1000 words A writer's guide to staying creative, focused, and productive all year round

Attenberg, award-winning author of memoir (I Came All This Way to Meet You, 2022) and fiction (All This Could Be Yours, 2019), has compiled a fantastic set of essays to help writers stay motivated throughout the year. Attenberg created a challenge, #1000wordsofsummer, to help herself and her teacher friends focus on writing 1,000 words a day, but it isn't just in summer that writers need support. Attenberg discusses her own experiences as a working author and leans into the satisfaction of producing words. To supplement Attenberg's essays, many celebrated writers have contributed their own thoughts as letters to the hashtag's community. Roxane Gay, Kiese Laymon, and Alexander Chee are just a few of the authors who share inspiration. Many related stories of working through the pandemic. Writing is both solitary and communal, and the lockdown forced even more solitude on a profession that already contends with isolation. Readers of this collection will feel surrounded and bolstered by like-minded people who have been in the trenches. Readers will want to refer to this book more than once, so it's an ideal purchase for public libraries.

This encouraging handbook by novelist Attenberg (I Came All This Way to Meet You) offers brief essays aimed at motivating readers to get writing. Reflecting on her own process, Attenberg discusses her routine of writing 1,000 words per day and shares that she goes on walks or visits art museums when she's feeling uninspired. Though Attenberg's practices are held up as possible models for the writing life, the overall emphasis is on affirmations rather than concrete advice, as when she advises, "If you want something, do what it takes to get it," and entreats readers to "value your creative self" and "believe your writing deserves to be treated with respect and care." The highlights of the volume are letters originally written for Attenberg's Craft Talk newsletter from such writers as Roxane Gay, Min Jin Lee, Emma Straub, and Bryan Washington, who expound on their craft; Carmen Maria Machado, for instance, describes her process of recording voice notes of narrative ideas and later expanding them into stories. Aspiring writers will appreciate Attenberg's cheerleading, even if her program lacks in specifics. (Jan.)