Words of Aspiration for 1000 Words of Summer
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The beginning of summer is the season of warm weather, barbecues, vacations, swimming, cool drinks, reading trashy novels, sand between the toes, lazy days, and so much more. It’s also a season of inspiration or aspiration. I’ve long aspired to be a writer make a living as a writer. I scratched out that last part because I need to believe in myself more, rather than assuming I need to reach certain professional benchmarks before I can consider myself a writer. If I or any of you out there are making the time to put pen to paper (or typing on the computer) then we’re writers. We might not know what type of writer or what our narrative voice is, but if we’re making the time to write we can get there.
This is all to say I’m very inspired to continue writing. I got some extra motivation after attending a virtual event (I couldn’t attend in person) for the 1000 Words of Summer yearly challenge hosted by author Jami Attenberg. The #1000 Words of Summer is a yearly event, hosted by Attenberg, in which participants will receive a daily letter of encouragement from a contributing author, in which thoughts/tips on writing, creativity, and productivity are shared. You can learn more about it here.
During last Saturday’s session, Jami Attenberg shared the origins of the challenge, read from her book 1000 Words: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round, and even challenged those in of us in the audience. She asked an essential question: why do we write? Here’s what I wrote in the moment:
Hmmm? I’m not sure. I have aspirations of being a travel writer. I have dreamed of being a writer since I was a child. I thought I would be a writer after college. I thought I would write the great American novel after college. That didn’t happen but the itch to write has always been there. I just needed a push to get me there. I was laid off in 2022 and that was my push. Stop dreaming and start trying.
There will always be more reasons to tap into our creative voices and on the flip side there will always be reasons not to be creative. This prompted more questions from Jami Attenberg. What are the distractions that keep us from writing and what are the solutions? Hmmm? Here’s what I came up with:
Distractions: TV, money woes, social media, food, internet, daily life, music, work, boredom
Solutions: Making time to write, taking time away from all the distractions, silence (this one’s hard)
I’ve always found reasons to delay writing. I don’t have the time. I have to work. I have to run errands. I want to go shopping. I have to get my hair done. I have to watch an all-day marathon of TV episodes I’ve seen more than a dozen times (Modern Family, ER, Law and Order SVU, A Different World, and Roseanne come to mind). I can always find the time to not do something, but I hardly find the time to do creative things that are important to me.
I don’t know that I can write 1000 words every day this summer, but I can certainly commit to say three days a week. Most if not all of it will be bad, but bad writing can be edited. You can’t edit a blank page, it’s just a blank page waiting for the words. So, here’s to the 1000 Words of Summer!
Three things: my favorite quotes from the book 1000 Words.
“If you take a week off, if you take two months off, or a year, or if you haven’t written since college. It feels hard to get back into it. The words feel foreign on the page. Do these sentences even make sense? Are these even words? What are words anyway? Every single time getting back into writing after a break is frustrating. Every single time.” –pg. 16
“So I’m going to break my rule and offer some advice: trust yourself. Give yourself grace. Trust yourself to know that there’s value in your interests. Trust yourself to know that your being interested in X gives it value.” –pg. 42 Bryan Washington
“Creativity happens all the time. Whether we know it or not. We just have to learn to pay attention to it. And we can be at any stage of the creative process all year round. We can always be thinking and observing and consuming and processing, even if there’s no visible output.” –pg. 232
Upcoming posts
Thursday: Lost ReWatch for episodes nineteen and twenty
Monday: Summer Reading on the Backlist