INKHAVEN RESIDENCY

Ink and Quill

A residency for ~30 people to grow into great writers.
For the month of November, you'll publish a blogpost every day. Or pack your bags.

Apply

Decision in 10 days

$4,000 (incl. Housing)

Scholarships available

Nov 1 — Nov 30,
 Berkeley CA

Advisors

Scott Alexander Scott Aaronson Gwern

Scott Alexander,
Scott Aaronson,
& Gwern

(more to be announced)

Organizers

Ben Pace Oliver Habryka
Lightcone Infrastructure Logo

Ben Pace,
Oliver Habryka,
& Lightcone Infrastructure

Our Vision

"Whenever I see a new person who blogs every day, it's very rare that that never goes anywhere or they don't get good. That's like my best leading indicator for who's going to be a good blogger."
—Scott Alexander,
Dwarkesh Patel Podcast

If you want to be excellent at something, it's extremely useful to do it every day. Athletes, musicians, and writers famously live by this advice. Separately, one of the world's strongest motivators is to be surrounded by ambitious, like-minded people.

For the month of November, we're running a residency for talented writers to hone their craft by writing and publishing a blogpost every single day. We provide food and housing at-cost, so that you can focus on writing.

We'll offer whatever we can to improve the writing experience and help the resident writers grow stronger. In fact, we've interviewed many successful writers about what's helped them, and we'll aim to offer many of the things they described, through mentorship opportunities from celebrated writers, craft-honing workshops, and professional feedback. But all that will be optional. Your commitments are simply to be here and write.

Note: In the quote above, Scott Alexander makes an observation about a correlation he has observed. With this program we will be Goodharting on that correlation. Hopefully increasing the leading variable will produce more of the lagging variable, but of course, perhaps it will merely bring the correlation to zero.

Writing Activities

Giving and Receiving Feedback

Get feedback on your writing from fellow Inkhaven participants, both 1-1 and in group workshops. This can happen as frequently as you like – including every day!

Mentorship

Share some of your essays with highly successful bloggers to discuss in a one-on-one setting, and get advice from them about the craft, your process, and what directions you want to grow as a writer.

Writing Classes

Join workshops led by accomplished writers, on topics like research, editing, cultivating good comments, and more to be determined.

Professional Support

Work with professional editors and writing coaches who will help you polish your work and overcome creative challenges.

All of these activities are optional; the only requirements are to (1) publish every day, and (2) be present at Lighthaven.

At the Lighthaven Campus

Lighthaven Campus

Lighthaven is a beautiful venue designed for lots of small, quiet conversations in various nooks with whiteboards. It has bedrooms, offices, a gym, and gardens to write from.

"Lighthaven felt rambly and wondrous and fun without being pretentious? Felt like an incredibly-well-executed, 11-of-10 house party venue (laudatory) crossed with Disneyland.

I am still learning about cool things and spaces in the venue that I missed (there was a robot sand table?)"
—Attendee in Manifest Feedback Form

Pricing & Options

Core Program

Program Fee $2,000

Accommodation

Shared Room (1 roommate) $2,000
Private Room $3,000+

Meal Plans (Optional)

Breakfast will be self-serve with food provided.
For lunch & dinner we offer hot meals, or you can instead get your own groceries from the nearby grocery stores just 3-4 blocks away.

2 Hot Meals per Day $1,200
1 Hot Meal per Day $600

Thanksgiving Discount

If you plan to leave at Thanksgiving and not return, you can receive a 15% discount on room and food costs. This discount does not apply to the program fee.

Scholarships Available

If the program costs would prevent you from participating, please let us know in your application. A limited number of scholarships are available for those who need financial support.

Apply

Decision in 10 days

Nov 1 — Nov 30,
 Berkeley CA

Cost: $4,000;
 Scholarships available

Contribute Your Writing Skills

We'd love to have excellent writers, editors, and relevant professionals contribute to Inkhaven. Some examples of qualities that we're interested in:

  • You've led writing workshops before.
  • You're a successful blogger or public writer.
  • You can teach a class on a part of writing you do very well.

If you have something else to offer, feel free to make a pitch!

We'll fly contributors out to Lighthaven, cover expenses and pay for their contributions.

Express Interest

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes, barring emergencies, you're committing to publish a 500+ word piece of writing on the internet each day.

It's up to you really, but generally it should be a minimum of 500 words. If you spend a lot of effort on a diagram or a poem however, it can be shorter.

A resident not publishing daily will be asked to leave the program. This is because we care about the cohort knowing that everyone is working hard together, and we don't wish to keep residents on-board who are not maintaining this standard.

In some circumstances, such as emergencies, we expect to make exceptions, and we'll be a little flexible about single lapses (though we'd ask you to then catch up), but on the whole posting daily is a hard requirement.

We'll of course continue to provide housing and food for the period if that's been paid for. However people no longer participating in the program may be moved to off-site housing.

"You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club."
— Jack London

I do believe that some people have more to say than others. But almost every serious writer I know has talked about how difficult it is to get started, how it feels like they have nothing to say, and how they have had to overcome this. They also often talk about how ideas beget new ideas (see the Paul Graham quote below). If you've written anything good before, or you're someone who we admit to the program, I believe you do have 30 days of blog posts in you.

I also find that the people I speak to who are worried about this are setting too high a standard for their daily writing. They seem to be holding themselves to the standards of the top 25% of their essays. Naturally, most daily pieces will be less developed than the pieces they spent weeks poring over. In LessWrong terms, I think it's fine to write a "quick take" rather than a post.

I do honestly think that, on many days, you will be able to get 500 words done before noon, and then spend the rest of the day developing other ideas and essays you've been working on.

And on the harder days, well, you'll be surrounded by 30-50 people who've also had hard days, and are wishing for you to succeed, and willing to help you. Ask Gwern for a blogpost idea, he'll have one.

"Writing doesn't just communicate ideas; it generates them. If you're bad at thinking, you're bad at writing. But if you force yourself to write clearly, you'll discover you had more to say than you thought."
— Paul Graham
"The scariest moment is always just before you start. After that, things can only get better."
— Stephen King, On Writing
"The act of writing is thinking in public. The ideas don't show up before you start. They show up because you started."
— David Perell

The primary reason is that you want to do a lot more writing, and you want an environment that supports you in doing that. You'll be surrounded by people who take writing seriously, who want to do a lot of it and do it well. Successful writers will be around to offer advice, peers will be around to help you (and ask for help) when stuck, and you'll do way more writing than you would have otherwise done in the month of November.

There will be people here who are full-time researchers or writers who want to get better, and people here from different career paths who have done a lot of writing but would like to expand into the direct-to-internet type.

The ideal Inkhaven resident is someone who:

  • …enjoys spending time writing.
  • …wants to become excellent at writing.
  • …is motivated by taking on a large challenge.
  • …is motivated by being surrounded by people, all working to accomplish something difficult.
  • …is able and eager to meet a somewhat intense commitment.
  • …is curious to understand how the world works, and deeply cares about truth.
  • …is down to give and receive candid feedback on writing.
  • …is able to make writing their primary focus for the month of November.

The exact level is still in flux. We're talking to more potential advisors, so we don't know how many we'll have yet. At a minimum, we're aiming for:

  • At least 2 workshops or sessions led by an advisor each week
  • At least once a week, every resident gets an opportunity to bring an essay of theirs to an advisor to read and discuss with them.

We're hopeful we'll offer much more support than this.

Some advisors will visit just for a few days, others will be present throughout the entire program. More writers and professionals will also be around to give classes, provide editing feedback, discuss the craft, and more.

Probably with a part-time job, but not with a full-time job. Writing should be your priority during most of this time.

This is meant to be a residency and have a cohort who is going through this together. Some people will be accepted who can't do the full time, but priority will be given to those who can do it all, and especially those who can show up from day 1.

Definitely some people will travel for some parts of the month (e.g. Thanksgiving). For these periods we recommend writing a few backup posts ahead of time for you to publish, especially for days when you're traveling and know that you won't have time to write.

On the other hand, it is good to find time to squeeze writing into your life, and this is also an opportunity to do more of that. Can you write a blogpost on a plane? Can you write one during a meal? And so on.

Please email me (Ben) at inkhaven@lightconeinfrastructure.com and I'll get back to you as soon as possible. Alternatively, just open the intercom in the bottom right and I'll message you back.