1000 Words of Summer 2025, part 1
Physically tired but creatively energized
1000 Words of Summer is a pressurized container. I don’t think I can — or, really, I don’t want to — produce words at this breakneck speed for any longer than two weeks, as I have to sacrifice sleep to the point of deliriousness to do it. But for two weeks, it’s magical what the pressure can produce.
I used to run long distances, and my favorite distance to run was ten miles because after the first seven, a lightness set in. No more heavy legs, no more slog. Almost effortless rotation, as if the body were a bicycle, as if it would take more force to stop than to keep going. After ten, it got harder again, but those three miles between seven and ten were my sweet spot for many years.
That’s how I feel about a thousand words. The first seven hundred are not easy and most of them will honestly probably be trashed. But something happens in those last three hundred, when I push myself beyond where I would have preferred to stop writing. The sentences get more surprising. The characters make unexpected decisions. The prose feels more like a poem.
This is why I love this time of year! I am physically tired but creatively energized!
I’ll do a full recap of what I’ve been working on next week, but in the meantime I’m here to check in with some updates.
Brooklyn event alert!
In less than three weeks, I’ll be in conversation with
at Lofty Pigeon Books for the NYC launch of her gorgeous book, Frontier: A Memoir & A Ghost Story.
I love this book so much and Erica is so smart and thoughtful and I know this conversation is going to be a good one! If you’re in New York, come on out! RSVP, preorder the book, and we’ll see you there.
This week in Leave news
published a conversation between me and about Leave, cultural representations of birth and how they do or don’t prepare one for the real thing, seeking help for postpartum medical mysteries, and more. Thank you to Erin, and thank you to Zona Motel for publishing our discussion. <3 
This week in reading
You know what goes well with 1000 Words of Summer? Finally deciding to read The Power Broker.
I will probably be reading this for the next year but that’s fine. I’m also reading Leila Taylor’s Sick Houses: Haunted Homes & the Architecture of Dread. Leila and I read together at Ditmas Lit the week before last, where she read an excellent essay about the Unabomber’s cabin. I finished Nicole Haroutunian’s Choose This Now and loved it. Still reading Brian Gresko’s You Must Go On, one entry per day. Brian also read at Ditmas Lit, as did Andrew Colarusso, who owns Taylor & Co. Books, another favorite local indie bookstore. Such a great event.
It’s also a GREAT moment for print lit mags. The latest issue of Grand: The Journal of One Grand Books is fantastic. It features a short story by Joanna Hershon that hit just right for me, previously unpublished fiction by J. G. Ballard (!!), and an excerpt from Yiyun Li’s new memoir. Most of this journal is also published online for free but the print issues are beautifully designed artifacts.
The latest issue of The Yale Review also just arrived and contains new fiction by Sigrid Nunez, Rachel Cusk, Bryan Washington, Jenny Erpenbeck, the list goes on. Feels like a magazine at the top of its game.
Finally, each day when I sit down to start my thousand words, I start by reading a page from Eliza Barry Callahan’s The Hearing Test, because it’s the general vibe I’m going for with my narrator and it helps me slide into writing. It’s even better on re-read.
Nine days down, five to go. If you’re also doing your thousand words a day, good luck, good luck, good luck.
Love,
Shayne