My podcast tree has grown a new branch. I don’t know how I found it, maybe I was clambering around, looking for stuff about creativity, but I scrambled onto the London Writers’ Salon and came to rest. Specifically, I sat with my legs swinging to listen to an interview with Jami Attenberg. The episode summary promised and delivered everything I wanted: Writing 1000 Words A Day, Learning How to Write Again, Finding Creative Inspiration, Committing to Creativity Daily.

I, of course, immediately took a field trip to Blacksburg Books and ordered Attenberg’s book. And subscribed to her Craft Talk newsletter.

After hearing the episode last month, I toyed with the idea of joining the community to write 1000 words a day for two weeks on something besides my rambly what’s-in-my-head journaling. In morning writes, I’ve listed topics to explore. While I wondered when this year’s #1000wordsofsummer event might start, I considered what project I might work on for a two week, 14,000 word commitment.

I learned a lot about my writing self in the process, namely that I recoil from planned writing work. That’s what it feels like when it’s planned: work. Right now, what attracts me to writing is spontaneity, and being in the moment. As soon as a topic becomes planned, I lose interest. Right now, I want to play. I don’t want to work.

One of my favorite writing prompts is the Here and Now* exercise. I frequently do this exercise when I want to write but don’t have anything in mind to write about. I love it because it makes me pay attention, right here, right now. It engages my senses and makes me realize how much I don’t know, like what kind of trees those are across the street, the ones I see every dang day of my life, or the name of the little hat a pendulum (pendant) light wears (it’s a shade, just like a lamp), or whether those metal ceilings with stamped patterns in them have a name (pressed tin ceiling).

I’d considered focusing on a particular topic for 1000wordsofsummer — I found one I thought I was excited about — but as it became more clear that it would feel like work instead of fun, Jami announced the dates of this year’s event: May 31 – June 13. The entire time I’ll be on vacation in Europe.

There’s no way I’m doing a project that feels like work while I’m there. But can I sit in a café, on a train, in a garden, on a museum bench, and write 1000 words on the here and now? Hell yeah I can. And I can’t wait to do it.

*There are many variations on this prompt. Here and Now is what Priscilla Long calls it in The Writer’s Portable Mentor. In Old Friend from Far Away, Natalie Goldberg uses “I’m looking at,” which can be expanded to “I’m listening to, I feel, I smell…”