Welcome to the newsletter home of New York Times bestselling author Jami Attenberg. You can get signed copies of any of my books via my local bookseller.
This newsletter serves two purposes.
Purpose 1:
For two weeks a year it is the home of the #1000wordsofsummer project, a 32,000 strong community of writers of all levels who are all supporting each other to write 1000 words a day for two weeks. This project has been in existence since 2018. The next round starts JUNE 1, 2024 and ends JUNE 14, 2024.
It works like this: every day you get a letter from me encouraging you to write. Most days another published author will contribute their thoughts on creativity, productivity, inspiration and more to the letter. You will write 1000 words at home or wherever you write. There is a slack for you to meet other participants and post your daily word count and more. People often track their progress on social media with #1000wordsofsummer. There is a community out there, but also this is very much about doing your own work. Still, we are all each other’s accountability partners: that is the magic of this project.
At the end of it all, you will have a big pile of words and a sense of accomplishment and hopefully the inspiration to keep going.
Here is a FAQ.
Here is an article I wrote about it on how it opened up my writing life.
Here is an article about it from the Associated Press.
Here is a podcast interview I did on the history of project.
And now it is a book which you can order a number of places!
Purpose 2:
For the rest of the year, it is a weekly newsletter on writing & publishing & living a creative life, an outgrowth of the #1000wordsofsummer project.
Once a week I will talk about writing sentences and essays and chapters and entire books and editing all of these kinds of things and how to motivate yourself and how to generate ideas and how to get inspired and how to navigate the publishing industry & more. I will ask other authors and creative people about these topics too.
There are subscriber-only discussion threads and archives. This part will not be free. It will be $5 a month or $50 a year.
About Jami Attenberg:
Jami is the author of seven books of fiction including The New York Times bestseller, The Middlesteins, Saint Mazie, All Grown Up, and, most recently, All This Could Be Yours. Her memoir, I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home, was published on January 11, 2022. 1000 WORDS was published on January 9, 2024, and a new novel, A Reason to See You Again, will be published on September 24, 2024. She has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Sunday Times and others. Her work has been published in sixteen languages. Follow her on twitter @jamiattenberg.