(bell dinging) (typewriter rumbling) - Hi, I'm Jami Attenberg.

Here is, "I Came All This Way to Meet You."

(light jazz music) It's a book about being a writer and being an American and being a traveler and being a woman.

It's everything that sort of leads up to me becoming the person that I am today, in terms of my creativity.

(light jazz music continues) - I could not love the name of this memoir more.

It could be your message to your readers, that you came all this way to meet them, or a definition of what you've gone through to become the writer you are today.

- Also, this book has a lot to do with community and friendship and building those kinds of friendships and so I think there's a lot of traveling in the book.

I travel all over the world in the book.

- I want you to see the second question I've written, which says, "You, Jami Attenberg, "have lived in a lot of places."

- I don't know, I was just trying to experiment.

I think being an artist, being a writer, being a human being is about being curious and I definitely had that in spades.

- People crave that stability and you were fine to ride the wind and to pursue this art and not have that stability and there's a lot of people that couldn't do that.

- But the stability is in the story.

The stability is in the project.

Whatever I'm working on is the stability for me.

So all the other things you can just shut out.

(light music) (rain pattering) - One of my favorite sentences in the book, "When someone tells you not to bother dreaming, "they're not on your side."

- That's why community is so important.

You want someone who can tell you the truth about your work and about your attitude.

And, I've been doing a lot of work recently, and one of my friends said to me the other day, she's like, "You don't complain about work a lot, "but you're complaining right now."

But she was saying it more as like a warning.

Not like, like a, "Are you okay?"

Kind of thing.

- Right, and that's a good friend.

We don't wanna just hear, "Oh, it's great Jami."

"Keep it up."

- Although it is sometimes important to have that one friend who like just, no matter what, is just gonna gonna gas you up and is just gonna be like, "You're a genius!

"You got this!"

- That's right.

Jami, you're awesome.

Thank you for being here and thank you all for watching "A Word on Words."

I'm Jeremy Finley.

Remember, keep reading.

(bell dinging) You and I were on a panel and I made a joke about being a boring Midwesterner and you roared up like a lion, and you were like, "Do not diminish the glory of the Midwest!"

(Jami laughing)