Faithful Readers-

So I’ve been invited to do a writer’s residency in remote northern Idaho for the month of March, at some artists’ land where there are horses, and nice light-filled rooms in which to work, and dry steadfast weather, and solitude. I don’t have to pay a single cent for it, other than gas costs and food, and there will be infinity of hours in which to work, and zero distractions, and it will all be in the environment where I find it most easy to be productive- the lonely wildz. And there is so much work that I need to do- there are stories that need polishing, and stories that I have only just begun, and stories that are like little seeds in my brain, waiting for the right light and air in which to sprout. And Idaho would be like my greenhouse, my tray of starts on the bright window-sill, the long empty weeks my worm-filled compost.

If you are a writer or an artist, you know what an incredible opportunity this is. People work their asses off to get residencies like this one, and they are few and far between, and you usually have to have a pretty hefty resume in order to get one, and I have no resume, only unformed talent and a mountain of unpolished writing. So it is sort of a miracle that I got it at all, and I would be able to get so much work done there, and I might even leave with the beginning of something that could end up being something much larger. It really is a very rare opportunity, and I am extremely fortunate to have stumbled into it.

But! I can’t go. I can’t go because I am almost laughably underemployed here in Portland, with no savings, and while I was gone I would have no way to pay my rent and bills. There is just no way. It’s like a big joke, like the whole universe is laughing at me. I can try and will away the need for money, but it just doesn’t work. So I have been brainstorming ways to raise the funds, and I came up with the idea of doing a fundraiser on my blog. Because the Idaho residency is about writing, and developing my writing, and leaving with something larger than what I have now, which is a handful of polished stories and a blog. It’s about push-starting myself out of this creative routine that I am in and into the next thing, whatever that may be. It’s about the first day of the rest of my literary life. And who is more invested in that than my faithful and steadfast blog readers? My faithful readers who maybe want to see me go write for a solid month in the middle of nowhere, and are curious about what would come out of that?

So will you donate? I am trying to raise five hundred dollars, to pay my expenses while I’m gone. I will update you as fundz come in, and let you know when I have reached my goal. Make magic happen, on the internet! Put me in Idaho, in a ray of morning sunshine, with an unbroken block of time before me! Send me off with a sack of GF flour and ten pounds of kale! Lock the door and throw away the key! I will make the sentences 4 U!

Yours faithfully in syntax,
Carrot Quinn

SEND ME TO IDAHO!