Day 6 of #1000wordsofsummer 2024

If you live in New Orleans, I will be hosting a happy hour write-along at Low Point Coffee this Saturday from 5-7 PM. I will also be popping by the Third Lantern Lit write-along tonight at The Domino.

If you’re just joining us now, Day 1 of this project starts here, and you can access all the archives here. Here is a FAQ. Also, 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. You can buy it anywhere books are sold.

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Hi friends.

Today you will write 1000 words. Because you long for a sense of completion in our world of unending questions, trapdoor possibilities, and fuzzy nuances. All those non-stop moving-target challenges that come with being an adult here on planet earth? Well, here is one thing you can do that is fixed and permanent. Words on the page. You can write these damn words every day for two weeks straight and then you will have done it. Then you are done. One thousand answers to one question. Can I do it again today? Yes, you can.

My muse

I always learn something new when I read the work of Emily Raboteau. She writes, as she puts it, at the intersection of social and environmental justice, race, climate change, and parenthood. She is widely published, appearing in The New York Times, New York, Best American Science Writing and more. A full professor at the City College of New York in Harlem, her past celebrated books include Searching for Zion, winner of an American Book Award, and the novel, The Professor’s Daughter. And, for the past 6 years, since the release of the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, she has channeled her literary gaze specifically on the climate crisis.

This focus recently resulted in the publication of Lessons for Survival: Mothering Against “the Apocalypse,” a critically acclaimed work of reportage and autobiography. The New York Times Book Review said it was, “A soulful exploration of the fraught experience of caretaking through crisis,” and no less than Jane Smiley herself called it “required reading.”

I love Emily’s voice and the way she thinks. (This piece is an excellent entry point into her work.) She is doing important work for all of us, with grace and care.

Her charity of choice is the Black Trans Advocacy Coalition and you can buy her books at her local shop, Word Up Community Bookshop. Here’s Emily on great work advice:

“The worst time in my writing life happened after I had back-to-back babies and then my computer crashed. I was sleep deprived. The babies were both in diapers. I lost the novel I’d been working on for a decade. I tried everything to retrieve my work, but it was gone. Poof. I mourned my previous life, before the babies, back when I was single, and dinner might have been a single artichoke plus a glass of red wine on my fire escape at 11pm before pulling an all-nighter to meet a writing deadline. Part of me wanted to jump off the George Washington Bridge.  Also, I was (and still am) married to a writer more famous than myself. Every writer has her gremlins. These were mine.

I complained about all this to a childhood friend who was (and still is) a moral philosopher. She advised me to hire her work coach. This work coach specialized in helping women in academia to finish writing their books. This was not exactly my profile although I was (and still am) employed as a professor. However, I trusted my friend who had benefited from the coaching. She described it as something like therapy. It would be expensive, my friend warned me, but worth the expense. I hired the work coach. I regained my footing. And now, I am going to share with you what this work coach taught me.

1. You have more time than you think. You just waste way too much of it on social media and returning emails. Therefore, during your scheduled writing time, use an app to block yourself from accessing those time-sucks.

2. Schedule your regular writing time. Put it in your calendar. It is sacrosanct. It should be regular. It’s best if you work in the morning. Really early, if need be, before everyone else wakes up and needs things of you. Your writing sessions need not be long. They may only be a half hour each weekday, for example. Studies have shown that you will be more productive if you write for a half hour each morning than if you do something like pull an all nighter once every two weeks after drinking red wine on your fire escape.

3. Find an accountability partner. This should be someone who needs an accountability partner as much as you do. Meet with them regularly to share work and feedback, online if you must, but in-person is better.

4. Set weekly goals. Baby steps. Report back to your accountability partner whether you have met those goals.

5. Say no. Say no to ten things a week. Saying no can look like telling your partner that you are not cooking dinner or telling your boss that you can’t take on that other project that isn’t your writing.

6. Writing is a like a muscle. If you commit to exercising it regularly, it will get stronger.

7. When you feel negatively about the act of writing or lacking in confidence, tell yourself, ‘I get to do this,’ rather than, ‘I have to do this.’ Make ‘I get to do this,’ your mantra.

8. Make sure your writing chair is not terrible for your back. Stretch. Hydrate. Set your phone timer at regular intervals, such as 30 minutes, to remind yourself to get up from your chair to stretch and drink water.

These practices helped me (and still do). I hope they might help some of you, too.”

What an incredible list for all of us. Good luck out there today.

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.