I’m still in Portland, working in the mornings, playing tourist in the afternoons, wandering through rose gardens, going to vintage stores, looking at old things, insisting on saying hello to people on the street because I can’t break the habit. I’m just going to give you a morning greeting as we pass by each other, even if we’ll never see each other again.

Mostly I have been on my own these past few days, until some friends arrive in town, and also I have a workshop to teach, and a reading to give, tonight. I’ve been getting up extra early, going to sleep early, too. A strange kind of vacation when you stop talking to people for a few days and just read instead. There is always that initial stimulation when we go somewhere new. We want to try all the things, be out and about. But I fall back into my old habits after a while. When solitude feels good and clean.

Still, I appreciate the time I have had with the people in this town. Everyone I know is big-hearted and focused on having a nice life and being a successful artist. It’s nice to be around that kind of energy.

When I had lunch with Chelsea last weekend we talked about all the things that writers do at these kinds of lunches. Money, the publishing industry, our time, our triumphs, our complaints, and then we spend forty-five minutes lovingly describing the plot of our new books.

I realized this morning that one thing that came up in our conversation might be an interesting writing prompt for us for the weekend.

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Sometimes you go to a reading or a literary event and an idea from it really sticks in your head. A year later I’m still thinking about a particular line of discussion that took place during the launch event for Laura van den Berg’s brilliant novel State of Paradise. In the novel, a tech company develops a portal-like device, with the slogan go where you need to be. That night, Laura was in conversation with Marie-Helene Bertino and Hilary Leichter, and eventually the question was raised: What’s your portal?

I loved hearing everyone’s answers and I really chewed on it for a while. (Mine is reading a book!) Afterward I told Laura that “What’s your portal?” would have been a great marketing tagline for the book.

Sometimes a cake is a portal

The paperback for State of Paradise is out on July 8 and so I thought I’d revisit the question with Laura. Here are some thoughts from her on it:

“I remember that night Marie-Helene said she thought of portals as a kind of one-way gate: once you went through you could not go back. A portal was an escape to another place, yes, but also the passage through marked a turn or a change. I’ve been carrying that question around with me ever since: asking it of myself and of others. What are the things that allow you to escape to another place while also changing you along the way?

In the last year I’ve gathered so many answers! Grief, love, running a marathon, making art, travel, rehabbing a house, turning a desolate patch of land into a garden. As I’ve settled into a new project, I’ve thought often that writing a book definitely counts as a portal. I escape into this world I’ve imagined, and also the regular commitment to the work changes me over time. Usually these changes are subtle, but I never feel like I’m quite the same person by the end of a project. In fact, the moments of greatest ‘stuckness’ often happen because I was resisting some kind of needed change, either to my process or how I was thinking about the story or maybe even my own understanding of the kind of writer I am or am not.”

So I think you can see where I’m going with this. My question for you this weekend is: What’s your portal?

Have a nice Sunday.

Jami

You are reading Craft Talk, the home of #1000wordsofsummer and also a weekly newsletter about writing from Jami Attenberg. I’m also on bluesky and instagram.

Moments ago, I sent a draft of my new novel to Kristen to read. Briefly, I felt like vomiting (totally normal), but I’m glad I sent it.

It made me think about how the real risk in writing sometimes is not the time we commit to it or the way we dig so deep within ourselves (although those are certainly risks!), but the act of choosing to share it with people. Everything’s nice and safe if we just keep it all for ourselves. But asking people’s opinions on it? Jumping off a goddamn cliff.

Here’s to a soft landing.

Today I’m wondering about your experience with #1000wordsofsummer. I first want to extend a big thank you to all those who donated. We made our goal of $26,000, with an extra $200 as lagniappe, which went to The Lynx Watch. Thanks for your commitment to these wonderful charities.

As to the writing itself, I’ve mentioned this before, but there is always a surprise in my own work every summer.

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Greetings from the Ragdale Residency, where I’ve been writing and thriving and also helping to support this wonderful cultural institution all weekend through a series of fundraising events. It’s a really beautiful spot.

Here are some of my comrades for the weekend, the brilliant novelists Ramona Ausubel and Xochitl Gonzalez, gamely posing in the wind.

There were many conversations about the important of supporting the arts right now (but really always) and it was exhilarating to think about what these kinds of places can do for an artist. Even for the few days I was there I got a tremendous amount of work done. So thank you to Ragdale for having me.

And now here’s just a quick, thoughtful little weekend prompt for you.

Last week I went to a launch party for my friend Dan Brook’s new book The Einstein of Sex, and it was one of the best book parties I’ve been to in a long time. The party took its inspiration from the Weimar Berlin cabaret scene, of which the subject of the book, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, was considered the “intellectual impresario.” There were gorgeous musical performances, a corresponding lecture on the emergence of queer acceptance, and a weird little dancing marionette. It felt worldly, eccentric and chic.

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Greetings from the other side of a snowstorm.

I just finished Aria Aber’s Good Girl, which I loved. It was so juicy and vibrant and moving, and the language was top-notch. Here’s a great review of it from pal (and 1000 Words contributor) R.O. Kwon.

Now I’m about to dig into friend (and another 1000 Words contributor!) Laila Lalami’s The Dream Hotel, which is already so suspenseful and riveting.

What are you reading right now?

Happy Sunday, y’all.

Jami

You are reading Craft Talk, the home of #1000wordsofsummer and also a weekly newsletter about writing from Jami Attenberg. I’m also on bluesky and instagram.

At the reading series I did in Savannah, they told me in advance they’d ask me a particular question during the interview portion of the night. It ended up being a little writing prompt for me, and it was nice to think about the past for a second rather than the present. So I’ll send you off into the weekend with it. If you’re looking to exercise your brain in a new way or want to take your mind off the right now of our world or just want a little nudge this morning, away you go.

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Also the paperback version of 1000 Words is out January 7, and might even be in shops this coming week. If you see it in a bookstore, will you post a pic and tag me?

Hi friends.

All the boxes are unpacked over here from the move, or maybe a better word is “emptied” although not necessarily “put away.” But all cardboard has been broken down and removed from the house. I moved ceaselessly for five days in a row, but it is done.

There’s been not much of a holiday season for me here, except that I gave myself the gift of a brand-new life, which is not nothing.

I’m starting to see a path to writing again, and I was thinking I needed a New Year’s Day read to get my head in shape. Do you have a book you’re thinking of reading that day?

For me, there’s one book I can return to that usually clarifies thing for me: Bluets by Maggie Nelson.

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Also if you are in Los Angeles, I will be talking about 1000 Words and A Reason to See You Again at Vroman’s Bookstore on January 16. It’s my first time in California since before the pandemic! Come say hi.

Hi friends.

I’ve been composing too much on my phone lately and I blew out my left thumb and I’m taking a few days to recover. So today’s missive is a thread as opposed to a letter, but it’s one I’ve been contemplating for a few days. In the comments, you were chatting about things we indulge in that feel like distractions, but this got me thinking about things that are not necessarily writing and “part of the process” but might be fuel for the writing anyway.

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I’m sending this weekend thread out early because I’ll be traveling for the next five days, to Mississippi today and to Florida starting tomorrow. I get to play with Kristen Arnett and Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya and Lauren Groff. It’s gonna be a real good time.

The book, which occupies most of my brain space, has been out for just three weeks. Still, somehow, magically, I’ve been getting a little writing done. Getting up early, taking those walks through the neighborhood, and scratching out a few words here there. Feels good to be productive. When I can get out of my own way, that is.

This week I was sitting outside on the back porch, writing in my little notebook, working on this new novel, staying in the moment of the story, when all of a sudden I caught myself judging what I was writing as I wrote it.

I heard myself saying, “This is not as strong as it could be.”

A-ha, the Inner Reviewer had returned. (I picture her with a beret and she vapes and she’s really skinny and lives in like, Berlin, and she learns new foreign languages simply so she can read books in their original tongue.)

Immediately I was pulled out of my narrator’s head and the scene itself, stopped from writing further. I did it to myself. I tricked myself into stopping. I tricked myself into not believing in my own process and work.

Here’s how I found my way back into the writing again just a few minutes later:

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Hi friends.

I woke up this morning with no fresh sentences in my head. But I did have a new name of a character and I will take it.

He was a minor character thus far in the thirty thousand words I had written. He had a few good lines in chapter one that were both funny and moved the story along, and then he disappeared forever. I hadn’t even known I was thinking about him. I hadn’t realized that I needed to name him. I didn’t even think he was going to show up again at any point later in the book and yet the very act of naming him fleshed him out in a brand new way in my head. I saw his clothes, his hairstyle, I heard his speaking voice.

What was his name?

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My new book comes out in nine days, and I’ll be heading out on tour which means I have arrived at what I think of as “Suitcase Season.” This is when I’m just in and out of the house for two months and I never put my suitcase away because I’m always just a few days away from packing it up again.

I’m always trying to game the system, pack the lightest, the smartest, the most comfortable, especially if I’m going out for an extended trip of say, more than a week. Because it’s just me and my suitcase for a while and it really becomes the most familiar and stabilizing force in my life. A good travel hack is one of my love languages.

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I’ve been reading a lot this month.

I’m in the midst of Middlemarch (which we will not speak of until we reach the other side), and friend of the ‘stack Emma Eisenberg’s joyously written Housemates. And I finished #1000wordsofsummer contributor Liz Moore’s big bestseller The God of the Woods, which had such a great and satisfying ending and also a few moments throughout where I was like, “Fuck yeah, Liz Moore!” I’m also dipping into Rosa Alcalá’s poetry collection, You, and I have to read just a little bit at a time because I don’t want that first read to be over quite yet.

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I adopted my dog a year ago this week. Here he is:

He came to me from New Iberia, LA via Baton Rouge. He is (mostly) Chihuahua and Rat Terrier. He is a charmer and a rascal and he loves to play tug-of-war with my socks. He respects a small business, especially one with treats. He likes to have a job like Protect Home From Strangers but is also content to laze in the sun. Every night he pretends to go to sleep at my feet but often ends up on a pillow next to my head by the morning. He likes to sit next to me when I read. He respects books and journals but hates laptops. I wish that I could enter a room with as much confidence as he does. He clearly thinks he is some kind of dog royalty and who am I to argue? A good dog, little Leo. A friend for life.

I’m leaving this thread open for you to tell me about your wonderful rescue pet who makes your life better every day.

Love,

Jami

You are reading Craft Talk, the home of #1000wordsofsummer and also a weekly newsletter about writing from Jami Attenberg. I’m also on twitter and instagram.

The only time I’ve ever written a direct fictionalization of a real person’s life was with my fifth book, Saint Mazie. (You can read a little bit about the real person here or here, in the original piece Joseph Mitchell wrote about her in The New Yorker.) At the time, there was just enough information about her out in the universe for me to get inspired by her story, her complexities as a person and a woman and a member of her community, but also the beauty of her spirit and her generosity toward others. She occupied space in my mind immediately—and then she was stuck there forever.

Soon enough, I took off with the little I could discover about her and imagined a whole life. After the fact of publication, I learned even more about her from people who knew her in her past, decades ago, when they were children. She remains a role model for me and a creative inspiration even though I’ve long since stopped writing about her. I even pass by a picture of her every day. I situated it in a central place in my home because she maintains a central place in my mind.

Certainly there are other people I’ve met or learned about in my life who have inspired bits and pieces of my writing, though no one so directly as her. And I guess I am wondering today if there’s anyone who has stimulated your writing, someone who you still think about or remember as an influence?

I am contemplating all this because the world is moving and shifting so quickly, and we receive and dispense with information about people and their lives and move onto the next story without thinking too hard about any of it. These stories simply disappear from our timeline.

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What I think is wonderful about writing is that we are able to fix a place and a time and people—fictional or otherwise, depending on what you’re writing—permanently on the page. Writing (and reading, of course!) books is a way to make the world stop spinning for a second. I am clinging to that every day lately.

I’m leaving this thread open to everyone. I’d love to hear all your stories of people who have fascinated you with their wisdom or their complexities or wildness or energy or humor. Who are the people who have influenced or inspired your work along the way? Who are the people who stuck?

Jami

You are reading Craft Talk, the home of #1000wordsofsummer and also a weekly newsletter about writing from Jami Attenberg. I’m also on twitter and instagram.

While I was with Kristen this past week in Alabama one of the things we talked about was the challenge of the publication process. And that doesn’t just mean having sold a book and having it edited or watching it go out in the world. It truly could be anything from prepping your book to send out to a specific reader for feedback, or when you are in the process of pitching it to an agent. Not to mention when it is finally out on submission to editors and we just sit and wait. That complicated moment when we transition from art to business. It can twist us up inside. How do we find relief or a feeling of safety?

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Good morning from LaGuardia Airport, where I’m waiting to head back home. I’ve spent the past ten days making progress on my novel-in-progress. Just kind of rereading and reorganizing and reordering all these words. My favorite little trick right now is one that I lean on when I’m feeling a little stuck or stopped in my tracks. It can be a helpful gesture to keep things moving along—at the very least.

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This week I was chatting with some friends about how consistently we take walks and what we use them for (thinking, daydreaming, problem solving, exercise, stress relieving, sweating out the toxins of our daily existence) which led to a discussion about how we take notes when we are away from our desk and what our tools are in general. All the little objects, patterns, and strategies that help us keep track of our ideas. (Yes, this is our idea of a fun conversation.)

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Hi friends.

Yesterday I sold my own books at a little sidewalk sale at a cafe near my house and it was delightful. I love freeing my archives. I don’t think it does me any good to have a bunch of first editions of my books stuck in my attic.

Also I had lots of nice conversations with friends and acquaintances and some new people I met for the first time. With some folks we chatted about writing and creativity and with some folks we talked about our dogs and with some folks we talked about the heat, because it was hot. We sat in the shade and tried not to move around too much. Everyone was in good spirits. Everyone had something nice to say.

I enjoyed almost all of my conversations in one way or another but there was one that I found a little more satisfying than the rest.

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Greetings from another airport, my second-to-last work trip for a while. Am I a little tired? Well, sure. I got up early! But this is the life of a writer trying to pay the bills in America right now. I don’t know anyone who gets to just write a book and be done with it already. And talking to people about 1000 Words has been a valuable, joyful experience these past five months. Thanks to those who have been showing up. (Shout out to those nice, smiling ladies in Greensboro!)

So I taught a workshop this weekend, as I did last weekend, and there was a moment where I looked up and a bunch of people were writing down what I had just said and it was something I had made up on the spot and I was like, “Shit, wait, what did I just say?” (Don’t worry, I found out later what it was. Thank goodness for people who take notes in class.)

But it got me thinking about great, memorable writing advice that I have received in my life, and also wondering about the best advice other people have received in their lives. The stuff that really stuck with them.

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Greetings from New Brunswick, where I gave a brand-new-for-the-first-time talk yesterday to a room of gorgeous and curious people. It was pleasant to be up north for a few days where it’s nice and cool. It was also really lovely to see my old friend Roxane Gay, and to watch her do her thing for a minute with a crowd. If you ever get a chance to see her speak, I highly recommend it.

OK, here’s a juicy subject for you that I can’t just shake this Sunday morning.

A few weeks ago I sent someone the galley of my new novel and then they read it and sent me a nice email about it. At the very end of that email, in a casual p.s., they mentioned a factual error embedded in a line of dialogue that I had just somehow missed, as had the copy editor, even though we had rigorously edited that book.

I sent a frantic email to my publisher. Would we be able to fix it in the first printing?

I made my peace with it: if it had to remain, it had to remain. But I still held my breath as I sent them a new line of dialogue as a fix.

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