In the late summer of 2018, I met a friend of mine at a coffee shop by the Brooklyn Navy Yards, and decided to make a commitment I wouldn’t be able to retract. I told my friend I’d give him an early draft of my writing project. The following items are the result of me deciding to buckle down and get some momentum going. They are readable in any order, but as potential elements of a fully fleshed out story, I think of them falling into this internal chronology (for the time being).
Six or so years later, during Barack Obama’s presidency -- this was before Osama Bin Laden was killed -- the writing idea cropped up again; this time as a bullet point on a list. It was part of a ten-item list that I emailed to myself every day as part of an effort to establish more productive routines in my life. Each item was written as an affirmative declaration in the present tense, and had a deadline associated with it that I liked to place inside parentheses. For example, I might write something like this:
- Virginia 1975
- Berry Berry Hi Krass
- The Bollingbrook day School
- A Game of Pool
- Supraluminal Ten Cent Ball (wip)
- Camp Libby South Korea
- Dr. Shin and the Aleutian Island Rats (wip)
- The World behind the World
- Old Man Black Gown
Events leading up to this
One day in November many years ago, I had what is known as a “gut-level feeling”; one that I took seriously, but knew would be difficult to translate into a concrete set of enumerable steps. I wanted to write down a few of the things that I thought were interesting about my dad Roger Willenbring. I didn’t really understand why the feeling came to me, just that it felt right. It even filled me with pride at times, just for having had the ability to conceive of it. It was simple, but deeply personal. Neither unrealistic nor trivial.Six or so years later, during Barack Obama’s presidency -- this was before Osama Bin Laden was killed -- the writing idea cropped up again; this time as a bullet point on a list. It was part of a ten-item list that I emailed to myself every day as part of an effort to establish more productive routines in my life. Each item was written as an affirmative declaration in the present tense, and had a deadline associated with it that I liked to place inside parentheses. For example, I might write something like this:
Sample bulleted list item: I can do 30 consecutive pull ups (10/1/2009).I held to this ritual unswervingly, and I’m proud to say that I did it every day for many years with extraordinary results. In every category except for my writing project, I was checking things off and achieving my goals. I began referring to my writing project as my collection of stories. But as I continued with my ten-item list emails, I realized I didn’t like the sound of my collection of stories. So I deprecated the term, and replaced it with the much simpler less-ambitious-sounding moniker of the writing project. The effect of me moving the goalposts in such a manner was exactly as you might suspect: my progress over the next 4 years was abysmal. Not a single sentence was produced. But I did see a huge uptick in the completion of unscheduled gardening tasks and home repair projects. I also managed to catch seven squirrels in my backyard in a matter of two days.
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