0023: 3 Questions for the author of 1000 Words:A Writer’s Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round.

Handwriting, Daily, Trust.

I’m all about staying creative all year round, so when I got the opportunity to ask

Jami Attenberg

3 questions, I jumped on it. I’ll let you interprate how these might apply to your own creative practice beyond writing.

1. If you had  only 10 minute a day to practice your craft how would you spend it?

I'm pretty fast, but I don't know how much work I would get done in 10 minutes! Handwriting always comes first for me, though. I would probably handwrite a few days in a row, and then type a few days after that. I think I need both steps in the process to get anywhere good.

2. Which do you prefer and why, a daily writing session or a cabin in the woods kind of situation?

I like to write daily. It's my day job now, and I like to get up in the morning early and think about my work first thing, what I want to be writing that day. I get really daydreamy about it. It gives me a structure to my day and also a sense of accomplishment. I don't really feel completely happy unless I've gotten some work done at least a few days a week if not the full workweek. 

Writing in a cabin is nice! I have definitely had some weekend writing getaways in my life. But I would probably go broke if I relied on these one-off experiences to get any work done.

3. How do writing sessions now feel compared to writing sessions when you first started?

I really didn't know what I was doing when I started and it was both terrifying and thrilling. I was truly making up what a book looked like and meant to me. I published my first book in 2006 and wrote it in 2004, so this is twenty years ago when I really started writing my first book in earnest--though I had done plenty of writing before then. It was a very free time in a way. All the mistakes were mine to make but also all the little triumphs felt huge.

These days it can still be quite terrifying and thrilling to write, but I find I trust myself more. Ten books in, I know what I'm capable of accomplishing, and I have an understanding of what my strong suits are as a writer, what I can lean on when the writing gets a little challenging. So I have acquired knowledge along the way, and when I sit down I can at least feel confident that I can pick a direction for the day. But no matter what, at the start of a new project there's always this little zingy feeling. And I love it. It makes me feel alive.

Jami Attenberg is the New York Times bestselling author of nine books, including The Middlesteins, All Grown Up and a memoir, I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home. She is also the creator of the annual online group writing accountability project #1000wordsofsummer, which inspired the recently published USA Today bestseller 1000 Words:A Writer’s Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round. Her tenth book, publishing September 24, 2024, is A Reason to See You Again. She lives in New Orleans. You can find her online regularly at Craft Talk.

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You’re reading Ugly Work, the blog of Adam Ming. Normally I don’t email this out, but today i thought you might want to hear about Jami Attenberg and especially 1000 Words.

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