Tracking What Works

Some hot tips for #1000wordsofsummer.

Hi friends.

I have been quietly doing my own #1000wordsofsummer warmup session this past week and will carry it through for the full two weeks. I wanted to get some momentum leading up to this summer’s session, but also I was interested in seeing if there were any new lessons to be learned from it that I might not be able to pick up in the throes of the main event. I basically just decided to be my own test case so I could share my findings with you. I hope it helps you to be better prepared for the big summer event. (A reminder that it starts May 31 and runs through June 13!)

I have appreciated the experience this past six days and look forward to finishing it up next week. I have also appreciated the presence of a person named Juno, who has been tracking their word count every day alongside me here. I’ll get more into this as we get closer to the main event (six-and-a-half weeks away!) but finding one (or a few) accountability partners can really help the two weeks of writing hum along.

And I love that Juno was unknown to me before and has basically become intrinsic to my writing process in a short period of time by being the one person regularly showing up. (No easy feat to show up every day!) We need consistency, we need support. And god, isn’t it nice to know we’re not alone out there? So thank you, Juno.

Anyway here are a few things that I noted this past week which might be helpful for you this summer. (Or really anytime at all if you’re trying to get things going on your work.)

1. Write at the same time every day. Make it feel like a ritual. Pick an assigned time when nothing else can happen but that. I looked at it as a standing date with myself and my brain, and it made me feel like I was taking my writing seriously.

2. Read something good. Something that challenges you a little bit. I like a book by a mid-career author at the top of their game. Someone who has worked out all the kinks in their work. I can’t really make recommendations because there are so many genres of writing out there. But I can tell you that I’ve been reading Flashlight, the new Susan Choi novel that’s coming out this fall (galley brag), and everything about it was so elevated that it’s been pushing me every day in an extremely healthy way. I went into reading it knowing I was going to read a master class in sentences alone and I got one.

3. Nighttime strategizing. Every evening I’ve been making a list of untouched (or unfinished) chapters or scenes left to write, and also some questions I might have for my narrator. I can sleep easier knowing I have something I can just instantly target in the morning. Plus it allows my sleeping brain to chew on it a little bit too.

4. Get a good night’s sleep. Choose to get the sleep you need so your mind can operate better the next day. And I know a lot of us are tossing and turning in these modern times. But shutting off the screens at a certain hour can help. Closing your phones or turning off your television set is actually an act of commitment to yourself and your brain.

5. Write with abandon. I’ve just been writing in a whirlwind every morning with no judgement. Knowing that it didn’t have to be perfect, and that I could just dump it in a big messy word doc at the end of the day has been such a freeing feeling. Even if you don’t use everything (or anything!) you write that day, it’s good to just keep going and push through it. All we’re trying to do here is let the words pile up. You can always clean them up later. But you need to have written to have something to edit.

I’ll also recommend to you that if you haven’t read the book version of this site and summer project yet—1000 Words: A Writer's Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round—I’d highly recommend it as a resource. You can buy it, of course, but it might also be available at your local library. I put this book together in hopes of being useful, so I hope you’ll access it however it’s available to you!

That’s it for today. I’m off to work on my nascent backyard garden. I keep trying to remind myself that I have the rest of my life to build out this garden, so I don’t need to rush on it. But it’s just so fun to dig in the dirt.

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.