1000 Words of Summer 2026 - Day 8

A letter from Paul Yoon.

If you are just joining us, here is the FAQ.

Want to support some incredible charities and also help sponsor a Scholastic Book Fair for a school in New Orleans? Today is the day to do it. Even a few bucks will help. Subscribe, venmo or read more about it here.

---

Hi friends.

Today you will write 1000 words. Because you have decided—correctly—to believe in yourself. You have spent the last week in a kind of communion with your brain and its output. You have been trusting in your own interests, theories, and feelings. Engaging with your intellect. Taking the artistic and creative parts of yourself seriously. You are doing the right thing with your life, with your time, in this moment. Congratulations. Now let’s go finish the rest of these words.

We are at day EIGHT, which is crazy. How are we feeling? Are we in a rhythm now? Do we know what we need from our day to write? Have we learned how to claim it for ourselves?

I hope, at the very least, you are having a little fun.

Two things that are true at the same time about today’s contributing writer: Paul Yoon is an incredible writer and also Paul Yoon is my friend’s nice husband. (I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it when my friends have nice husbands, it is so much better than the alternative.)

Paul has written five acclaimed books including Snow Hunters, which won the Young Lions Fiction Award and most recently, The Hive and the Honey, which won The Story Prize and was described as “virtuosic” by Vanity Fair. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship amongst other accolades, his stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, and The Best American Short Stories. (Here, read this story, it’s wonderful.) He also teaches at Harvard University.

His new novel, Etna, is forthcoming from Scribner. Of it, Hernan Diaz said it was, “A sublimely quiet depiction of loneliness and disorientation,” and the New York Times named it one of the novels everyone will be talking about in 2026. Out this August, I encourage you to pre-order it here. (Shout out to Suzanna at Oblong Books!)

Here Paul muses on how less time to write can still lead to better writing. He’s asked that his donation go to Pet Rescue by Judy in Sanford, FL.