle with herself and flexible about the idea of how working there might look. “Reading is something; sitting there is something,” the friend told her, adding, “What comes from it all might not be what you expect.”
Seven years later, the little details and offhand observations Choi began writing down in an attempt to record the textures of her experience at the house—one favorite example is the industrial carpet mailers that arrived addressed to “Mr. Carston McCuller”—have taken on greater weight. With enough hindsight those notes became an essential resource, a contemporaneous reflection of what “ended up being incredibly crucial and actually a significant turning point in my life,” she says.
Spaide similarly struggled with productivity anxiety before his stay at the Merrill House. But once he arrived, it became clear that the exploration of Merrill’s belongings was the work—that “sifting through his board game collection and looking at his fancy wooden dominoes gave me important information,” he says. With that approach in mind, watching sunrises or sunsets through the apartment windows as Merrill once did, finding unexpected annotations in his books, and daydreaming at his desk behind that remarkable hinged bookcase became just as worthwhile as sketching out new poems or essays. “It was incredibly productive and enlightening, and I hope to never forget what I learned there,” he adds, “and I hardly wrote anything.” {read}