Day 5 of #1000wordsofsummer 2024

If you’re just joining us now, Day 1 of this project starts here, and you can access all the archives here.

There is a FAQ which will hopefully answer all your questions about this project.

There is a slack where you can connect with other writers.

There is a companion book to this project containing the words of 54 contributing writers and it is wonderful and helpful.

I always forget we have mug and t-shirts. But we do!

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Hi friends.

Today you will write 1000 words because you are interested in figuring out how strong you are, how persistent, how focused. You are testing yourself. It’s day 5. And it’s starting to feel like real work now. The everyday-ness of it. But you can do this, I promise you. Just make the time for yourself. Then sit down, and write. Your 1000 words are waiting for you.

This morning I wrote in my journal: Take whatever speaks to you and use it. There is an entire world of inspiration waiting for you to take it.

So today, I shall take it.

Today’s contributing writer is Justin Taylor, an old, dear friend of mine who I have known since our New York days, when I remember him as a rising star and also a diligent and committed educator, riding the subways up and down the length of the city from adjunct job to adjunct job, piecing together this life of a writer, focused, steady, determined, and also wickedly talented. I remember when he got that first story in the The New Yorker. I remember when he got that first rave in the NYTBR for his debut collection. It is heartwarming to watch his career flourish. He is a lifer.

And now he is the author of five books, including the wonderful memoir Riding with the Ghost, and is the Director of the Sewanee School of Letters, and he just received the cover review of the NYTBR for his hilarious and wildly inventive new novel, Reboot. He is one of the most fun people I know to discuss writing with because he has read practically everything and thinks deeply about craft, but also because writing seems so playful for him, too. I was delighted he agreed to write for us this year, but then extra pleased to see it was on one of my favorite topics.

Signed copies of his book are available at Powell’s and he has asked that his donation go to Literary Arts. Here’s Justin on the magic of writing longhand.

“I’ve never been good at sticking to routines. I’m bad at recognizing patterns, easily distracted, and repetition bores me.  I like to court uncertainty, be open to spontaneity, let my subconscious take the wheel and the work swerve where it will. If I had to express this as a literary value, I would call it a desire for self-surprise.

When I read a book and am elated by a turn of phrase or bowled over by a bizarrely brilliant insight or a shocking character development, I believe that my experience is a mimesis of the surprise that the writer felt when they first put it down on the page. My hope is to give my readers that kind of experience, which means I first have to figure out how to give it to myself.

I am not precious about where I write, or what time of day, or how often. I don’t outline. I don’t write every day. If anything, my one constant is to avoid routines. But I do have a very specific process I use when I am writing.

I do all my first drafts longhand. 

That’s it.  

I like yellow legal pads but it could be a journal or a notebook or looseleaf. The kind of pen also doesn’t matter to me, though I am partial to a Pilot G-2 .7 with a clicker, or a Muji .5 gel. Black ink, ideally, but blue is fine. I’ve written in purple and sparkly glitter gel green when that was what was around. 

The reason I write longhand is because I type faster than I think, so when I get to the end of the line I am typing I have to pause to think of the next line. This costs me momentum and it leaves dead time when I might get self-conscious or distracted. When I am on my computer, well, I am on my computer, which is already a dangerously distracting and cluttered and emotionally charged space. It’s where my socials live, my personal email, my work email(s), my therapist, not to mention all my old writing and open tabs and video games and breaking news and my text messages, which forward automatically from my phone.  Even if I turn off the internet, the computer is still a massively overdetermined space, like a cemetery or a synagogue or your parents’ bedroom. 

A blank page comes to you free from history and you come to it without expectation. Also, writing by hand is a somatic experience. It’s like yoga breathing. Put your brain and your hand into rhythm with each other. Most of us write a little slower than we think, so our minds are shaping the next line while we’re finishing writing this one. We’ll hit a flow state faster and stay in it longer.

Eventually, of course, we will want to type up our stuff so that it’s in a format where we can work with it. But don’t rush to get there. Don’t be afraid to rest your draft the way you would a turkey before carving it. Or longer. It can be like making overnight oats, or aging whiskey, if we want it to be.

The ultimate goal here is simply to spend as much unmediated time as we can with our own writing, and to give it our best attention when we do. If we can manage that—whether for one hour a day, or one day a week, or whatever—the rest will take care of itself. One handwritten page at a time—we got this.”

Hope your pages are going well today, however you write them.

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.