I’m 1000 Words and So Can You
There’s a reason the main branch of the Jacksonville Public Library system gets a shoutout in How to Keep a Husband for 10 Days, and it’s not just because of its gorgeous architecture. If this city didn’t have such a dynamic library system, Florida would be that much more unlivable. But luckily JPL has incredible (and usually free!) adult programming, including their Writer's Lab series, a monthly writing workshop with generative lectures hosted guest authors and publishing professionals. I've hosted one before and will be hosting one again in February (details below).
More importantly, I had an absolutely lovely time attending one hosted by novelist, memoirist, and bestselling author Jami Attenberg (The Middlesteins, I Came All This Way to Meet You) this past Saturday.
The workshop was an interactive, generative tour through the concept behind Attenberg’s latest work, a craft book called 1000 Words. The fact that it’s hit multiple bestseller lists and at last count was on its fourth printing underlines the impact it’s having on writers the world over.
What Is 1000 Words?
1000 Words isn’t just a book, though.
(It’s a lifestyle. Mostly kidding.)
No, it’s a community that started in 2018 when Jami and her friend, a memoirist, both needed pushes to reach the other side of their writing goals.
They settled on 1,000 words a day, which felt doable for their projects and which, at the end of three to six months, would get them good first drafts, which they could revise over the next six months. (Everyone's at a different point in their writing journey, so 1,000 words doesn't always work, Attenberg said in her craft talk. Really this challenge translates to "Do a good day's work," whatever that means to you in your present moment.)
With author Jami Attenberg.
Attenberg posted about this journey, first on Twitter, now on Substack. Her Twitter followers in 2018 clamored to participate as well, and over the intervening six years, #1000WordsofSummer has reached tens of thousands of writers. (It's now charitable too. Last year, 1000 Words raised $30,000 for charity and hosted a Scholastic Book Fair in a title I school in New Orleans, where Attenberg lives.)
Resting is a Creative Act
After explaining the main concept of #1000Words, she talked about building in periods of rest around the generative work. 1000 Words comes out of what has traditionally been a summertime writing challenge, so in keeping with the book's subtitle, A Writer's Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round, she discussed how the four seasons, literal or proverbial, can bolster our creative generativity. There’s
Summer as the season of creation;
Fall as one of harvest and giving yourself grace for what you did and didn’t accomplish;
Winter as a period of intention-setting; and
Spring as a time to think about the planning and logistics of your projects, almost like plotting out a future garden.
“It’s going to sting.”
If you're using the literal or figurative summer season of 1000 Words to draft rather than to revise, Jami says it should be "messy. First-drafty." That's okay and definitely expected. "It's going to sting no matter what," she said before we got into our first in-workshop writing prompt. "Just go for it."
And sting it did, sitting in Conference Room A of the University Place Library on Saturday morning, but in a good and healing way, like Bactine over a scraped palm.
It was a moving and a vulnerable thing to be sitting among other writers, doing the thing we all love, separate but together. I was moved to tears a couple of times during the workshop, especially during our second writing prompt, an artist's statement that asked us to interrogate our past, present, and future selves. I thought a lot during that prompt about the joy and the safe space, the one healthy thing I could control when things got weird, that the act of writing has brought me in the past. I also thought about how I can build up a seawall to protect it so that the ebbs and flows of industry don't wash that joy away.
So happy that my friend Hurley Winkler was at the workshop too. <3
Before this workshop, I didn't know much about the community #1000Words has generated apart from what I'd seen on Twitter, but I'm in awe of it now. One woman in the Writer’s Lab raised her hand at an early point and asked, somewhat flabbergasted, if she was the only non-writer in the room. She self-described in this way but also stated that she had felt a pull, time and again in her life, to write more than just poems for colleagues who were retiring and love letters in her husband’s birthday cards. The magic wasn't lost on me that, as we all did a writing exercise or two, she had technically transformed into a writer.
After the Writer’s Lab, I bought a copy of 1000 Words, which I look forward to getting into no later than this July, when my dear friend Hurley Winkler is discussing it with her Book Club for Writers. I also almost definitely overshared with Jami Attenberg in her signing line about how much her lecture had meant to me, how it had buoyed my spirits and given me some encouragement, to which she replied, by signing my book, “Good luck with all your projects.” 🫶🏽
If you want writing thoughts from Jami Attenberg all year round—and obviously you do—you should subscribe to her weekly newsletter, Craft Talk. She has some great guest writers lined up for #1000WordsofSummer 2024, and I’m looking forward to joining in.
Upcoming Events:
I’ll be making a guest author appearance at Rebel Readers’s January Book Club. They’re meeting this Sunday, January 28, from 12 to 2 p.m. at Wicked Barley in Jacksonville! Don’t miss out!
I'll be attending AWP 2024 in Kansas City, Missouri. Let me know if I'll see you there so we can grab some barbecue and complain about the midwestern coldness.
I'm interviewing Emily Rath for Jacksonville Public Library's Lit Chat series on Galentine's Day. You can register here, though be advised priority is given to library card holders.
Comp Title Book Club with Michelle Lizet Flores. February 16, 6:30 p.m. Register for the live chat here.
The following Saturday, February 17, I'm hosting a Writer’s Lab event (also with the library system) called Not Your Mama's Romance Novel, about how the romance genre has evolved, especially over the last decade. Join us, won’t you?
