Greetings from Lavigny, Switzerland where I am slowly roasting alive along with the rest of Europe. OK, that’s a bit dramatic. We are not as bad as other places – Paris and London have been quite dire – but we have routinely had 90-plus degree days with nights only going down to around mid-70s.

Luckily, the chateau has very thick walls which do retain the cool, somewhat. I’ve learned to close my shutters and drapes during the day and then throw it all open through the night. Plus plenty of cold showers and one rather anemic fan doing its best.

No one should feel at all bad for me. It’s been an amazing June here, hard to believe I only have a few days left, it feels like I just arrived. I’ve been blessed with an absolutely terrific cohort of international writers. (I’m the only Yank.) I’ve heard stories from others about how easily a residency can be ruined by one unpleasant guest. I’ve been very lucky so far, unless, of course, the unpleasant guest is me. (It’s that great line from Rounders: If you can’t spot the sucker at the table, he’s you.)

Here’s a picture of us from a local newspaper profile. (I told them it looks like the publicity photo for a new crimefighting drama. CSI Suisse!)

We meet for an apéro in the garden every evening at 6:30 with our wonderful Director Sophie Kandaouroff, to talk about the day’s labors or movies or books or publishing trash talk. (Yes, they do that abroad as well.) Sometimes we troubleshoot one another’s writing problems. We even talked about the big Swiss referendum, which was defeated during our stay. We have writers here from Switzerland, Ireland, and France and our cocktail hour bounces freely from French to English. I’m struck by how hyphenated these European writers are – they all work in many streams: non-fiction, fiction, film, journalism, translation. Whereas I am a lowly hedgehog among the foxes, working away on the novel. (My favorite part of these gatherings is when we are all swapping our reading recommendations. I leave with an overflowing list of new things to check out.)

The house is quite special. It has a great history, having belonged to one of the great German language publishers of the 20^th century. You can (and should) read about him here. I’m told that Nabokov was a frequent guest and stayed in my room, aptly named:

And last Sunday, we had our public salon, where we each read for about ten minutes to a nice audience spanning Geneva to Lausanne. (Lavigny is kind of in between, on the shores of Lake Geneva.) You can find them all in the Chateau de Lavigny Instagram and YouTube accounts, but here is my (slightly nervous) reading.

In these closing days, I have been comparing this experience to my March trip to Maison Dora Maar in Menérbes, thinking about things that both had in common versus the way they differ; and thinking about the path my work has taken in both places.

In France, we were a tight little unit of three, all Americans (just by chance). We spent rather a lot of time together, had frequent daytrips to surrounding villages. Here, we are a group of five (we started out as six but one of our number stayed only two weeks) and I have traveled around a lot less. This is partly due to the brutal heat wave which more or less confines me to my room; but it is also due to the enormous progress I’ve made and momentum I’ve built.

I came to France in March with about ten pages written. I was truly at the beginning. I set a daily goal of 1,000 words, minus Sunday, which I hit and often exceeded. As is my way, I fell into a daily routine – rise early, coffee in the house, walk through town to feel the sun, stop in the local for second coffee and research, and then finally to work, usually reaching my goal by lunchtime, which left the afternoons open. Sometimes I wrote more, sometimes I did research, sometimes we just went out. 

It was a critical time because I was trying to find the voice of the book; and once I had that, I needed to learn about my characters. My first drafts are written in hodge podge fashion, not at all sequentially. I’m like a magpie, hopping and just writing whatever catches my fancy that day. But I left with about 30,000 words, four reasonably clear POV characters, and something that felt like a foundation. No order yet, no linear narrative, I knew that would come.

I’m a Scrivener user, as many of you are, and my binder view might look something like this:

 It just functions as a bucket into which I dump all my ideas.

I knew coming into this residency that I wanted to maintain my 1,000 words a day but also need to sort out the structure of novel so I could begin to shape the 30,000 words I already had. I mostly followed my daily routine from March, though I added in an afternoon time block to think about structure. That took the form of large post-its all along my room’s walls, maps and pictures and interim printouts; and around the middle of the second week, I had my hands around it. Rough, to be sure, a rickety bridge that one crosses at their own risk; but enough to continue building the rest of the story around. So my file began to look something like this: 

I have four days before I have to leave this marvelous place. I’ve got about 20,000 words so far and plan to have another 6,000 before I depart, so I will come home close to 60,000 words in hand. Then it’s a long stretch until my next and last 2026 residency in November but I will not be letting up off the gas. I had originally anticipated I would finish a first draft there; but given the clarity and momentum I now have, I imagine I will arrive there with a full draft.

I always tell my students to celebrate every milestone along the way. Yesterday, I finished a draft of part one (of four), about 95 pages. It was a thrilling feeling to move from the chaotic creation of the first residency to a more purposeful path in the second.

These residencies have been a gift, and I am pretty humbled by all the support I have received, as well as the new friendships that will certainly continue past these months together. I can’t say I have fully shaken off the old imposter syndrome; and I have my weekly crisis of confidence about this novel’s prospects. But as the clock winds down, my main feelings are of gratitude and excitement for the next steps.

Stay cool, stay safe, stay sane. Keep writing and do let me know how it’s going …