Hello, this is Celeste and welcome to the Letters for Creatives newsletter. I have been writing poems since 2017 and fiction since 2022. This is the place where I share my thoughts and found resources for writers and creatives.

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Summer is already here. The heat has come earlier than last year. My day job, the economic recession and the climate got me quite in a nihilistic phase.

I have been too hectic to write anything lately. Call it an excuse. I have always talk about balancing these projects with a day job. But I still don’t know how.

Yet I have started to make some progress to my draft 0 for my novel last Saturday. I guess it has been way too long that I have even looked at my draft 0, not to mention written anything.

It makes me feel like I am making progress here, however small that is. That makes me feel less nihilistic. If you want to know if something is your “life purpose”, notice the feeling that it evokes. It is quite obvious in that way. On a good day, I can write for 4 hours. On a bad day, not even a single word is there.

Music has been such a big part of my life. It helps me get out of a rut, being nihilistic, whatever that is. So it was obvious to listen to Hania Rani and Nils Frahm to just feel something. It worked. For me, it often makes me feel much deeper and help me to write.

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1000 words of summer again

Writers on Substack have talked about writing, finishing manuscripts, submitting to lit mags and so on as summer approaches.

If you are looking for accountability, Jami Attenberg’s 1000 words of summer. It will happen between June 17 and June 30 this year (2 weeks of writing 1000 words every day). That is 14,000 words, at least one-third of a manuscript!

I sort of participate in that on and off last year. That got me to have the manuscript that I am still working on (Can’t believe that I have worked on a story for a year). I have heard of writers spending 3 to 10 years on a manuscript (Donna Tartt locked her place for her dedication of 10 years).

This week for paid subscribers:

1. Challenge #8

2. Submitting your fiction

3. Planning for 2026

This week challenge:

To start fresh and get back to the routine of creating and writing this year, there would be a creative or writing challenge every other week. You can see the first 5 challenges below.

The remaining challenges for 2023, creative or writing resources would be accessible for paying subscribers, with only $6 a month (the cost of a coffee) or $60 a year.

Challenge 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Previously for paid subscribers: Challenge 6 | 7

Challenge #8:...