Writing has been my secret life. My husband and kids see me physically doing it. But my outside world? No idea.
Last week at school we were looking for someone to chair book week. Someone in the group said, “ask her, she’s an amazing author, she gets books.”
The “her” the speaker was referring to was not me. It was another published author and art historian. I sat there with everything in me wanting to plant a little flag in the ground and say, “I get books too. I guide women in writing them.”
However, I didn’t say it.
And then I wondered, how do I become the one who is known for knowing books, for being the author, for guiding the writers?
The answer that kept coming back was simple and a little uncomfortable: writing can’t stay a secret if I want it to become a movement.
Last week I wrote that I wanted writing to be more social and I meant it. I am building that here, on Fridays, one week at a time. But I’m also learning that it’s okay to join someone else’s community while you’re growing your own.
The very next day after writing that, an email landed in my inbox from Jami Attenberg’s Craft Talk newsletter. She was inviting the world to join #1000wordsofsummer, two weeks, one thousand words a day and fifty thousand writers doing it together. And here’s the part that made me chuckle, Jami Attenberg lives in New Orleans. My city, “hello, neighbor.”
I said yes immediately. Obviously.
The timing? Objectively the worst possible. My mom’s house just sold and I’m clearing out the last of the furniture. I’m taking my daughters to Hawaii to visit their friends since we used to live there. The program runs May 30 through June 12.
And yet, there will be long airplane flights, and writing on a plane is my speciality. Something about 30,000 feet turns my brain into a word incubator. Maybe its the combination of the altitude, the deliciously bad coffee, or the nowhere-else-to-be of it all.
There will be nights alone in a hotel while I sort through my mother’s things, with early mornings at the coffee bar and my laptop open and no one needing anything from me.
And there will be a Slack full of writers I haven’t met yet. Writers I can encourage. Writers who might, gasp, encourage me back.
That’s what I mean when I say I want writing to be social. Humans, in the same invisible world I’ve been living in alone, reaching across the quiet internet space and saying I’m writing too.
Nine months ago I started this newsletter. I didn’t know what to call it, so I named it, The Rooms I’m Writing In.
The second title I tried was The First Draft Friday Club.
It was warmer but still a “club” and I want everyone here.
I felt like Goldilocks. The first two names weren’t quite right. This one is.
On Fridays, We Write.
Not I write. Not you write. We write, together and every Friday.
This is a movement for women with a story to tell, a brand to build, and a community to grow.
Men are welcome too.
Write on a Friday. Let the inspiration carry you into Saturday. Steal a voice note at your kid’s baseball game. Write three sentences before you leave for carpool. It all counts.
You don’t have to call yourself a writer. You just have to have a story living inside you that keeps moving toward the page.
Buy the journal. I’ll hand you the pen.
With love from New Orleans,
Heather
P.S. I’m writing my thousand words on planes (33,000 feet in the sky makes me want to write), in hotel rooms, and in the early, early mornings of a very busy season. Where will you be writing?
WEEK 8 BOOK WRITING UPDATE
What’s working: Morning pages. I am working on the stories and examples for chapters 7 and 8. My memory is being jogged by my morning pages and prompts I am giving myself.
What got done: Parts of weeks/chapters 7 and 8.
What felt hard: The messy middle is still getting to me. This has been my slowest section.
What surprised me: Finding a writing group to join while I build one myself. I always think I have to do things alone at first and its simply not true.
Next week: Finish 7 and 8.
5/29: Finish 7 & 8 and start drafting 9 & 10 (I have about 6 hours of airplane time to do this and hours in airport lounges, hotel lobbies and voice notes while driving around Los Angeles.)
6/5: 11 & 12
6/12: Revise
6/19: Full first draft done and read through
6/26: Full first draft complete and start to edit
Still on target to talk to my publisher on 7/1, Jessica DeBry about next steps. My goal is to publish in Q4!
On Fridays, We Write. ✍️
Join The Signature Manuscript Method and write together on Friday morning for an hour.
