The Self-Appointed Writing Residency
Assign yourself a beat, and write a column
Can a writer appoint themselves artist-in-residence of a place or subject or idea and make some kind of literary project about it? How would that work, exactly?
This is the question I’ve heard from a bunch of writers who have read this post on the self-appointed artist residency. They’re contemplating doing something along those lines, only with words rather than visual art.
So how would a writer approach a project like that?
I’ve been a full-time writer for thirty years, and I’ve been lucky to build a career on self-generated assignments. I come up with an idea, I work out what form it should take (a nonfiction book, a novel, an article, a column) and then I go pitch it to someone—a publisher, a newspaper, a magazine. So far, that’s worked out for me.
But what would it mean to skip the application process and to simply appoint myself the writer-in-residence of whatever subject I have in mind: Portland’s food carts, the history of the Columbia river, the vicissitudes of middle age, etc.?
Here’s an idea: Appoint yourself the weekly columnist of whatever your subject is.
You remember newspaper columns, right?
Some of you are old enough to remember when a medium-sized city might have two or three newspapers, plus an alternative weekly, maybe a weekly business journal, a Spanish language paper, etc. Each one was loaded with columnists writing on local politics, sports, food, gardening, parenting, personal finance, theater, music and, best of all, the sort of “man about town” column that could be about absolutely anything at all, as long as it was interesting. Humor columns, from Dave Barry to Erma Bombeck, fit into this category, as did legendary local insiders like San Francisco’s Herb Caen. Candace Bushnell wrote a column for the New York Observer in the nineties about dating and the single life in New York City, and that worked out okay for her.
I grew up under the influence of some truly wild Texas columnists: the great Molly Ivins, whose barbed political humor is desperately needed today, Joe Bob Briggs, whose movie column “Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In” was only marginally about movies but also a kind of social criticism, and rock critic Ed Ward’s “Petaluma Pete” column for the Austin Chronicle, in which he created a fictional persona who sort of wrote about food and sort of wrote about his life. Even the Chronicle’s Council Watch stuck with me, because it was a gossipy, insider-ish look at everything the city council got up to.
These writers taught me that you can do anything in a column. If all you need to write a song is three chords and the truth, then all you need to write a column is 1000 words and a deadline.
My first book was based on a monthly gardening column I wrote for a free feminist newspaper in Santa Cruz. I went on to write, at various times, a gardening column, a book column, a local theater column, and, my favorite, the madcap North Coast Almanack, a sort of spoof on the almanacs of yore.
That last one came about because I’d been writing columns for so long that I was completely out of ideas. When you’re out of ideas and you keep going anyway, that’s when you start breaking rules and writing like nothing matters. It was great fun.
So in that spirit, here’s how I’d start a column:
Assign yourself a beat. You can be a parenting columnist. A book or music critic. An outdoors columnist. Cover your local school district, the goings-on at the port authority or the farmers market, or, I don’t know, astronomy, or the Federal Reserve.
You can write a fictional column, which is to say a column written by a fictional persona writing about fictional events or topics. It’s allowed.
Pick a deadline and stick to it. Weekly, biweekly, monthly.
Pick a word count. Newspaper columns run about 750-1000 words. Sure, you’ll want to ramble on sometimes. You know what a long column is? Two columns. Save the rest for next week.
The best column-writing advice I ever heard was from the San Francisco Chronicle’s Jon Carroll: A good column is about one and a half things.
Keep a list of ideas, even the dumb ones, and consult that list rather than staring at the blank page.
Along those lines, try to have a few extra columns in the bag, whether they’re fully written or just a paragraph or two that you could easily flesh out in a pinch.
Give yourself a running start. Before your first deadline, write two or three columns according to your new schedule so that you get into the habit.
Find your way. You have a lenient and supportive editor (you) who has given you a long leash. Take advantage of that. Roam if you want to.
Write as naturally as possible. Write as if you’re talking to your best friend. Your unscripted, unleashed voice belongs in your column.
Avoid defensive writing. What I mean is that in this digital age, anyone can post a “but what about” or “but you left out” or “but this fails to address my one specific need/issue/worldview” comment. As a result, writers have started to spend a lot of time up front hedging against those complaints. “Yes, I know, not all cats. I’m talking about this one cat and some other cats I’ve known but your cat might be different.” Skip that. Let the commenters write their own column.
Having said that—enjoy your readers! Get to know them! Write for them! Sometimes they’ll send you amusing quips and great ideas. I wrote here about how Dave Barry handles his relationship with his readers. He’s brilliant at this.
And then—PUBLISH!
A column is meant to be read. It should be published. How you publish doesn’t matter, but you should do it faithfully on your deadline. Here are some ideas:
Email it to a select group of lucky recipients. My husband used to read the New Yorker from cover to cover on his bus commute to work. He wrote a weekly review of the entire magazine, including the ads and cartoons, as a way to recommend to his (half a dozen) readers what to actually read in each week’s magazine and what to skip. It was funny and brilliant and I’ve often asked him to please start doing it again, but I guess he’s moved on.
Print it out (in any format: as a typed Word document, a cool newspaper-ish template, a zine) and distribute it as you see fit. Leave a stack on your coffee shop’s free table, put it in your Little Free Library, staple them to telephone poles.
Post it to your blog. Blogs still exist. You can share the links on social media or drop them in the group chat.
Start an email newsletter right here on Substack or any other newsletter platform.
Approach an actual, real newspaper or a local news website/email newsletter and ask them if they’d like to publish your column.
Start a group blog or group newsletter. I helped found GardenRant, a popular group blog written by several lively, opinionated writers. There were four of us in the early days, each with our assigned day of the week. Jungle Red Writers has been doing this for years with a slate of seven writers. Find your crew, have as few rules as possible, and enjoy the camaraderie.
Actually publishing your column has a few benefits:
A little bit of pressure will keep you on track
Knowing that you’re writing for somebody will subtly improve your writing and editing.
You’ll get a more of a dopamine hit by actually publishing than you will by hitting save and closing a Word doc.
Publishing, printing, or hitting send forces you to actually finish the column and move on to the next one.
Now you can call yourself a columnist
Just as calling yourself the unofficial artist-in-residence of, say, pollinators makes you stand up a little straighter and take your duties a little more seriously, actually calling yourself the lawn croquet columnist for the Lazy Oaks Apartments (there actually was a column like this in a paper I used to read, it was hilarious and wonderful) gives you a nice little job title. Take pride in it!
One final reminder: You decide when your column ends
A column is not supposed to last forever! While the weekly deadline creates a small (and hopefully pleasant) sense of obligation, it’s also okay to bring it to a close. All columns end eventually. Deciding to end it isn’t a failure. It doesn’t make you a quitter. You can decide on an end date, announce your departure, write your final column, and move on (to your next column).
Supporters are exploring page layouts
Should your sketchbook or journal or notebook have a pretty design, or should you just scribble like nobody’s watching? We got into all that last week.
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Next to marrying you, my weekly review of the New Yorker was apparently my one good idea, and I failed to follow through with it. I think it is probably too late now. For one thing, there are hardly any ads anymore.
My self-appointed writing residency in Warroad, Minnesota, on the Canadian border resulted in my soon-to-be-released book, The Land of Everlasting Sky: A Memoir of Loss and Legacy on Lake of the Woods (June 2, 2026, from She Writes Press, distributed by Simon & Schuster). Every week I post a glimpse into the history and culture of this community without a newspaper since 2019.