Kathy-Diane Leveille on why writers need to recharge
/Kathy-Diane Leveille has joined us at The Hideout for two residencies and will return in 2025 to work on her new novel. We asked her to share her thoughts on her time at The Hideout and why residences are so important for writers.
_____
It was such a gift to have a quiet hideaway to retreat to with my novel writing. There is often a time of weaving umpteen narrative elements at once, and it’s so easy to lose threads when daily life, with all its interruptions, gets in the way. I think an individual type of monastic withdrawal is something all writers need to gain clarity with fresh perspective on life and creativity, as they feed into and out of one another. Joshua and Trevor have intuitively created just such quiet expansive surroundings.
My favorite time is often spent on the wooden bench by the pond on the walking trail. On my last visit, I spotted a blue heron rising from the grasses. This beautiful bird, awkward and gangly in flight, is so graceful and poised in the shallows. It was my last day and made me think of all the knots loosened in my work that session. We writers need our quiet spaces with room to poise and ponder so the words can rise freely, before we carry them back, shinier and true, into the world again.
Kathy-Diane Leveille is the author of the short story collection Roads Unravelling, and novels Let the Shadows Fall Behind You and Standing in the Whale’s Jaw. She lives in New Brunswick with her family, busily tending wild gardens and words.
