1000 Words: A Writer's Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round

by Jami Attenberg

A USA TODAY Bestseller
A Washington Post Bestseller

Inspired by Jami Attenberg’s wildly popular literary movement #1000WordsofSummer, this writer’s guide features encouraging essays on creativity, productivity, and writing from acclaimed authors including Roxane Gay, Lauren Groff, Celeste Ng, Meg Wolitzer, and Carmen Maria Machado.

In 2018, novelist Jami Attenberg, faced with a looming deadline, needed writing inspiration. Using a bootcamp model, she and a friend set out to write one thousand words daily for two weeks straight. They opened this practice to Attenberg’s online community and soon hundreds then thousands of people started using the #1000WordsofSummer hashtag to track their work and support one another. What began as a simple challenge between two friends has become a literary movement—write 1,000 words per day without judgment, or bias, or concerns about writer’s block, and see what comes of it.

1000 Words is the book-length extension of this movement. It is about becoming—and staying—motivated, discovering yourself and your creative desires, and approaching your craft from a new direction. It features advice from more than fifty well-known writers, including New York Times bestsellers, Pulitzer Prize winners, and stars of the literary world. Framing these letters are words of wisdom and encouragement, plus specific strategies, from Attenberg on how to carve out a creative path for yourself all year round.

Paired with vibrant word art illustrations, 1000 Words is an accessible and motivational craft book that allows you to open any page and get a quick and fulfilling hit of inspiration.

Featuring Roxane Gay, Bryan Washington, Susan Orlean, Maris Kreizman, Sara Novic, Rumaan Alam, Lauren Oyler, Emma Straub, Christopher Gonzales, Benjamin Percy, Mira Jacob, Laura van den Berg, Carmen Maria Machado, Courtney Sullivan, Rebecca Carroll, Ada Limon, R.O. Kwon, Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, Elissa Washuta, Alexander Chee, Maggie Shipstead, Deesha Philyaw, Jasmine Guillory, Kristen Arnett, Attica Locke, Megan Abbott, Min Jin Lee, Lauren Groff, Andrew Sean Greer, Camille Dungy, Megan Giddings, Isaac Fitsgerald, Hannah Tinti, Michael H. Weber, Celeste Ng, Elizabeth McCracken, Will Leitch, Maurice Carlos Ruffin, Morgan Parker, Kiese Laymon, Melissa Febos, Alissa Nutting, Liz Moore, Laila Lalami, Megan Mayhew Berman, Rebecca Makkai, Meg Wolitzer, Mychal Denzel Smith, Josh Gondelman, and Dantiel W. Moniz.

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction, Self Help, Essays, Audiobook, Crafts, How To

270 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 9, 2024

About the author

I'm the author of Instant Love, The Kept Man, The Melting Season, The Middlesteins, and Saint Mazie, All Grown Up, and All This Could Be Yours, and a memoir, I Came All This Way To Meet You: Writing Myself Home. You can find me on twitter @jamiattenberg. I am the founder of the #1000wordsofsummer annual writing project and have a newsletter called Craft Talk. In 2024 the book version of #1000wordsofsummer will be published along with a new novel. I'm originally from the Chicago area, lived in New York City for sixteen years, and am now happily a New Orleans resident.

Reviews

[Jami · Rating 5 out of 5]

Guys I put my heart and soul into this! Fifty-four amazing contributors + my own words of wisdom and encouragement, plus specific strategies, on how to carve out a creative path for yourself all year round. My goal is to motivate you to write. This book is all good vibes and I hope it helps you and entertains you, yes ma'am, five stars!

[Rosemary Atwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes a work torpedoes into the middle of your heart and makes you want to stop everything and just write. This is a beautiful book, a-brim with grace and generosity, wisdom and comfort. See if it makes you feel this way too.

[Sarah Adler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Books about the creative process tend to be hit or miss for me. This one was a huge hit! The way it was organized and the topics covered made me feel incredibly seen and understood as an author, and I appreciated that Jami's advice was supplemented with letters from other creatives. I felt so motivated reading this that I started aiming for 1000 words a day instead of my previous goal of 500 and managed to stick with it for most of the homestretch of drafting my third book (and then only paused while recovering from a very bad cold). Definitely something I plan on buying for myself and for all of my writer friends!

[Brandice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyed reading 1000 Words, a compilation of advice on how to stay creative and in the writing process, by Jami Attenberg, with contributions from several authors.

Even when I didn’t know or haven’t connected with the work of a contributing author, their advice offered is sound. Discipline and establishing an effective routine are clearly paramount. I loved hearing from some favorite contributing authors too.

Reading 1000 Words had me thinking I can write a book, and who knows, maybe I will ;) An inspiring, motivating read for aspiring and motivated writers — 4.5 stars

[witzelsucht · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a compilation of pleasant, cheerleading platitudes to encourage writers, rather than a concrete "guide" to anything. It's very, very slight and the references to writing in COVID make it feel terribly dated already, but I liked that it featured input from many different, diverse authors, and the bite-sized sections made it easy to dip in and out of reading. It contains no secrets on how to actually write 1,000 words a day, just PMA stuff that you already know, really.

[Paige · Rating 5 out of 5]

Attenberg's passion for her work and for her friends' and colleagues' work is just so infectious, I have to give 5 stars.

Her contributors to this collection of writing advice added different perspectives and were a very beneficial addition.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

total banger

[Kelly Pramberger · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is awesome. As an aspiring memoir writer I loved how Attenberg shared her 1000 words writing challenge and how it led to an entire movement. It was inspiring to read and I felt the energy from the contributors through their quotes and essays that were included. Well done! I will be purchasing a copy for my home library. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC. Five stars.

[Lea · Rating 2 out of 5]

A lot of mundane advice on writing that can be summed up as "wake up an hour earlier every day and just write, no excuses". The only thing I really liked was the idea of a draft as a mound of clay.

Also, I read the German translation and it's so bad that I debated not continuing. As a translator, knowing the dire state of the industry, I really struggle to understand how stuff like this gets published.

[Smart Girl Reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took me awhile to get through this one because it's jam packed with practical tips & advice. I have an abundance of highlights & post-its from it, sprinkled throughout my home office. As an aspiring writer who loses focus so often, due to outside influences, this book was extremely helpful. It reminded me that I have a story that needs to be heard and helped me cultivate ways to get my thoughts on paper. If you've even thought about writing a book or a blog, I highly recommend this book.

5 ⭐️

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you write, read this book. Genuinely motivating and validating, you won’t regret it.

[Rachel B · Rating 1 out of 5]

Abandoned after 29% through the audiobook.

Apparently, the whole point of this book is just to tell writers, "You can do it! Speak your truth."

The main narrator has terrible enunciation - she should not have been the one to do this job. All of the narrators thus far have had awful intonation, as well, with strange pacing/breaks in speech, reading bad things as if they were happy, questions as statements and vice versa... it was weirdly all over the place and made me think the narration was done by AI.

Since there is no useful advice so far and, according to other reviews, there isn't any to come, I'm giving up.

Note: There is profanity, including God's name misused, and some sexual references intended to be humorous, but that don't land.

[Janine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inspired by Jami Attenberg's #1000wordsofsummer challenge, 1000 Words is a writing motivation book reflecting on her and dozens of participating authors' experiences with the experiment and the years afterward. The writing is mainly Attenberg's, but the other authors occasionally pitch in their thoughts to support her ideas and thesis with their own experiences.

The advice is covered in four "seasons" of the writer's cycle (Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall), starting from creative mindset, getting motivation to start writing, drafting, and to editing and publishing, this covers the entire gambit of motivation. This is not a "how to" writing craft book or a prompt book (though there's a few prompts in it), but focuses on mindset, which is great for those in creative burnout and ruts, especially for newbies. While at first, I was almost ready to dismiss the book with the long winded introduction, something started to click during the "Winter" chapters, and by the time I got to the “Spring" chapter, I was all in. I was highlighting and taking notes throughout the rest of the read, full of quotes and insights. I appreciate that some of the advice does clash, which is more options for writers to take if one doesn't work. I also love the little notes throughout the book to take quick action. I wasn't a huge fan of the overwhelming references to 2020 events (especially in the latter half), as it took me out of the motivation and made me think more about those events (and made me think of burnout, as 2020 events were a factor to my own spiral), and it also dates the book (book release is 3 years after the end of 2020). However, it does add a historical footprint to the work and some aspects of the lessons can apply at any time of crisis. Overall, this is more of a collection of insights with a cohesive theme than a single book, which makes is easy to just pick a page and turn it to it.

This was a great tool for me as I'm working out my own creative rut (after extended burnout from constant negativity). This is a must for all writers who doubt their own creative spirit and I believe other creatives will get something out of this too!

*I received a review copy from Netgalley and Simon Element. All opinions are my own.*

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first 5 star review of 2024! Honestly this is the best writing book I’ve read in awhile. I loved all the different author’s ways of writing. I particularly loved that Jami couldn’t get behind the typical author’s answer of “I sit in a chair at the same time every day and write.” Which as teen having just read Stephen King’s On Writing, I thought it was genius until I realized that didn’t work for me. I wondered if I was doing something wrong with this whole writing thing. Over the years I learned that it didn’t matter when or where I wrote as long as I was writing. I really thank Jami for validating that.

All in all I think this is a great read for anyone who wants to start writing or someone who wants to pick up writing again. Writing is always there for us.

[Kristina Petrova · Rating 2 out of 5]

Honestly - it was a long blog post. The chapters were under two pages probably. Nothing new, and I felt like reading a pep talk after pep talk. Probably would help someone else, but it wasn't what I was looking for or thought it would be.

[Monica · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a helpful balance of pep talk and practical writing advice.

[Hayley · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I needed. I'll be back soon.

[Alexandria Faulkenbury · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed participating in #1000wordsofsummer last year, and this is a great little distillation of it in book form.

[Jenny Leitsch · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will come back to this book time and time again for encouragement and reminders about writing and living a creative life. Loved hearing from all the different authors included in the book as well as Attenberg herself. An uplifting, worthwhile read for writers.

[Annie Dorsey · Rating 3 out of 5]

TLDR— we’re all writers and you feel a stirring in your soul when you think about writing. Don’t let your fear of failure stop you from writing. Write for yourself, write to process, write because it’s cathartic, write because it gets you unplugged, etc.

There are so many reasons to write and more not to. Be one who does.

Also write 1000 words per day for 2 weeks as an endurance challenge…. Who knows what you might discover

[Nicole VanderDoes · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book of pretty straightforward (and honest, humorous) advice about writing from Jami Attenberg and many of her writer friends that somehow coalesces into something very special. At different times, different parts will resonate. Some will immediately pierce deeply and embed. A couple things still bouncing around in my mind are that creativity (or was it imagination?) consists of heart, mind, and time, and that a first draft is the clay, marble, paint, the raw material of a writer. I am already writing with more joy and productivity, so it did something right!

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I were closer to the beginning of my writing career than the end, I would have found this inspirational. Even so, I always enjoy reading about the creative process and found this very interesting.

[Kalinda · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has to my favorite book on writing that I've ever read. It's simple, to the point and damn inspiring. If you are a writer who has been in a terrible slump, a writer who would like to write more, someone who has always dreamt of being a writer -- this book for you. Some might find it's no-nonsense "Tony Robbins" style of motivation pollyanna-ish, but I found it to be wonderfully refreshing. Is it repetitive? Yes, but sometimes that's what we writers need! Because we know deep inside how to get out of our slump, but it's so helpful to hear the words over and over again -- just do it, go write. This book is also great because it showcases how all writers, no matter how many books they've published or awards they've won -- all writers struggle, all writers find writing hard, all writers get into slumps. There's also great practical advice as to how to ease back into a project, and how if you're not up 1000 words a day, even 100 might suffice, because something is better than nothing.

[Amaziah Finley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Upon reading it I wanted to instantly start it again. Made writing feel fresh and fun and feasible!

[Carly Victoria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of us writers need a motivator. This non judgmental, easy to follow, motivating book literally connects you with published writers who struggle like you and I do. I sometimes look at published writers like famous celebrities (as perfect and unreachable people). If you need a metaphorical kick in the pants to write, just start with 1000 words a day.

I’ll also add that I’ve never felt so seen as an aspiring writer with this book. I always thought the problem was me (Well Hi it’s still me) but I struggle with a lot of things these authors do/did. I’m not abnormal (Yay), and its really resonated with me.

I’ve been writing since I was a young child. Then I grew up and life happened. From then, it’s been a struggle. I can honestly say I will be picking up this book throughout my writing process now. It’s helped me get past that hurdle, i’ve somehow developed! Thank you to the authors who took time out their lives to bring their thoughts into this and Jami as well, for compiling everything.

[Brett Milam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Writers love to do anything but write, which includes talking about writing and bemoaning writing advice while also giving said advice. Flowery, begrudgingly, self-deprecatingly, writers love talking about writing because so much of our brain space is taken up by the act of writing, and when someone accomplishes it, the rest of us want to know how they pulled off such magic. Fortunately for us writers starting out — I recently finished my first draft of a fiction book, so this was a well-timed audio listen for me — Jami Atttenberg’s 2024 book, 1,000 Words: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round, offers a few bits of wisdom from a wide range of authors, including Attenberg, about how to create that magic. Attenberg voiced her portion of the book, and throughout her own advice are words of wisdom from 50 other authors, including Roxane Gay, Celeste Neg, Meg Wolitzer, and more. Importantly for context, it seems like many of those letters were written not long after the COVID-19 pandemic. The letters often reference the difficulty of writing during a global and historic pandemic, civil unrest, the presidential election, and so forth.

Spoiler alert: Writing is hard. Sometimes, the stuff that looks like not writing — daydreaming, taking a walk, staring blankly at the screen, doing the laundry, and whatever else — is a form of writing, an all-encompassing necessity for the “act of writing.” This is why writers are often protective of our solitude, quiet time, and time itself because we know we need more than just the time it takes to literally write; we also need the time it takes to make writing happen. Of course, all writers are different, which is the classic throat-clearing before any writerly advice. There are no hard and fast rules. Except, of course, that at some point, you must write and you must finish what you’ve written. It must be shared with the world. Some may disagree with that last part. After all, diaries and such exist, but the point, as I see it, of creating art is for it to be engaged with. For it to then exist within the minds of others.

As a very online writer, who doesn’t travel in writerly spaces as much as I ought to, Attenberg’s #1000WordsofSummer literary movement completely passed me by. But it was a movement with humble beginnings Attenberg and a fellow author started in 2018 to meet a looming deadline. They wanted to push themselves to see if they could do 1,000 words a day for two weeks straight. Because a lot of Attenberg’s friends are teachers, it took place in the summer. I was curious how long, on average, it takes Attenberg to write 1,000 words. For me, it depends on if I’m in the “hum” mode or if I’m forcing it. Because 1,000 words isn’t all that much when you think about it in the grand scheme of a blog post like this, and certainly a book. At this point in my book review, I’m already half way to 1,000 and I’ve barely started to dig into some of the advice. Certainly, even two weeks of doing that doesn’t make a book, but it’s a nice way to knock out 14,000 words. Attenberg said 65,000 to 85,000 words, depending on your book and genre, is a good range for a book, though. So, anyhow, this book is presented to us as a handbook for creativity, productivity, and writing.

Let’s get to some of the advice I was able to put into my Notes app while listening. I’m going to hit these bullet point style (well, dashes for Goodreads):

- Roxane Gay said to take yourself seriously, but not too seriously. There exists a delicate balance between a writer’s penchant (mine included) for self-deprecation and often an equal desire to write the Next Great Literary Novel™. I go back-and-forth on both of these. Like many writers, I want to write something with critical acclaim, which often means staying power, too. But I also love reading (and writing) fun genre books. However, I think it’s more difficult to take myself seriously than it is to pull back the reins on the latter desire. To stand athwart the cynicism and self-deprecation and say, “I have something important and worthwhile to say. Take me seriously.”
- Related, there is absolutely something to be said for silly and fun writing (like a lot of my blog posts!) and not just trying to write that Next Great Literary Novel™. That is its own form of catharsis and a necessity, too.
- Attenberg had a fantastic point that I wish my younger self would have taken heed of: Writing is cathartic in the moment, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be published in the moment. My younger self often wrote in that cathartic way and would then share/publish it immediately. But distance helps with any writing project, especially one manifest from catharsis.
- One of my favorite bits of advice from the book, which reinforced what I already felt, is that expiration dates are silly for writers. Yes, by way of comparison, we may feel sad realizing we didn’t publish our first novel in our 20s or 30s or even 50s! But our contribution to the world doesn’t have an expiration date; it can occur whenever we’re ready and capable of sharing it with the world.
- That said, we all are, of course, writing against the ultimate deadline: our death.
- This advice may be the hardest for all of us writers, especially the type A personalities and perfectionists among us: Embrace good enough. You have to finish. You have to let go. Complete the project! It will not be perfect. There are bound to be mistakes and ways you could have revised this or that. But it’s good enough.

As I said, this was an opportune time for me to encounter Attenberg’s book and to hear much of the advice from her and other authors throughout. To hear that Celeste Ng, who has written one of my favorite novels (Everything I Never Told You), struggles like the rest of us, was beautifully validating. And yes, Attenberg gives me a useful, timely reminder that first drafts aren’t going to be great, but they contain the pieces of the magic we need for the second and third drafts. Keep going. I intend to. Thank you, Attenberg and other authors, for the useful motivation!

For the record, unintentionally, I finished this review at 1,090 words, taking about 40-ish minutes to write.

[LKM · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sadly, this book did not resonate with me at all.
Maybe it was that it wasn't what I expected (I expected more tips, maybe a more guided approach, while this was more of just cheering on you in a non-structured, structured way), maybe it was the COVID mentions (dated), or maybe the anecdotes intertwined within it all, and I was never big on anecdotes because I always find them completely unrelatable (the opposite of what they aim to be). Whatever it was, it wasn't for me. The few tips that were there were typicap tips yiu hear elsewhere.

It came highly recommended and I ended up highly disappointed.

Biggest ick when I noticed the author rated her own book 5 stars too. Tsk tsk.

[Madison · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of the better "just do it!"-style writing books I've read. I'm not really the intended audience because volume of production/finishing first drafts are not really issues for me (I am in revision hell instead), but if you are struggling to get started or keep going through an early draft of a project, this is worth picking up.

[Violeta · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is mostly geared to prose writers rather than poets, but I still found a lot of food for thought and encouragement in these pages. I really appreciated the breadth of this guide’s suggestions and the wise kindness of its voices.

[Kathleen Nalley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Huge disappointment. I was ready for inspiration and encouragement modeled through other writer’s experience. Nada.