Ragdale and Re-entry into the "Real World"

By S. Kirk Walsh, writer

The first time I returned to the “real world” from Ragdale was in April 1999. It was my first experience at an artist residency program, and I traveled home to New York City in a state of that post-Ragdale bliss and in awe of my fourteen days in Lake Forest, Illinois.

Never had I had experienced such a nurturing creative environment in my life. At the time, I had recently graduated from a creative writing program, but “nurturing” certainly wouldn’t be the first word that would come to mind when describing that experience. (Challenging and instructive, yes.) At Ragdale, I felt supported—and surrounded—by a group of like-minded people for the first time.

Once, I remembered taking an afternoon walk in the prairie, and a fellow writer, Frances Maclean, joined me on one of the wood benches. We talked about my favorite current novel, “The Waves,” by Virginia Woolf, which continues to be in my top five, and how life at Ragdale compared to life back at home. She asked me how many hours I was writing per day during my residency. I answered, about six or seven hours. And she said, “You know, when you get home, you won’t be able to do that. During regular life, it’s only possible for most people to write four hours per day. It becomes too exhausting.” I agreed with her, saying that even four hours was a lot back in the real world. But somewhere in the back of my head, I thought, “I’m gonna work at home, the way I work at Ragdale.”

As soon as I returned to NYC, I quickly forgot Frances’ wise words. I became both disappointed and frustrated. Why couldn’t I recreate the simple conditions at Ragdale during my life in New York City? I didn’t want to return phone calls to friends. Shopping for groceries and making dinner became a tiresome burden. And then there were those clear-windowed envelopes that appeared in the mail every week or so. Indeed, I had difficulty negotiating the real world, to put it mildly.

After one or two more residencies, I began to understand the re-entry process, and how Ragdale figured into my “real world” experience as a fiction writer. Chicago-based artist Olivia Petrides explained it succinctly to me one night over dinner. “I think of my residency as a way to recharge for the entire year,” she said. “Everything that I work on here during my stay informs my work for the rest of year.”

This approach felt right to me. The creative productivity that I experience at Ragdale is unlike anything I experience in my real life. As Frances said several years ago, it is impossible to replicate it. But, it has become true for me over the years, the work that I generate during a residency sustains—and recharges—me throughout the year. For example, during my most recent residency in November 2006, I completed a very rough draft of a new novel. During my stay, I had the opportunity and space to spread out with my characters and take in the bigger picture of the narrative. Since returning home (now in Austin, Texas), I have been methodically trudging away at revising one chapter at a time, doing my best to work everyday. But indeed, the demands of my life don’t always allow this. I have learned to trust the ebbs and flows of my creative life, knowing that my time at Ragdale is a significant part of that experience.

Another way I bring Ragdale home with me is to stay connected with my Ragdale friends. I have been fortunate to meet many talented artists at Ragdale; some of them I have been friends with for almost ten years. When I open an email or receive a phone call from a Ragdale friend, I feel like I’m tapping into that nurturing community that supports my creative self in ways that I never imagined possible.