How to Shut Out the World

Hi friends.

Been working working working over here. But also I had some nice dinners this week and I went swimming and I met a puppy and I wrote quietly at my local while drinking a glass of cold white wine.

Also I dug through my closet and resurrected some dresses I wore repeatedly on past book tours and then got so sick of them I never wanted to see them again. Maybe for the tenth book it’s time for some greatest hits.

Anyway, five weeks to go until the book comes out! So it’s positive stimulation only, people, or I’m just gonna take a nap instead.

Even though I’ve been working, it felt like things were moving kind of slow this week. I don’t really get stuck or stopped with my writing but if I do it’s just because I’m problem-solving and my brain will get there eventually.

I do like to try this One Easy Trick to get things moving again. (It’s one I’ve certainly written about before, but it’s always nice to have a reminder of something that’s helpful.) I find answering the question “Why do I write?” can help shake things loose.

This morning I wrote in my journal:

Sometimes I write just so I don’t have to think about anything else in the world. I do it so I can be alone with myself.

If one value of writing to me is the pleasure of solitude and shutting out all the noise, then I can apply that to the writing itself. I can really sink myself into a scene, or at least the landscapes of it, imagining that world and no other. Writing down to the very print on the wallpaper. Or I can use the opportunity to dig around in a character’s mind, what they think about in their quiet moments, when they are alone with themselves and have nowhere to hide.

And, at the very least, I can think about what the pleasures are of any of my characters. Even if they are nothing like me—and most of them aren’t—they have joys and amusements and habits that feed them, that can trigger a blissful, safe or stimulated state. Spending a little time identifying them always gets me to a new place.

Now the story is cracked open for me again. Now I am seeing new ways in or, possibly, answers to lingering issues. And all I had to do was ask myself a simple question.

I’ll end here with a reminder that there is a Mini 1000 coming up at the end of the month, August 29-September 2. (Sign up here.) If this is your first time doing it, I truly recommend the book version of this newsletter as a motivator. Lots of libraries have it in stock if you don’t want to buy it!

The Mini is really the last burst of writing I’m going to do for a while as I sink into my last wave of book promotion for 2024. It has been a busy year. I bet it’s been the same for you, too. So let’s see what we can get down on the page together during this shared moment in time. Let’s give this thing one more shot.

And then I’m going to cut myself some slack when I hit the road for A Reason to See You Again. Whatever gets done is what gets done. Maybe I’ll only write when I need to shut out the world for a second.

I hope you have a gorgeous 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 twitter and instagram.