a thousand words are worth a picture
re-learning how to write via group project
i’ve been participating in 1000 words of summer, the brainchild of author jami attenberg, for a couple of years now. i deleted twitter, so i’m not sure exactly how long, only that i’ve done a handful of minis (five or six days) and two of the regular ones (two weeks). the idea, if you are unfamiliar, is to write a thousand words a day for a set amount of days (see above), with daily emails about writing from jami and an assortment of her writer friends and associates.
i am the kind of person who resists structure and authority so much that i can make a plan myself and refuse to follow it because nobody tells me what to do (even me), so it is mildly surprising that this works so well for me. i think it must be because i am doing this solely for the fun of it. like, yes, also for the words, but i would write anyway. i’ve written something like seven novels, which is at least half a million words, and maybe a total of 40,000 of those words came out of 1000 words of summer. when i do this, it’s zero pressure.
i didn't expect to learn so much about my writing process, and to see it evolve so much, from this exercise. I’ve always been the sort of writer who writes when i am inspired, and i know a lot of writing advice hates that and says it is unequivocally bad and real writers don’t do it that way, but, uh, i am a real writer and i was doing it successfully for years. so. the thing is, now i am a first thing in the morning writer. i didn’t see it coming! i don’t know when it happened!
but i think i do know why it happened, and that’s very simple: i do not like getting out of bed. embarrassing but true! my husband brings me coffee in the morning, or i get it myself when i go downstairs to pee, and then i stay in bed for as long as i possibly can. there are many downsides to freelancing, and this is absolutely not one of them.
so i sit in my bed with my coffee and sometimes my cat (she does what she wants) and i scroll on my phone and then eventually i open the mobile word app and i start typing. i don’t know if it is the early morning quiet (my children sleep later than i do now that they are teenagers) or simply the fact that i work better if i have a little treat first, rather than after, but doing my fun work (writing) before the unfun business of life (eating, the eternal admin of managing my household, freelance editing, endless doomscrolling, figuring out what to have for dinner even though we just had dinner yesterday) really seems to be working for me.
the last four days, i have written a little bit more than a thousand words every morning. i honestly couldn’t tell you what i’ve done with the rest of my time, because those words are the most wonderful part of my days. (well, i did have taco bell the other day. a close second.) i will never join the 5 a.m. writers club (unless i do) because i am incapable of being disciplined about writing, but a thousand words on my phone in bed in the morning? doesn’t feel like discipline, it feels like joy.
buttondown has added comments as an option, so if you would like to comment, i am trying them out! i believe you have to click through. i don’t know! we will find out together! i’d love to know if you have a particular time of day that you write.
"but a thousand words on my phone in bed in the morning? doesn’t feel like discipline, it feels like joy." Love this line. I've been feeling a sense of joy doing #mini1000, too. First time it's felt this good in a long time.