In 2018, best-selling author Jami Attenberg launched #1000WordsOfSummer with a friend, pledging to write 1,000 words daily for two weeks. This “writing bootcamp” exploded into a two-week online writing extravaganza: in 2023, over 30,000 writers around the globe took part. In 2024, Attenberg rolled some of her past daily emails and tweet texts, with the collective wisdom of 50+ authors, into a book — 1000 Words: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round — published in January 2024.

Each year, dozens, if not hundreds, of books in the “how to write” category are published. What makes Attenberg’s unique is its structure and the hefty amount of practical advice and guidance packed into its 239 pages. The book echoes the natural world because, as Attenberg puts it, “the creative lifecycle is year round, and it operates in ebbs and flows.” The book section titled “Winter” offers guidance on developmental work; “Spring” is all about project prep. Generating new work is the focus of the section called “Summer.” (The original bootcamp is after all called 1000 Words of Summer.) In “Fall,” the focus is on post-writing reassessments and regrouping. Essays by Attenberg and “craft letters” by dozens of award-winning authors pack each section and are delivered in a punchy, to-the-point manner; the result is a wealth of insights, encouragement, and proven tricks and techniques for all aspects of creative writing.

1000 Words Changes Lives

The first line of 1000 Words asks: “Have you ever made something that has changed your life forever completely by accident?”

1000 Words sold out before it launched. It’s been featured on NPR and garnered glowing reviews on the Today show and in BookPage. LitHub calls it “the new Bird by Bird,” a reference to Anne Lamott’s beloved book. “By accident,” Attenberg says, her life changed.

But hers isn’t the only one changed by her experimental writing bootcamp.

In spring 2021, worn down by a year of Covid-induced isolation, grayed-out from the New England winter, my writing desperately needed … something. Online workshops had helped a bit. (I’d tried ones sponsored by organizations in Idaho and California, as well as the Massachusetts Pioneer Valley.) But they inevitably ended and it was back to solitude. What I needed was community.

I learned of Jami Attenberg’s #1000WordsOfSummer on Twitter. The challenge daunted me — I had a home, a family, a demanding full-time job. I like my sleep. But, like I said, I was desperate. And that desperation prompted an uncharacteristic impulse.

I logged into the Slack channel dedicated to #1000WordsOfSummer. A swift-moving column of messages (of the other participants introducing themselves) greeted me. One in particular, from Elisa Speranza, caught my eye:

Hi everyone. I’m writing historical fiction in New Orleans, working on my second novel while the first one languishes in publishing purgatory. I’ll be writing from the slightly cooler confines of Martha’s Vineyard this summer. I’m originally from Boston so a special hello to all my fellow Massholes in the group.

Amazing: someone on Martha’s Vineyard was doing #1000Words too. She’d logged onto Slack channel at the exact same moment as me. In the world of social media, I’m more of a lurker than participant, but on impulse I replied.

Hello fellow Masshole (and lucky you not to spend winters too on MV). Like you hoping this #1000wordsofsummer gets me moving on my next project.

We exchanged a few notes, learned we were in neighboring towns, and on Elisa’s suggestion, decided to meet up for a coffee or cocktail.

Covid was still raging. But it was May, and we were vaccinated, and a few well-ventilated restaurants and bars were open. Her suggestion of a single drink reassured me. One drink. Not a meal — because what if …, I thought to myself of all the possible scenarios that could occur with someone I didn’t know yet.

But my fears were unfounded, and so were hers. We talked for hours, and ordered a second round.

Elisa bemoaned how she’d been “flinging query letters into the void, mostly to no avail.” And the clock was ticking: her World War II novel The Italian Prisoner was based on the stories of real-life New Orleanians, now in their 90s. Determined to produce a book they could read soon, she was contemplating self-publishing.

I’d lucked out in the agent department, but my first manuscript was going nowhere. I’d decided to revise, but did not know how. Elisa introduced me to her developmental editor, Allison Alsup, co-founder of the New Orleans Writers Workshop. Fueled by Alsup’s guidance and Attenberg’s #1000WordsOfSummer, which included two subsequent “Mini 1000” events, I got through a full revision faster than expected, with whole new scenes and chapters coming to fruition. (Now out on submission, the opening chapter was named first runner-up in the latest Faulkner-Wisdom novel-in-progress competition.)

Bonded by 1000 Words, Elisa and I went on to launch a network of local, professional women who write. The Washashores Writers Collective — its namesake a term Islanders use to refer to anyone born “away” — has now grown to more than 21 members. We meet up in person in summer and keep up the conversation via a private Facebook page. This generous, supportive “hive mind” almost always produces a solution to every challenge. Need a lawyer to get your rights back from an unresponsive publisher? One of your Washashores knows one. Need someone to scout a location in Washington, DC, for that key scene in your thriller? There’s a Washashore who’ll trek into the bowels of the Metro for you. All born from the spirit of Attenberg’s #1000Words community.

Most recently, the Washashores have joined forces with a local arts center, The Featherstone Center for the Arts, providing ideas, attendees, and even instructors for its literary arts program.

In the introduction to 1000 Words, Attenberg writes: “If we reach out to others admitting our challenges while also cheering one another on, we’re all capable of more than we expected.” Attenberg’s trust in that truth changed her life. And mine. And Elisa’s. And, now, dozens of others in our community. 1000 Words, as an event and as a book, produced the proverbial ripple of a pebble cast into a pond. The impact will just keep spreading.

1000 Words: Changing Writers’ Lives “by Accident” was originally published in ANMLY on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.