Have you ever considered a writing retreat? Most of them are (I think) outrageously expensive. How about a free one instead? Consider applying to Yaddo.
Yaddo is one of the most respected artist residencies in the world, offering writers something increasingly rare: uninterrupted time and space to focus deeply on creative work. Founded in 1900, Yaddo was created with a singular purpose, to support artists by removing everyday distractions so they can fully engage with their craft. Located on a wooded estate in Saratoga Springs, New York, Yaddo has quietly supported generations of writers whose work has gone on to shape contemporary literature.
What makes Yaddo especially appealing to authors is its emphasis on creative freedom. There are no required workshops, classes, or public obligations. Writers are given room, board, and a private workspace, allowing them to set their own rhythm and priorities. Residencies typically range from two weeks to two months, offering enough time to make real progress on a project or to rediscover momentum that may have been lost to teaching, work, or daily responsibilities.
Selection is based on the strength of the work itself. There is no expectation that writers arrive with a polished or market ready manuscript, and no requirement to produce a finished piece by the end of the residency. This makes Yaddo an ideal space for experimentation, risk taking, and deep revision. Many writers find that the absence of pressure allows them to work more honestly and adventurously than they can elsewhere.
While solitude is central to the Yaddo experience, a quiet sense of community is also part of daily life. Communal meals and shared spaces offer opportunities for informal conversation with artists working across disciplines, including music, visual art, film, and theater. These interactions are optional but often enriching, providing fresh perspectives without overwhelming the creative focus.
For authors navigating a literary world that increasingly demands constant productivity and self promotion, Yaddo offers a rare and valuable gift. Time to write. Time to think. Time to reconnect with the work itself. For writers serious about their craft, applying to Yaddo is not just an opportunity. It is an investment in the long life of their creative practice.
DEADLINE:
Dianne Pearce is the chief editor and bottle washer at Current Words Publishing, and the half-cocked imaginer behind Old Scratch Press and Instant Noodles. Pearce loves helping writers realize the dream of having their work published. I mean she is really crazy about doing that for some reason. To that end, to join in the fray, to look at the thing from the other side, to stand in another’s shoes, and all of those things, she is fully expecting and promising to publish her first collection of poetry, In the Cancer Cafeteria, spring of 2026. Please don’t hold your breath. For very long. Happy Holidays!
There’s a certain stereotype about writers: distracted, dreamy, maybe a little moody, often lost in their own heads. Then there are those of us whose third-grade teacher writes on her report card, “Ellis is very sensitive. She says she doesn’t feel good when she doesn’t want to participate and sometimes puts her hands over her ears.”
What we don’t always name is that many of us identify with something more specific—ADHD, anxiety, depression, OCD, autism, bipolar disorder. In other words, neurodivergence.
Far from being a barrier, these brain patterns often come hand-in-hand with creativity. Our ability to notice connections others overlook, to hyper-focus on a project for hours, or to sense language at a heightened level can all be part of what makes us writers. (Doesn’t everyone have a list of words they hate simply because the way the word feels in their mouth?)
The Double-Edged Sword
Of course, the same brain that gifts us with creative leaps can also work against us. ADHD can make finishing projects feel like climbing Everest. Anxiety can whisper that nothing we write is ever good enough. Depression can steal the life-force necessary to even begin. The very sensitivity that makes us attuned to metaphor and meaning can leave us overwhelmed by the noise of the world.
Reframing the Narrative
Instead of treating neurodivergence as something to battle, what if we reframed it as part of the writer’s toolkit?
Hyperfocus can become a superpower for deep revision. Or help you finish the book!
Restless energy can fuel bursts of freewriting that break past creative blocks. That, and dance breaks.
Heightened sensitivity can deepen character work, dialogue, and description. As long as you remember to take breaks.
The key is learning how to manage the edges—finding rest, support, and strategies so that the gift doesn’t become a burden.
Practical Ways to Support Your Creative Brain
Chunk your writing time. Short, timed sessions (15–25 minutes) can harness focus without overwhelming you.
Write rituals, not rules. A small ritual (lighting a candle, stretching, a playlist) helps train your brain to enter writing mode.
Name the inner critic. Literally give it a name or persona so it loses power over you.
Seek community. Writing groups, workshops, or even online spaces help balance the solitary nature of the work.
Honor rest. Brains that run hot need recovery time. Pushing the pause-button isn’t failing—it’s part of the process.
Why It Matters
When we share openly about the link between writing and neurodivergence, we create permission for others. Permission to stop beating themselves up for struggling with deadlines. Permission to see their “quirks” as part of their artistry. Permission to make choices others might not understand. Permission to write anyway.
Do you identify as a neurodivergent writer? How does it show up in your creative process—both the gifts and the challenges?
Ellis Elliott
Founding member Old Scratch Press Poetry Collective
Author of Break in the Field poetry collection and A Witch Awakens: A Fire Circle Mystery.
The holiday/end of year issue of INSTANT NOODLES, the issue where we always ask people to try for humor. Do you have what it takes to make us smile?
Submissions for 2025 are open through November 2, 2025.
The Old Scratch Press team asks that all fiction/non-fiction pieces adhere to a word count of 1,000 words or less.
2025 Themes and Topics
GRAVY is our 2025 winter holiday theme. Give us your best holiday gravy fails, mishaps, ridiculous gravy encounters (any December holiday, from Hannukah, to Solstice, to NYE, etc.) or your best wry work about gravy, in general. The point of the end-of-year issue is always to be light-hearted to downright silly. Submissions for GRAVY are open through NOVEMBER 2, 2025; the issue will publish on DECEMBER 1, 2025.Please CLICK HERE to submit. We’re looking for short fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, art, and multi-media.
INSTANT NOODLES is always free to submit to, and free to read. We’re about to announce the pieces that were published that we’re submitting to BEST OF THE NET and PUSHCART, so stay tuned to this station!
Thanks for being an INSTANT NOODLES participant and/or fan! We appreciate you giving indie authors a place to get read!
Alan Bern is more than just the author of DREAMS OF THE RETURN—he’s also one of the founding voices of Old Scratch Press, a collective born from a group of terrific writers with a deep love of traditional and hybrid poetry, prose, and art. As a retired children’s librarian and cofounder (with Robert Woods) of the fine-press publisher Lines & Faces, Alan has long pursued the merging of word, image, and place.
In DREAMS OF THE RETURN, he turns his lens to Italy—in particular the South—bringing to life landscapes both storied and luminous through his own photographs and through classic Italian poetry, delivered both in its original form and in his own translations. The journey is lyrical, immersive: it’s not merely a travel guide, but a portrait of longing, place, memory, and beauty.
And that’s something Alan does beautifully—his artistry weaves together what he’s done throughout his life: poetry, prose, photography, memoir, all fueled by a love for Italy. Within the OSP community, he is known for “photo-poems,” a daily practice in which images and language overlap, inviting the reader to travel with him across geographies and inward, into self.
In addition to poems and photographs, DREAMS OF THE RETURN also includes intimate personal essays that layer history, memory, and lived experience. In “The Good One,” for example, Alan recounts a walk through Naples’ Quartieri Spagnoli with his friend Marco. What begins as a conversation about Jewish philosopher Don Isaac Abravanel and the sacred geography of southern Italy turns into a heartbreaking encounter with a community altar for “o’ Bono”—a young man accidentally killed during a New Year’s Eve celebration. Through this story, Alan reveals how place, tragedy, resilience, and human connection are intertwined in ways both profound and ordinary.
A true perfectionist, Alan (pictured left) worked closely with his good friend, Peter Truskier, to ensure that the photos selected would sparkle in the book just like the locations did in real life.
DREAMS OF THE RETURN is, in effect, another way Alan invites us to travel: through light and verse, through time and place. It’s a book to savor—start with a wind-soft sun, ruins, olive trees and history; consume it slowly with pizza margherita and red wine; linger into the evening with the sweetness of roccoco napoletani and an espresso kissed with Sambuca. You can order a copy of your own here:
Clearly the owner of that journal is not doing a good job of compiling her collection because on her journal is a slice of orange she is attempting to dry out, three crystals, and a paintbrush. The book is open and written in with a pencil, not good for preserving writing as (being a teacher for one-zillions years I can tell you) pencil smudges overtime to become indecipherable. She’s also got a pile of vintage mail (definitely older and already been mailed to her, to someone), which is deliciously tantalizing, and reading is much easier and more fun than writing.
Who is this mess of a woman? That’s a stock photo, but it could easily be my desk, with a few dozen highlighters and yesterday’s coffee added to the milieu.
It’s difficult for me to have a clean desk, no lie there. It’s difficult for me to spend time cleaning my desk, and not because I am not a neat person, but because I push my own things back. In fact, though I think of myself as a generally nice and “in a good mood” sort of person, I can get snappy when I feel tooo squeezed out.
I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.
JRR Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1)
What a great bit of writing that is!
So I have made the bold assertion that I will publish my collection of poetry through Old Scratch Press in 2026. There. I said it to the group, and now I said it to you. I swear I’m gonna do it. I am going to occasionally clean my desk, and push in some room to get my collection together by pushing other things back (other things probably being sleep! Ha!). I just took on a new tutoring student, a few pro bono editing projects (my daughter’s school has a non-profit component to it, and I donated some editing to the auction, and it got bought!), a half dozen or so sample edits, in addition to the regular amount of edits, which is many hundreds of pages per month, and I signed up for a singing course with a friend, have a relative needing assistance for cancer treatments, a teen in need of a lot of “staying on track” help with school work and she is also involved in some theater projects her dad or I need to be the transportation for (and, in general, making sure she eats, remembers her glasses, etc.), and a business to run and a home and family, in addition to trying to squeeze in a daily run. I would love to run well enough to participate in a 5K, and I have been thinking of joining a thing in my neighborhood where I could get a running trainer. Of all of those things I am doing there is nothing I do not want to be doing, except for wishing my relative didn’t have cancer, of course. One friend had told me recently she was stepping back from a project, and I had anticipated it about four months earlier, actually, and I completely get it. My relative, who is staying with me this week and last for her treatments, woke up today and told me she is spending the last few days she needs to be local for her tests at a friend’s because she needs a change of scenery. I had expected that too, and I had prepared a to-go coffee for her before she woke up. However I have a HS friend on FB who is every bit as engaged in politics as I am, and worried about the general state of what we see as the slide into authoritarianism, and another HS classmate said to him, “We liked it better when you just wrote about your kids and scouting. You don’t have a lot of chapters (she actually wrote chapters!) left; don’t waste them on this.” and I could not agree less. Age, chapter of life, has nothing to do with wanting to accomplish things and caring about things outside of ourselves, so, no, I do not think he should stop fighting the good fight. Yet I feel that I do have an understanding that we literally cannot do it all, and don’t want to, and I respect it, and think it is a good thing, and I flatter myself that I am especially good at reading the room, and can see when change is coming. But, I’m not good at, “No.” I’m not good at giving up on something I’ve begun, even if it does not realize my own dream. It’s an obstacle because in order to publish one of my many projects, I assumed I would have to come up with a good, firm, “No.” And I simply can’t. So I have decided instead to come up with a good, slightly quavering, “Yes.” I’m outing myself that I am going to put my damn book out. I am saying it, and affirming it, and treating it, as much as possible, as a done deal. I think if I normalize it, the way I normalize all the other things, I will simply do it because it has a due-date, or a do-date. Both!
And so, here is my question to you:
If you have been writing short stories, short non-fiction, flash, poetry, for some time now (I’m not going to say I’ve been writing for decades, but at least since the synth-pop craze and the resurgence of skinny ties (the best kind of ties)), how do you choose what to include, and what to leave behind, resting, forever lost in a permanent dream state in the “my writing” file on your desktop? Though the synth-pop craze wasn’t what I would describe as a serious time in the world, I was a serious writer; I took myself very seriously, and I think that “me” has somehow stuck around, and I judge that writing to be more profound, when in reality for pretty much all of us our early writing is awful. I remember writing a poem laden with love and portent that was about a page long and contained only the word “baby” written over and over again in different combinations with possessive pronouns and a few sappy adjectives. Songs, when sung, can add meaning through cadence, tone, etc., but, with that “baby” experiment I learned that mere words on a page cannot do that. It was a piece of absolute dreck. I do not regret deleting it!
So, those old pieces hold special meaning for me, but most are not very good (I confess I still think some of them are genius!), and almost all are not even remotely relevant to who I am now. Though I am still a whiny liberal with a moral bent, and that still is there, even in the new pieces.
And this is it, my one chance to publish my poetry, to put it out there in the world. When I was in my MA and MFA programs I knew who the “it” poets were in the world of poets who published, and I wanted to join them, to earn their respect. And as I tried I very much felt borne farther away from them. Primarily by life circumstances and that inability to say no, that pushing back of my own things, more than anything else. And that very much was a tell (an inadvertent behavior or mannerism that betrays) that I didn’t belong among them. Writers who are successful (and success looks different for a poet than a novelist, or self-help book author, etc.) almost all have a modicum of selfishness that allows them to push things away that don’t serve them, and also leads them to self-preserve. They’re not going to be dumb enough to share their “baby” poem with their thesis advisor. Selfishness belongs on the seven deadly sins list, IMHO. But success almost needs it, like a plant needs water, to survive.
So, for better or for worse, committing a deadly sin or not, I am going to get this thing done as if it is not even my thing, so I will not be being selfish; I will simply be doing another job on the list.
But, again, I have this question: if you could put together a collection of your writing (or publish one of your novels, if you write long-form) how do you choose? How do you group? How do you look back over your body of work and say, “This goes; this doesn’t?” And if you could have your book published next year, what would you want on your cover, and why? While working with OSP one thing that has continually surprised me is that the authors seem to know what the cover needs to be. How in the heck….?
So, what about you? Would you know? I’m super curious to hear! Drop me a comment below!
Recently Robert Fleming was nice enough to get Old Scratch Press booked on Like a blot from the blue. Robert Fleming, Gabby Gilliam, Anthony Doyle, Alan Bern, Virginia (Ginny) Watts, and I showed up. I gave a little information on Old Scratch Press; Gabby gave some information Instant Noodles, and Anthony and Ginny read from their new books. Being there and presenting to an international audience was a fantastic opportunity for us, and the folks there were great.
What I liked even more were the other people who showed up.
I’m going to guess that there were about 30 people who showed up who were not us, one of whom was Fin Hall, the blot-in-chief. It was clear that many of these folks had been attending regularly for quite some time. One at a time, in turn, based on when they signed up, Fin called on each person, and the author read 1-3 poems, depending on length.
When I was in my twenties and thirties, which, sadly, I am not any more, I used to read at LIP (live, in person) open mics all the time, and I would often have to hang in until midnight to get my chance. Usually these were held in bars in Philadelphia, or in West Chester, Pennsylvania. I did my best to dress as “punk rock” as possible, and my general aim, if I’m honest, was to get laid. It’s frankly shocking how few times that happened, when that was clearly my intent. I usually had on a mini skirt and was showing cleavage, but, in truth, people who knew me then told me then, and will reiterate the very same thing today, that me punked-out and showing cleavage was, somehow, still giving Julie Andrews when what I was going for was Grace Slick. Ah well.
In any case, the thrill of reading, and the thrill of possibly getting lucky, and the location (always bars) also meant that, in all likelihood, by the time they got to me on the sign-up list, I was hella drunk. I was a smoker (Benson and Hedges 100s back then), but because I was also a poser: at those events I came with a pack of Dunhill Blue.
Waaaay too expensive to smoke all the time, but on open mic nights I always stopped at the news agent’s (Philadelphia had news agents!) to get a pack beforehand.
A few times/year the venues would ask me to be the featured reader, and I think that was because I was also volunteering with a little Zine called Magic Bullet (run by Andrew Craig, wherever he is today), which I had quite a few publications in, and, who knows, maybe I was good.
I was working my way through an MA and then an MFA from my twenties into my thirties, and my professors seemed to think I was good, as well, and I won the student awards each year, so maybe. When I read at the school events I was not drunk, but neither was I nervous, perhaps because my professors made me feel gifted.
And then, sometime around the end of my last degree, life took a turn. My very long relationship went very south. Another relationship pooped too quickly, and flamed out just as fast, and I remember I felt, while I was still prolific as a poet, that I had somehow lost at life. I wanted, you see, to become a published poet and a professor, and a spouse, and a parent, and I wanted all four things to work out perfectly, and just none of them did.
My life, then, became a series of edits. If it didn’t work to have the man with the red hair, then cut him from the piece, and write in another man, one with cheap beer on his lips. It was so time-consuming to send out work, one poem here, and one there, through the mail, keeping track of where it went, and keeping a lookout for the SASE to bring it back, and seeing if it was in decent enough condition to be mailed back out again, and I remember for awhile I was printing on onion skin to save money (who knows what that is?), and digging up the two dollars or eight quarters to send the piece of onion skin back out, and waiting for the SASE again to return, and each time writing a letter of introduction, sometimes including letters of introduction from my professors who were consistently and kindly encouraging. I remember two of them, who seemed to think my writing was the bee’s knees, were flummoxed that my poems weren’t getting entry, but maybe the long narrative style went out with Wordsworth. And life became more about driving from 9-5 job to college job to relationship, to moving out, to moving over there, to trying again, to keep on trying, to being, frankly, trying.
Little by little, returned SASE by SASE, edited dream by edited dream, the writing dribbled to a stop. Drip, drip, dr—
It was so quiet in my head.
Well, in the poetry part of my head at least.
And a decade and a half ran through my fingers.
And then I started writing again. Not only poetry, and not the plays I wrote in my twenties, but fiction, and memoir, which is, I guess, what this is.
I found myself in a place where the place, the locale, was so small and local, it felt small enough that I dared to go to a reading again.
But over the intervening years something just awful seemed to have happened. When I showed up to read at the open mics, even when I went with friends, I could not make it through a single poem without devolving into tears. And maybe there’s a reason for this shocking behavior, and maybe there isn’t, but it seems as inevitable to me as hair going grey, and as unavoidable as the red dot from a sniper’s gun in one of those movies with snipers.
And yet, at the simple evening with Blot from the blue I felt encouraged. The readers were great, and seemed normal (for the most part… I mean, poets, right?), and kindly, and on Zoom my head is no bigger than a Cerignola olive, so I am going to say I felt safe. I think it would be quite okay to join in, and I asked him later, and Fin said yes, folks can join. And folks could mean me, or you.
And use this email to express interest likeablotfromtheblue@gmail.com.
And if you show up, be a goooood listener first, and a good reader second.
I’m not much of a drinker these days, so if I show up it will probably be very sober, and there hasn’t been any nicotine in these lungs for a long spell. I will, however, be caffeinated. And that’s at least something. The poem I am thinking of reading has some sound effects in it, which is probably ill-advised. But after I read, and make whatever sort of a fool of myself I am destined to be, I can write a new poem: Pearce With Her Pants Fallen Down.
Nadja often finishes her posts with a writing prompt, so here is me, stealing that excellent idea:
Think of an “edit” you made in your own life, by choice or by force. How did it work out for you?
Or
Have you ever read at an open mic? Write a flash memoir piece describing your experience.
Are you a flash fiction, poetry, or short memoir writer with a finished manuscript—or one nearly ready to go? Old Scratch Press, a collaborative collective supported by Current Words Publishing, is now accepting applications for two new members to join us in 2026.
We’re a tight-knit, skill-sharing group that publishes each other’s books, runs the lit mag Instant Noodles, and supports each other with editing, design, marketing, and community.
We are hosting meet and greets on August 6th and August 13. To be invited you have to send a small sample. There are no fees to submit, and there are no fees to join, and there are no fees to publish your collection. There are no fees. Who else you gonna find to collaborate with who dedicates an entire issue of a literary magazine to that most magical of elixirs… gravy? If you’re eager to grow as a writer and be part of something creative and weird and wonderful, we’d love to meet you.
OLD SCRATCH PRESS 