This week in reading, this week in writing

"Send that newsletter quick," my kid says, because it's Sunday morning and he wants to play Tetris together

We’re nearing my favorite time of year: 1000 Words of Summer. 🙌

For those of you who don’t know, 1000 Words of Summer is a project started by the writer Jami Attenberg that facilitates a bunch of people (we’re 40k+ now) coming together for two weeks every summer to write 1000 words a day. There’s an encouraging email that goes out each morning and a Slack community where people post their word counts and encourage each other, and it’s generally my favorite time of year.

This will be my seventh 1000 Words of Summer — I’ve done it every year since the beginning! It’s never easy, but it’s always fun and rewarding, and if you have a big project you need to kickstart or reinvigorate or get across the finish line, I encourage you to join us — June 1-14, 2024.

This week in writing

The week before last, I finished a round of edits on Leave and sent it off to my publisher for what should be the final round of edits? After that, we move into layout.

Then I spent a few days taking care of business. I submitted an application for a fellowship, pulled my thoughts together on an AWP panel proposal and started reaching out to panelists, and got new headshots!

For the photos, I worked with Sylvie Rosokoff, who was incredible. Though I am not the most comfortable in front of a camera, Sylvie put me at ease and I had a lot of fun showing her around my neighborhood.

This past week, I started thinking about 1000 Words of Summer. I know how much I’m going to write each day, but the question is: 1000 words of what?

I’m hesitant to transition back to the pond novel, knowing that I have another round of Leave edits coming. But I also don’t want to work on edits during 1000 Words of Summer. I need a project where I can sit down each day with an idea and just go. Something in a generative stage. Something drafty.

One possibility: essays. I’ve been slowly working over several months on a bunch of different essay drafts that cover topics tangential to Leave, essays I can hopefully place in the lead up to the book’s launch. I am very interested in the essay form and have been experimenting with it for a while but have yet to submit one anywhere, let alone publish one. I’ve been reading lots of creative nonfiction to study how other people do it.

Then Chelsea Hodson announced a new 6-week essay class starting June 1, and that sealed the deal. I’ve been part of her Morning Writing Club for a while and have wanted to study with Chelsea more formally, so this is the perfect opportunity. I signed up. Essays it is!

This week in reading

I finished Stay True by Hua Hsu and started a bunch more books.

I picked up The Bulgarian Training Manual by Ruth Bonapace at AWP and have been saving it for a breather between grief memoirs. This one is out from the very cool Clash Books on June 4 and is one of those books that gets described as a “wild romp.” I’ve never read a book that looks straight at gym culture like this — not diet or eating disorder culture but actual gym culture — and the narrator is very fun.

I also started Splinters by Leslie Jamison. This is strangely my first Jamison and probably not the one to start with? Or maybe the perfect one to start with? Jamison fangirls can correct me, but I’m getting the feeling that it’s distinctly different from her other work. Compelling and definitely making me think about the choices a memoirist must make if they want to tell a story that heavily involves another person.

And I started They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, which is my first Hanif Abdurraqib and why oh why did I wait this long?! I’m listening on audio and Abdurraqib narrates and it’s so, so good but you probably knew that already.

On the short form side of things, this week’s reading also included an excellent LARB review by my friend Jenessa Abrams: Standing on the Cliff of Motherhood: On Miranda July’s “All Fours.” I’ll tell you all what I told Jenessa, which is that it’s the perfect example of weaving the personal into a review in a way that makes it more effective as criticism.

Writing is reading and reading is writing and I’m wishing you all a Sunday where you get to do both if you want.

Love.