How to Write a Book Right Now

Photo: Bryan Tarnowski/Bryan Tarnowski Every time I turn around, Jami Attenberg has published another novel or memoir. But I do not begrudge her this, because I know how she does it. For years, Jami has enlisted conspirators in writing a thousand words a day, come hell or high water. Today, she’s out with another book ( see what I mean? ) about writing books, featuring advice from dozens of writers . The book is called 1000 Words. She’s doing events with contributors in New Orleans, Brooklyn, D.C., and Philly this week and may be appearing near you soon . We chatted the other day before she left her home in New Orleans for the tour. What I really liked about reading this book was — well, my writing advice is like yours. You have to write a lot . Sure, be nice to yourself, but go. But then other people had other kinds of advice. J. Courtney Sullivan’s thing was so brilliant. She had a really young kid. She didn’t have child care. And so every night she would send herself an email with the same subject line. And when she came back later, she called these emails her bread crumbs waiting for her to come and write them through. That’s a brilliant technique. I could write this book because these people all told me I could. You said recently you’ve been thinking a lot about aging, as one does at our age. Are you leaving yourself bread crumbs about aging? I think so. I started this other little newsletter about it. It has to do with aging as a woman, menopause, the culture. It’s very small, personal stuff, building a little community out of it. But it’s not the big thing that I do — well! I always say it’s not the thing that I do and then it’ll always become something more. I think I’m using this thinking for a character. If you’ve been writing professionally for a long time, nothing you do is a waste of time. Do you know what I mean? Yeah! It’s the […]

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