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all this could be yours by jami attenberg

#this book is so slow. but true #all this could be yours #jami attenberg #books

Let’s talk about how to prep for writing 1000 words a day for two weeks straight.

This may be an event for us!

It's organized by Jami Attenberg on her newsletter, she also has a book out as a companion, but you don't have to buy the book to participate. You just have to sign up for the newsletter, and you'll get daily emails for the event for the first two weeks of June.

Check out the FAQ here:

All your questions answered here!

#1000 words of summer #Jami Attenberg #substack #writing event

To make art is to wake up in a state of craving, a craving to discharge

The gallery was distributing a brief but beautiful booklet that contained an interview with Bourgeois conducted by Christiane Meyer-Thoss over a period of time in the late 1980s. I was struck by some excerpts:

To make art is to wake up in a state of craving, a craving to discharge resentment, rage. It’s not a linear progression; it goes like a clock; every day, when you reach a certain spot on the clock, it recurs. It’s a certain rhythm occurring every day. And the making of art has a curative effect. A tension you are under disappears, dramatically.

The artist has been given a gift. This word comes back all the time. It is the gift of being at ease with your unconscious and trusting it. It is the ability immediately to short-circuit the conscious and to have direct access to the deeper perceptions of the unconscious. This is a gift because such awareness is useful, allowing you to know yourself, especially your limitations.

I love sculpture eternally, because sculpture is the only thing that challenges me. But it is also not enough. If I have expressed today what I wanted to express, good, it’s true for a minute, but then I have to prove myself again. So, I start a new one.

I read those words and laughed: we’re cursed! Bourgeois is speaking of the compulsiveness of being an artist. We get up every day and do the work because that is our job but also because there is an eternal fire flickering inside us, forcing us to do so. There is no casual dismissal of that tension; in fact, we cannot ignore it. Bourgeois makes the creative process sound difficult—and often it is, certainly. We must push through the difficulties though, for the ease is awaiting us, and by that, I mean the ease of our hearts, at last, when we know that we are done with our work.

— Jami Attenberg, I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home (Ecco, January 11, 2022)

#Jami Attenberg #art #artist #sculpture #Louise Bourgeois #crave #need #writer #writing

Read more of Jami Attenberg in “1000 Words of Summer: How an Accountability Project Opened Up My Writing Life.”

#Jami Attenberg #May/June #I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home #Writer's Block #Writer's Problems #National Poetry Month #Writer's Life

Jami Attenberg’s new novel dives deep into a troubled family over the course of one long day, as their abusive, rage-filled patriarch lies dying after a heart attack. Critic Heller McAlpin says that may sound like a hard sell, but Attenberg’s lively writing makes it worth the read. Check out her full review here.

-- Petra

#npr books #books #reading #fiction #jami attenberg #book reviews