1000 Words of Summer Recap
The rambliest of recaps
Something that always happens during 1000 Words of Summer is that everything starts to feel a little more serendipitous. Writing so much every day forces me to pay greater and more careful attention. The serendipity is there all the time if I look for it, but I usually only find it when I’m either deep in a project or writing for volume. Volume writing means constantly looking for connections. It changes the way I look at my writing and the world.
The Thursday evening before 1000 Words, I found myself in Brooklyn Heights with a free hour and I went to Books Are Magic without the goal of buying a specific book but knowing that I would leave with some book. I browsed leisurely, trying to remember the last time I’d had so long alone in a bookstore. 2019?
Almost every other customer there was a mom with at least one small child. In these moments, when I am out in the world without my child, I find myself flashing meaningful smiles at the other moms as if to say, “You can’t tell right now but I am one of you!” This is a weird impulse and probably comes off even creepier than I think. I tried not to focus on the other moms with their kids or to think about my own kid, who was with a babysitter that night so that Daniel and I could see the comedy show my friend Molly hosts at a different Brooklyn bookstore, The Lofty Pigeon.
I picked up books, read the back and inside covers, opened to pages in the middle to get a sense of the writing, put them back if they weren’t quite right. I landed on Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me by Ada Calhoun. I’d just read a long interview with Ada in Isaac Fitzgerald’s newsletter, Walk It Off, and was totally charmed by her. I’d been interested in her book when it first came out but never got around to buying it and now seemed like the perfect time.
I took the book to Hinterlands to wait for Daniel and read and drink a Five Boroughs Tiny Juicy. When was the last time I read a book alone in a bar? Again, sometime in the 2010s.
Early in the book, Ada talks about how when her father was dying, he wrote an essay about it. Immediately I googled this essay and came up with it: The Art of Dying by Peter Schjeldahl. Bookmarked to read later. Great.
The next day, we went to Massachusetts to stay with Anna at her parents’ home on the pond. My kid kayaked for the first time. We saw the Mayflower II and Plymouth Rock, drank good beers at a local brewery, ate ice cream, and made s’mores around the fire pit. Anna and I went on the longest run I’ve done since 2018, which also happened to be the last time we ran together. Up until that last run, which we didn’t know at the time would be the last for a long while, we ran together once or twice a week for years. Almost six years later, I nearly cried at how good it felt to run with her again. On a run is a place you can talk about anything. Running buddies are the best buddies.
While we were in MA, I was in full relaxation mode. I pulled up my New Yorker app, which is something I almost never do these days because the articles are generally too long to finish without interruption at this particular stage of my life. But I was on the pond! My kid was in a kayak! I had all the time in the world! The first piece on my screen was by Steve Martin: Looking at Art with Peter Schjeldahl. In it, Steve also talked about Peter’s essay about dying. Double bookmarked.
That afternoon was the first session of the essay class I’m taking with Chelsea Hodson. Our homework for the coming week? Read The Art of Dying by Peter Schjeldahl.
This week in reading
I read The Art of Dying by Peter Schjeldahl. I wish I could tell you why the universe conspired to get me to read this piece, at this moment, but my favorite line was: “But what’s as commonplace as dying? Everybody does it.”
I’m reading so many good books right now. Also a Poet, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib (so! good! on! audio!), Attachments by Lucas Mann. I’m in a memoir/essay place right now, but I’ve been thinking a lot about essayistic fiction — not necessarily autofiction but fiction that feels like it from the tone, the point of view, the way it might backburner or forego plot in favor of meandering through the narrator’s mind. I’m zeroing in on what I like in a novel, why I loved Eliza Barry Callahan’s The Hearing Test so much, why I love a Sigrid Nunez novel. (What are other novels like these? Let’s make a list.)
This week in writing
We did it! 14 days of 1,000 words a day. 12 of them were easy. On the two that weren’t, my kiddo woke up in the 3am hour and the 4am hour on two consecutive days and when I say “woke up” I don’t mean called out for me and then fell back asleep, I mean wide awake, full of energy, wanted me to do LEGO with him and so those days were harder but we still got it done by nightfall.
This is how the magic happens!
Someone refill that woman’s coffee.
The final tally:
Day 1: 1,053
Day 2: 1,084
Day 3: 1,039
Day 4: 1,129
Day 5: 1,022
Day 6: 1,003
Day 7: 1,273
Day 8: 1,048
Day 9: 1,500
Day 10: 1,055
Day 11: 1,047
Day 12: 1,034
Day 13: 1,314
Day 14: 1,079
TOTAL: 15,680
Over 15,000 words that were in there but needed the perfect combo of structure and challenge and pressure to surface.
What did I write? Mostly I wrote toward four or five topics that I think will become two or three essays. In the first session of Chelsea’s essay class, I shared that I’m trying to figure out how to write an essay that’s about more than one thing. I love braided essays but how are they constructed — work toward a few different essays, find the connections, and then weave them all together? Or decide on your topics and set out to write about them together? Chelsea suggested that for the duration of our six-week class I resist the urge to start a new document when I have a new idea. Instead, she said, I could try writing in one long document, even if the ideas seem disparate. If I want to switch topics, just do a double line break and write about something else.
I’ve been trying this approach and guess what? Turns out the things I am meditating on are more connected than I thought.
I came into the two weeks thinking I would write about birth and postpartum and how Leave came to be, but instead I ended up writing about giving things away on Craigslist and a toxic relationship I had when I was young and being born again as a teenager and my first apartment and all the gyms to which I have ever belonged (this, my friends, could be a book) and my dad. (Happy Father’s Day, Dad! I don’t know if you read this or even know I have a newsletter!)
Right now I’m overwriting, just exploring all these memories and ideas, and later I will revise. Just loving and trusting the process. Feeling grateful for this annual infusion of energy.
Congrats to everyone who participated! Let’s do it again soon. (I’m serious — Jami said there may be a mini 1000 in the fall.)
"On a run is a place you can talk about anything." A real beaut of a line.
WE ARE SO BACK