the writer self
For the last week, I've been taking part in writer Jami Attenberg's initiative "1,000 Words of Summer," in which you show up and commit to writing 1,000 words a day for two weeks. No excuses. Unless, of course, there are excuses, which - well, there always are.
For many years, I didn't write for myself. I wrote for pay, for others. Which of course is writing. I knew I was a writer, I thought like a writer, I felt like a writer, I always have, but I didn't write like a writer. I didn't show up for myself as a writer. I'm still learning to do that -- to show up for my writer self.
Attenberg wrote: "I live in service of the writer...Once I realized the writer was actually a better version of me, it got a lot easier."
I've struggled with writing for many years, and I will, suspect, for the rest of my life, in varying ways, maybe in part because I have not yet ascertained that the writer is a better version of myself. But as I've grown older, I've become more comfortable with the truth that I am more eloquent in writing than in speaking, that I can express myself far better when I have the quiet and the time to do it than in the heat -- or just, median temperature -- of the moment. It's why I preferred stand-up to improv. I far preferred to write in my own time than to grasp for the funniest (or even just, funny) line in the spur of the moment. And then I preferred to perform while only relying on myself, on my own ideas.
I have shied away from the life of a writer for so long, because I am such an inherently social creature, because I am positively energized by chance or purposeful encounters with others. Yesterday, my sister told me that I craved connection more than any other person she knows. And it's true! I do! It feeds me, and gives me great joy and a sense of purpose and place in this world. And that's felt at odds for so long with the pursuit of writing. But I'm finding peace in learning how to marry the two. To relish the observing and the connecting as the first phase of the writing.
Since Covid, Tyler has worked from our house's only desk (in the dining room, stuffed next to the dining room table). So here is the inspiring, Architectural Digest-worthy place that I write: from an ergonomic floor-chair (shout out to Nada for this back-saving rec!) in my bedroom, facing outwards at the hummingbirds drinking from the orange flower tree (don't know the name, grew up in The City) just outside my window:
Of course, I feel like giving up every single day of this challenge. I'm writing a brand-new screenplay: my second ever. I hate what I'm writing, I think it's absolutely terrible, and that no one will ever want to watch this movie. Five years ago, I'd have thrown my hands in the air and said Forget It! and walked away from it, but I'm on this stupid challenge, and I'm on this stupid accountability text thread with 7 other not-stupid writers, and that obligation is enough to keep me going. I've wanted to switch over to writing something completely different every day of this challenge, but I'm not going to. I'm going to write the bad screenplay, so that I can then hone it into a good one. I've been afraid of writing something very, very terrible for many years, but I'm not letting that fear stop me anymore. No one has to read the bad one. (But everyone has to see the good one. At Arclight, preferably. Starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus, ideally).
My hope for this #1000WordsADay challenge is not only to have written most of the first draft of this screenplay, but more importantly to have found the joy in the doing, not in the having done. Ask me in a week if I was successful! (jk, I'll probably just tell you here.)
What are you writing? I want to know. Tell me, and if you want, join me in this heinous challenge. We can hate it together, while doing something we didn't know was possible, mere days or years or even minutes ago.
Okay, now off to have my gums scraped with metal. Metaphorically.