Day 2, Winter 2025, Mini 1000

Today we tell our stories.

Hi friends.

Today we will write 1000 Words. Together. We will do this because we have things we need to say, and no one else can say them but us. I am talking about our stories, which are personal and singular and specific to our hearts and minds. They are living within us and also somehow they are right on the surface of our skin and we must—we must!—write them down.

The value of telling those stories is deep. And the satisfaction it can give us to extricate our personal truths or evocative fictions or whatever it is we need to tell is immeasurable.

So today, now, we are going to tell our stories. Pen to paper, hands to keyboard. One thousand words at a time.

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I asked a few of the contributors to 1000 WORDS—all of whom have exciting new books coming out this year—to write letters to us this week. And boy are you in for a treat.

First up is my friend Megan Giddings, currently of Minneapolis, MN. I think about her writing and her stories all the time. What I admire about her is she is one of the most wildly inventive writers alive and yet has the ability to make everything in her fiction feel like it’s happening right next door. She is the author of Lakewood, a finalist for a 2020 LA Times Book Prize in The Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction category, and The Women Could Fly, one of The Washington Post’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy novels of 2022. Her new novel Meet Me at the Crossroads, which you can pre-order here, is going to set your brain on fire.

Here’s a lovely missive from her about words and the new year.

“For the last handful of years, I've intuitively chosen a word for the year ahead. Sometimes, it comes from the work I'm doing. When I was working on my second novel, the word was ‘justice.’ My younger sibling, my husband, and I were a little stoned and splitting a bottle of champagne and that was the word I blurted out. And then the truer, more complicated thing followed: ‘I don't even know if I believe in it.’ It's a gift they frequently give me to feel comfortable enough to think aloud with them, to say some of the thoughts that will later help me write.

The word is sometimes a prayer, sometimes a wish, sometimes a puzzle. (Last year, the word I promised myself was ‘rest.’ It was clearly a silly attempt at manifest culture.)

I reflect on my chosen word whenever I'm taking a walk. I sometimes use it to understand myself. I sometimes use it as its own generative exercise for creativity. Sometimes, I think I should have stuck with the German phrase I had been considering: Strahlen wie ein Honigkuchenpferd. In a literal way it means ‘to shine like a honey cake horse.’ I just find it funny and cute. Maybe if it had stayed, I would have had a mostly funny and cute year. Maybe if I had an easier time pronouncing ‘kuchen,’ I would have said that phrase instead of ‘rest.’

Just because you're reading this in 2025, doesn't mean you can't choose a word. The year is still a mostly blank page. Don't overthink. Let yourself be surprised by what comes out if at all possible. I'm writing this before the year's turn. I have a word in mind—a wish for what I want for myself and an idea I'm slowly knocking open as I write. But just like I do whenever I sit down to write, I'm open to surprising myself.”

Here’s to a day full of surprises,

Jami

You are reading Mini 1000, an infrequent newsletter encouraging you to write from Jami Attenberg. My main newsletter is Craft Talk. I’m also on bluesky and instagram.