Writers: A group in Detroit wants to give you a free house

Writing. It’s a tough racket, especially if you aspire to do anything loftier than say mean things about people’s terrible attempts to parody Girls. Making money writing is hard, which makes you worry about money, which then makes your writing suffer. But now a civic-minded group in Detroit will just straight up give you a house, so long as you stay there and write for two years. Hey, you’ve made worse decisions.Write A House is an organization in Detroit that’s renovating houses with the hopes of handing them over to writers, who will be writers-in-residence, in a very literal fashion. Seeing as how it can sometimes feel like your choices with writing come down to either being poor by staying true to your artistic roots like a Barton Fink or getting rich by giving up and writing stories about how the Pope is a glittery vampire conspiracy like Dan Brown, this could give you a cushion to do the former.

Applications for the houses in Write A House won’t be reviewed until the Spring of next year, but that gives you some time to get your shit in order. They’re going to want a three page writing sample, your resume and two paragraphs on why you want one of the houses. We’d recommend proofreading it for typos. If you get a house, you’ll be required to contribute to the WAH blog,  show up and read at some readings and make your two years in Detroit one in which you stay involved in and become part of the community.

You’re probably expecting some jokes about Detroit now, but screw it, we’ve been to Detroit and it seemed fine. There’s a great baseball team with possibly the best baseball player in the world, things are cheaper and from what we remember, dumb kids are supposed to love urban decay. Of which there’s plenty. Plus, Detroit is much, much more interesting than Kansas.