Opinionated advice on doing Inkhaven
Getting the most out of an incredible month
I went to Inkhaven, a writing retreat in Berkeley where you must publish 500 words per day or else.
We actually discovered that or else is a real thing when one of the residents got kicked out for submitting at 12:02. After a dramatic performance where said resident was placed in stocks and put on trial he was accepted back into the cohort.
One resident did get kicked out for not posting, although he decided to leave for personal reasons, so he left overnight.
General
You are here to write, but not just to write. You’re in Berkeley on the incredible Lighthaven campus (which you should explore all of), and surrounded by 50+ clever and beautiful people from all walks of life. Get to know them, have deep conversations with them, make out with them (or not, I don’t care).
Batch 2 was much more diverse than batch 1. Batch 1 was very rationalist/EA/AI-pilled; batch 2 was still all of those things but with more variety – we had “real writers” too. Poets, novelists, playwrights, famous bloggers. It’s possible batch 3 will go further in that direction.
Social
Meet everyone! Do this sooner rather than later; you don’t want to meet someone right at the end and find you don’t have time to get to know them properly.
Avoid falling into routine conversations as time goes on. You’re not going to be around these people for long; don’t just ask them what they’re writing about. Probe a bit more deeply, ask about their home lives, about why they’re at Inkhaven and how they found out about it, about their personal stuff.
I learned some of the most interesting and surprising things about people in the last few days of the residency. You never know what someone is like, so don’t make assumptions!
Everyone here is smart and weird and wonderful, and there’s so much to find out about them and so many ways to connect with them.
Don’t limit your social connections to the people who are generally in your sphere. There’s much to be learned from the residents you wouldn’t normally interact with.
Some people will just never be around. They’re either not living at Lighthaven (or the nearby accommodation) – perhaps they have a family – or they just don’t want to hang out. So you won’t be able to actually meet everyone.
Live on campus. The nearby accommodation is nicer for the money, and isn’t very far away, but there’s something magic about being able to open your door, walk ten yards, and be in the throng right away.
My mornings looked like: wake up, put on sweatpants, walk to the kitchen, pour myself a coffee, talk to whoever was up (usually quite a lot of people).
It’s possible your writing will be better if you don’t live on campus – the resident who produced some of the best-liked writing was living in one of the off-site houses – but I still think it’s a tradeoff worth making.
Get a feel for the rhythm of the place. Some people have quite different daily routines.
I was surprised how quiet it was after dinner until late, having published my piece for the day. Lots of people worked right up to the line so were often just not around in the evenings. If that’s the case for your batch, maybe aim to do more socialising during the day.
Lunch was the most sociable meal. If you’re going to order one meal a day and just snack or eat the free bagels the rest of the time, order lunch.
There was a person I hadn’t met; another resident said: “she’s the one who’s always sat at a booth in the kitchen by 8am with an empty French press and fifty poems written.”
Play social connection games. Someone organised a game of Hot Seat, where someone is nominated to answer questions from the audience of varying levels of spiciness (they can of course decline to answer a given question). Make your questions silly, probing, or just straightforward.
Writing
You do actually have to write and publish 500 words per day or you get kicked out. There was lots of legalesque debating about whether 12:00:59 the following day was acceptable, so the rules have since been updated to specify that 12:00:00 is the deadline.
What actually happens if you get kicked out is undefined, annoyingly. If I get kicked out do I have to actually leave the next morning? Do I get a refund on the accommodation I paid for?
But also, please don’t submit stuff right at the deadline. Lots of people did this (30% of posts went up in the last hour of the day) and I just couldn’t understand it. It’s pointless: it means you don’t have time to read other people’s writing, have less time to socialise in the evening, and probably will end up writing less well.
Show up with a list of things to write about. Put them in the Inkhaven Tracker I made (not affiliated with Inkhaven)!
Show up with a bunch of drafts. You’re allowed to do this so long as you do at least 500 words of editing on them. I had a piece I’d been sitting on for about three years which turned out to be the best I published (if you’re reading this on April 29, it’s not been published yet!)
You are allowed to get ahead and write drafts for other days, which I hadn’t realised. Definitely do this, preferably early on when you have more stamina. Having even one or two in the chamber means you can just hit publish if you don’t have anything in you, which really takes the pressure off. I had another commitment mid-way through which took most of the day and it was good to be able to just press the button.
Don’t use your buffer to coast. Use it to allow yourself a day off if you’re burned out, or to work on a post for several days which you otherwise wouldn’t be able to focus on.
Experiment with different kinds of writing. Get out of your comfort zone; if you always write in-depth research, try writing some personal non-fiction (aka squishy personal stuff; really plumb the depths). If you always write persuasive rhetoric, try writing a short story.
The team added a challenge to write one piece in each of seven categories: empirical (a survey or experiment), informational, persuasive, humour, advice, fiction, and personal. If you hit all seven you got a cool enamelled pin.
Dig deep. Expose yourself more than you would normally. Some people are here to get over their fear of hitting the ‘publish’ button. The fear of hitting that button when you’ve just written something about your last two breakups, or about catching the eye of a cute girl on the street, or about lost love – that’s ten times worse. Learn to overcome it. Those might be some of your best posts.
The kinds of things you post will be shaped by how the other residents respond to them. I think this is inevitable. I was surprised by how quickly I forgot that my friends back home were subscribers and ended up writing stuff I thought would impress other residents (and get lots of likes). Probably fine; you can reset your reward function when you leave and it’s fun to compete for attention locally.
Pay for a Claude Max subscription. You’ll get a lot of mileage out of it – bouncing ideas back and forth, getting line edits on final drafts, asking for topic recommendations based on what you’ve already written.
I used Claude Code to write a script which scraped all of my Substack posts. I then set up a Claude Cowork project in that folder so it always had context on what I’d written.
Misc
As much as you can, read the writing of other residents. I spent hours doing this in the first couple of days but it’s unsustainable to read the output of 54 other people. That said, skimming the recent posts of the day is a great idea and gives you a way to connect with others through their writing.
Go for a walk now and then. There were stretches of several days where I didn’t leave the campus or exercise, and that’s probably not great. The UC Berkeley campus is nice for a stroll.
Inkhaven can be many *-havens. Slophaven – in the middle of the month when people’s energy dips and they just pump out low-effort posts. Brinkhaven – the inevitable deadline panic that people seemed to weirdly love. Drinkhaven – although the stock of alcohol by the end was dire, and avoid overdoing it and being hungover. Situationhaven – I will say no more about this.
Kinkhavenokay this didn’t actually happen but I’m hyperstitioning it.
Inkhaven has been one of the best months of my life. Some people got financial aid to be here; I paid full whack and it wasn’t cheap, but it was absolutely worth it. If you’re on the fence, go for it. I would do it again in a heartbeat.
awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww