Waking up today was surreal. Inkhaven 2025 is almost over. As a resident, I made some of my favorite memories.
An Assortment of Things that Happened
A few days before the event began I visited the venue. I met Ben, the author of our feast retreat, and he told me how my Bishop’s Castle essay was my admission ticket. He showed me around Lighthaven, the best venue in the world.
I saw Eneasz again and learned that he had moved from Denver to The Bay. There was the thud of a door closing forever.
Gray ran a workshop on ideation— the core of his advice was to split the idea-space into sectors, then each sector into subsectors, and then to fill each subsector with ideas. You will think of many more animals if you first try to think of all cats, then all dogs, etc.
Ozy told me, “There’s nothing particularly bad about your fiction, but there’s nothing particularly good about it, and this is a hard position to be in as a writer.” She taught me the differences between third person omniscient, limited, and subjective. She told me that characters need to want things. I put her advice at the top of mind as I wrote the other animal stories. It helped. I improved.
After looking at our average word count, Lucie calculated the date for the Inkhaven apocalypse and published this in a peer-reviewed journal.
Linch organized many rousing games of Blood on the Clocktower.
The Berkeley Problematic Properties Board inspected Lighthaven.
Leah McCuan set up a coffee nook in the Bayes building. Delicious coffee was had by all.
Nobody failed. Sometimes, optimism and realism are the same. Congratulations to the prolific!
Thoughts on the Format
During a one-on-one, Ben told me that people were skeptical about the idea of requiring one 500-word blogpost every day. He was right and they were wrong.
Sharpening a skill is like sharpening metal: short, consistent strokes are more effective than all-at-once bursts. Inkhaven gave us the carrots of celebration, good food, great coaching, and amazing friends— but it was the whip of the posting requirement that made all this effective.
Unfortunately, I feel like the format coerced me into to salami-slicing my longer posts into short posts that could fill multiple days. I tend to write long, integrated pieces, so every time I sliced that salami I cringed a little. Ben has proposed a solution called “Weekhaven”— to have people write one long 3500-word effortpost every week. I could not endorse this more.
Advice
There will be more Inkhavens. I hear whispers that it will occur biannually.
If you want to be a great blogger, Inkhaven is the place to get your reps in. Please apply. If you get in, here’s some advice:
Build a buffer. There will come a day when you really don’t want to write. Lend your future self a hand by being prepared for that day.
Socialize a lot. Inkhaven is a rare place and time where the world’s best rationalist writers congregate. This will be easier if you follow #1.
Take advantage of opportunities for coaching, both from your assigned coach and from the contributing writers. Try to schedule one-on-ones with the writers you admire most. Ask them how they do it— you will learn a lot. The path to greatness is both wider and steeper than it seems.
As with everything, savor the journey. I never wrote for the same Inkhaven twice— they were not the same posts, and it was not the same Inkhaven.
