At Least We're Trying

We are, right?

While I am mainly writing this year, I am allowing a few events on my calendar in the future. If you’re in Portland, OR, please mark your calendars for a workshop and reading on July 12. (More details to come.) I’m working on some fall dates in New York and New Orleans. If you want me to come speak to your organization, hit me up.

If you’re in Chicago, I’ll be appearing at two events in May in support of the wonderful Ragdale Foundation. More details here.

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Hi friends.

We had a big rain in the city yesterday and now it’s all gray and cool here and in my backyard the birds are chatting to each other rather boisterously and my zucchini plant flowered boldly overnight. We’re just a few weeks or so away from the weather getting hot, although I suppose it depends on what your definition of hot is as it’s already in the 80s here most days. Oh it’s not too bad out yet, I keep thinking. My sensitivity to heat has been altered over the years so I don’t even know we’re in it until we’re really in it.

I did notice the jasmine flowers had started to fall and pile up on the sidewalks, though. That always seems to signal something’s coming. I wrote that down, thought I might use it in the novel. A way to indicate a changing of the season, from spring to summer, without actually saying it out loud. I hunger for these effortless little details. I grab them where I can.

I wrote down, too, that the garden shop was giving away all its unsold Easter lilies yesterday. Nobody loved you, I thought. But I do. I repotted mine out back and then forgot about it when the rain came and by the time I recovered it some of the flowers had been rained off entirely. Everything’s falling, melting, drooping. I put the pot in my kitchen and when I woke up this morning it was starting to stink up the kitchen with its scent.

I sat next to it with my coffee and my journal and wrote for a while about how I wished I were a better person, and I wondered if I would ever get somewhere else in my life—spiritually? soulfully?—that’s different than where I am now. And then I wrote, “Well, at least you try.”

At least I try.

I’ve been gone this past week here because I was over here, where there are some letters for you if you need a little pick me up. What did you do this past week? Did you read something good? Did you write any good sentences? Did you achieve any moments of clarity? I write this to you today without having read a lick of news yet. I write this to you from the perspective of just one writer to another, asking you how your work is going. If I leave you with any writing prompt today it’s just that: a check in with yourself to see where you’re at with your work.

As for me, I successfully finished my practice run of #1000wordsofsummer, and I ’ve crossed the 75k threshold on this novel of mine. (I have a title but I won’t share it until I’m sure it’s the one.) (Although I’m pretty sure it is.) I’m spending the next few weeks cleaning up what I’ve written thus far in this final third so I know what holes are left to be filled.

Already I can see there’s two smaller storylines that need to feel more rewarding and fully realized. And I’ll probably need to retroactively outline the final third so I can see what order everything needs to happen in for it to make sense, but also for it to feel more suspenseful to the reader. And I need to smooth out the narrator’s voice, to make sure it matches all the parts, even though it’s allowed to sound a little bit different, older versus younger, because there is a span of time involved.

Also there’s just some writing I need to trash entirely. I had some moments in the past two weeks where I actively wrote something just so I could throw it away. I remember thinking, this is the wrong thing, and the wrong way to write this scene, but it’s the thing in my head and I’m just going to put it down to make some room for the right way. And eventually I got there. To the right way.

Even the mistakes are part of the process. The books we read, the little details we seek and document, and the things we write so we can throw them away. The quiet moments in the morning where we are listening to the birds and smelling the drenched Easter lilies. Every last bit of it. All of it is a part of the process.

I hope you have a steady week.

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.