Good morning,
My friend A.N. encouraged me to start this Substack just over two years ago. Though we’d been friends for many years, I invited her to work with me as a coach when I was earning my certification hours. We’d been working together in a coach/client relationship for a few months when she said that many of the books, articles, podcasts, films, etc., that I would text around to friends or share about in conversation could be well-suited to serve as fodder for a weekly newsletter. The person whose Substack she shared with me for inspiration was “Craft Talk” by Jami Attenberg.
I subscribed and would read her stuff here and there. I knew she’d written some books, including a bestselling novel, and that she’d developed a community around a concept called “1000 Words,” – a burst of structured writing of 1000 words a day for two weeks (with group support and accountability) that would yield 50 pages of a book. I kept myself at a distance from this process because it seems so easy and hard at the same time.
Chicago Tribune critic Christopher Borelli profiled Attenberg and her new book in a robust article titled “Jami Attenberg on her book ‘1000 Words: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round.” The origin of her book is: “Six years ago, Attenberg was sitting with a writer friend, talking about the difficulty of staying motivated. They decided to put themselves through a self-invented two-week boot camp of sorts. The goal was to write 1000 words a day. After two weeks they’d have 50 pages of a book. Attenberg went online, tweeted about the project and soon, hundreds of strangers were joining them, committed to finishing 1000 words every day for two weeks. Understand: At this point in her career, Attenberg had already written six books, including the bestselling novel ‘The Middlesteins.’ She still needed motivation.”
In addition to learning more about Attenberg’s career and reason for writing the book, I love how the many quotes and anecdotes Borelli shares from revered writers:
“During one of the many pitstops in Attenberg’s book, [Rebecca Makkai, the acclaimed Chicago-based novelist], notes that her own first book took 10 years to finish, partly because she had children, and partly because she lost faith in what she was writing.”
“Years ago, when I [Borelli] was in college, on a whim, eager for advice, I called Roger Ebert at the Sun-Times and he answered his phone and I asked him how he was able to write so much, and he said he had a deadline right now and he didn’t have time to talk — which itself was an answer.”
“Joan Didion once said that writing the first sentence of anything is difficult but by the time you’ve written two, you’re committed and should just keep plowing ahead.”
“Maya Angelou would rent a hotel room for a few months and leave her home at 6 a.m. every day and write on the hotel bed until 1:30 p.m. or so, then return the next day.”
“Dostoevsky said, ‘There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.’ When beginning a new book, John le Carré would remind himself: ‘The cat sat on a mat’ is not the first line… But ‘The cat sat on the dog’s mat’ could work.”
“James Baldwin, who said many smart things about so many things, has one of the smartest lines ever about the pain of writing: ‘Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance.’ He said the most important thing for a writer starting out is having someone who reads their work and says, ‘The effort is real.’”
I think the most salient thing that Attenberg shares in the article is this simple and stark nugget: “The thing is, to start, you don’t go out Friday night. Write at lunch. Bring a notebook on public transportation. This writer, Deesha Philyaw, said be prepared to disappoint people. She meant her family. You carve from your life to support your creative self.”
I’m happy to carve out time each weekend to write this letter, but I resist carving out the time to do more. In theory I’d like to write one hour each morning, a goal that my coach Kathryn and I came up with years ago and was affirmed as a good idea when I heard Jerry Seinfeld on Tim Ferriss’s podcast. Here’s a transcript of the part that resonated with me:
Jerry Seinfeld: [If someone says] “I can’t do 15 minutes.” “Okay, let’s do 10. Let’s do 10. Let’s come up with something you can do. That’s where you start everything. That’s how you start to build a system.” So my daughter — so I said to her, “You have to have an end-time to your writing session. If you’re going to sit down at a desk with a problem and do nothing else, you’ve got to get a reward for that. And the reward is, the alarm goes off, and you’re done. You get up and walk away and go have some cookies and milk. You’re done.”
If you have the guts to sit down and write, you need a reward at the other end of that session, which is “Stop now. Pencils down.” So that’s the beginning of a system that to me will help almost anybody learn to write, which is something I’ve kind of wanted to teach in a way, because I think it’s so simple.
I think exercise is pretty simple too, but people don’t — they don’t come up with good, simple little systems. They just try and do it, and to me, that’s — you’re going to fail.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. The simple doesn’t mean easy, and the point you made —
Jerry Seinfeld: No, no, no. Not easy —
Tim Ferriss: — is to —
Jerry Seinfeld: — but simple.
Tim Ferriss: — so important. The incentives. Right? Having a reward. Having a defined format. How long did your daughter end up choosing for her writing duration, or how long —
Jerry Seinfeld: I told her —
Tim Ferriss: — have you chosen?
Jerry Seinfeld: I told her, “Just do an hour.” That’s a lot. She says, “I’m going to write all day.” “No, you’re not. Nobody writes all day. Shakespeare can’t write all day. It’s torture.”
Just do an hour. That’s a lot. Sitting and writing for an hour yields about 1000 words. Seems simple enough. Part of my own resistance relates to thoughts about: What if what I write isn’t any good? What if I lose interest in the story I’m putting together? What if I can’t do more than one day in a row?
With most things I say I want to do, I can let about 1000 other things get in the way. So I’m glad for folks like Attenberg, Borelli, Seinfeld, Ferriss… all people farther down the writing path than me who are candid about their resistance and their sometimes negative thoughts and feelings about writing.
Attenberg’s profile concludes with: “All of it — good, bad, soul-crushing — was part of becoming a writer. ‘It didn’t feel like a waste,’ she said about the junked books, though the words sounded broader. ‘Sometimes you do something to get you to somewhere else. You go through the bad to get you to next thing. It’s all part of a bigger picture.’”
What are you doing now that might lead you somewhere else? What’s something challenging you’re going through that might take you to the next thing? How do you envision your bigger picture?
Until next time,
Matt