When the Light Changes
My new book, A Reason to See You Again publishes next Tuesday. Vanity Fair just called me the “doyen of absorbing family excavations” and there is more press over here. Pre-order a signed copy here or anywhere you buy books.
My tour starts 9/22 in New Orleans with Patricia Lockwood, then 9/23 in Boston with Courtney Sullivan, then 9/24 in Brooklyn with Mary H.K. Choi, then 9/25 in DC with Linda Holmes, and then there is much more after that. Find the full list here.
The time is now, baby! Being a working artist is the great love and challenge of my life, and I appreciate you supporting me and my work. And I hope you enjoy my tenth book.
Hi friends.
Before we get into it today I just want to mention that after the hurricane I went to Mississippi for their book festival and I met lots of nice people and I taught a fun workshop on writing 1000 words a day and I had a great, long dinner with new writer friends and it was a pleasant two days away from home in a hotel. Then when I came home from Jackson, I noticed the light had changed. I have been extremely overwhelmed by so many things but noting that we were in a new season at least in terms of the morning skies was meaningful to me as someone who roams the streets early looking for a nice shot. It is a hobby and a habit and a salve, to wander around my neighborhood taking pictures. The light is everything to me. And now everything looks a little different. And I appreciate it so much.
I wonder how the sky is near you today.
OK. Onto work.
I am distracted this week by last minute little bits of press for the book and organizing life for being out on the road for two weeks not to mention the news, every day the news, the goddamn heartbreak of it all. I’m writing in my notebook in the morning mostly just for sanity’s sake and not for any kind of productivity. It’s times like these, when we are so busy or occupied by other events in the world, that our writing can feel furthest away. And yet, when we just check in with it even for a few minutes, it can help us clarify things greatly. I’m not telling you that you have to write every day but also I am telling you that it can help.
Also helpful: this week I went to a cafe (because a change of scenery can also be useful), and I opened all the documents I have in progress and just scrolled through them a bit. I have an essay on aging that I’ve been thinking about for a year and I’ve only recently banged out a first draft of it. And I have a short story—like so short it’s borderline flash although it feels like maybe in the end it might be a bit longer than that?—that I’ve been playing with since the beginning of the year. And I have that novel that I’m going to dive back into again once I get over the next few weeks of my life.
The comfort it gives me to know these documents are there, waiting for me. I do not feel oppressed by their untouched existence. I feel loving toward them. I feel their sense of potential. I miss them but I do not feel anxiety. I am working on other things, but I will get back to them soon enough. They will survive without me, for now. And they will instantly forgive me when I return to them.
If you haven’t touched your work in a while, I wonder if today is the day you open up whatever you have sitting on your desktop. That newsletter about your work life. That love letter confessing your feelings. That op-ed piece about the election or that poem about your mother or that screenplay about a crime spree or your master’s thesis you have been working on for the last year and you’re so close to finishing it that you have already planned exactly where you will have the celebration dinner. All these things waiting to be completed with authority or tended to like a baby or loved with all your heart or however you feel about your work.
Is today the day you open it up? Is today the day you start writing it again? Is today the day you finish it?
Sending love,
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.
Yes, the light is changing here in North Florida, too. The sun rises a little further to the south, casting different shadows, too.
Thanks for the nudge to open in-progress work. I have three messy documents that contain writing on an idea I'm starting to recognize as a novel. One was written during 1000words this June. Collectively they're all over the road and I've been putting off looking at them, not confident I'll find a throughline.
I read them all this morning after reading your post, highlighting the bits that have energy. It's a new practice for me, finding that things I've written are worth highlighting. This idea is worth tending, thanks for bringing me back to it.