50 Stories in 50 Weeks

Hi there. I don’t know if you’re there or not. In all likelihood, there is no one reading this, which I find comforting, because it makes it easier for me to tell you (or not-you, if you’re not reading this) what I’m about to tell you.

You see, a couple weeks ago I had a terrible idea. An idea so terrible that it has subjected and committed me to weekly community disservice, and flung this post and papa blog into existence.

But before I get to that, some context: I like writing (I actually hate it most of the time, but for simplicity’s sake, let’s say I like it). Yes, I like writing. I’ve liked writing for a long time. I won’t bore you with stories of how when I was five, I wrote endearing fables of a cute but moldy tater tot whose dream it was of swimming in the fryer with the fresh tater tots. Partially because I have other things to bore you with, and mostly because it’s untrue. All you need to know for now is that I like writing, and that I’d like to write more.

“So what’s the problem?”, a friend asked when I told him of my ambitions at a party. “Go. Write. No one wants you here anyways.”

“I’m working on it. I’ve got a few masterpieces on the go. Twenty of ‘em. They just need a few finishing strokes.”

Kicking myself for admitting this out loud and for saying “a few finishing strokes”, I walked home with bruises on my shins, determined to complete at least one of these said masterpieces. I sat down at my desk, taking a deep breath and warming up my fingers by playing the air piano over the keyboard for a few seconds. Just as I was about to begin completing my first masterpiece, the quiet sounds of genius were replaced by a banging noise. It was a faint banging, I could barely hear it, it’s possible it didn’t even exist, but nonetheless, I couldn’t have anything disrupt Mother Muse while she whispered Truth into my right ear.

I was ruffled by the distraction. It’s thanks to these raucous WFHers that the world is brimming with writers whose genius has not yet been realized. Needing absolute silence in order to get started on beginning finishing my first masterpiece (but too lazy to put on my noise-cancelling headphones), I stood up resolutely, ready to investigate the disturbance. Like my childhood hero Tintin, I’m always ready to sacrifice writing deadlines in order to investigate acts of public mischief. (Plus we both have the same lick of hair and we’re both hand drawn).

My ears - dissapointed to have not picked up a signal from Mother Muse, but eager to be put to use - sensed that this hypothetical noise originated from the great beyond, in the hallway outside my apartment. I threw on my peacoat and led Snowy (I don’t have a dog, so I made do with an empty soup can and some yarn) jogging into the hallway.

“Quick Snowy, they’re getting away!”

Snowy wagged his tail, happy to be included in this adventure long after he’d outlived his usefulness as a Campbell’s canister.

Thanks (many, many thanks) to the inconsiderate scallywag, no writing was started, much less finished that day.

Of course, writing doesn’t necessarily make someone a writer. There are other kinds of activities an aspiring writer can pursue that also makes them a writer. For example, everyday, I wake up early, ready to do the hard things. I look myself in the mirror, tell myself “You can do hard things”, and then I go listen to the latest writing podcast episode while eating an avocado toast.

This routine has successfully nearly made me start finishing twenty masterpieces this year, so who was I to argue with it? Still, 2024 is an auspicious year (the sum of its digits add up to 10, a meaningful number to those who can’t count), so I figured I’d give writing more airtime this year. That’s why on January 1st, I forced future-ajaysabs into a heroic posture by signing him up for a flash-fiction writing contest, set to take place two weeks later. (As an aside, people really should not make decisions on January 1st. The mountain of collectively shattered dreams come February is too blinding to look at directly.) It was the perfect ploy - present-ajaysabs felt all of the pleasure of that decision, while future-ajasabs felt all the pain of it.

The writing competition was both exhilarating and extremely painful, though much more of one than the other. There was a requisite tension between agonizing over every single word while also ensuring a continual forward movement over the course of 60 hours. Moreover, for the first time in months, I finished and submitted a piece of writing. To save us both from embarrassment, I’ll avoid mentioning how many hours (were one to count months in hours) had been poured into writing and rewriting any one of my twenty work-in-progress magnum opera.

(I scribbled a few high-minded thoughts here about the effect constraints had on my process and outcome.)

Riding the high of completing a 500 word short story as though I had just won the gold medal for luge at the Sochi Winter Olympics, a feeling of invincibility swept over me while I was in the shower.

Have you seen the movie Julie & Julia? Don’t worry if you haven’t, I’ll go ahead and spoil it for you. The premise is that there’s a person (Julie) who decides to cook one or more Julia Child (Julia) recipes everyday for the rest of her life. Or maybe for a year. I can’t remember.

I found this prospect enticing. I wanted to be the someone who cooks a new recipe everyday for the rest of my life. Only instead of cooking, I want to write, and only instead of (re-)writing  Julia Child’s recipes everyday, I wanted to write…well, something else. Something of my own.

So while I was in the shower vigorously soaping my arms, which felt more Herculean than usual, lightning struck, electrifying me. I should re-create the conditions of this writing competition everyday! I’ll write…something, everyday!

This idea stuck to my insides like bubble gum. I knew I needed a forcing mechanism to help me finish smaller, more complete, pieces of writing. I thought that having regular, consistent, deadlines might help with this. As Seth Godin says Elizabeth King says, practice saves us from the poverty of our intentions.

But as we all know, having goals for ourselves is irrelevant. It’s the prospect of public humiliation that makes the world go round (or spin like a pancake, for all my devout flat-Earther fans out there). For this to be real, for this idea to achieve its lofty ambitions (lofty to me at least), I would have to tell people about it.

So naturally, I scaled back the frequency of this interval from everyday to once a week. 50 stories in 50 weeks. The romanticism of this idea took hold in me.

It’s a delicate tap dance. I need you, dear reader, to exist in order to have public accountability. But I need you to not exist to write honestly. Otherwise I might write what I think you want to hear before first knowing what brand of bumblebee I am.

A few days after I had this slippery, sudsy revelation, my friend & I were leisurely strolling towards the airport. He’s a writer himself (not the sort that took the podcast route to becoming a writer, but we won’t judge him too harshly), so I decided to mention the beginning of my plan to him. I just wanted to try this idea on for size, like when someone (not me, obviously) goes to a posh store to try on a jacket that they can’t afford - just to make sure it fits - in preparation for the day they have enough cash to purchase it. Somehow, by the time we reached Departures, I had somehow promised him I’d follow-through with this idea, effective immediately. Neither of us were flying in or out of the airport, so I had nowhere to run, except into the hands of border security, where I was scared I would be apprehended and tried for not sticking to my highest ideals. So I said “okay, okay, I’ll do it.” I’ve since stopped talking to my friends.

This brings us to yesterday. The day that has come to be known to me and my inner voice as The Day I Tried to Talk Myself Down from Writing. It’s something of a daily recurring holiday in that bird’s nest we call my brain, but this latest celebration had more fireworks than usual.

“What if I don’t have anything to say and it turns out I’m stupid?”, I whimpered to Snowy.

“Then you’ll be stupid”, replied soup can Snowy, who sounded remarkably like Morgan Freeman, replied. He looked into my soul with his wise and tinny eyes. “But then at least you’ll know you’re stupid rather than having to entertain the prospect of being stupid.”

“I don’t have time to write, I’m so busy”, I continued to whine.

“That’s certainly true. I haven’t had food in me in years. But will you ever have time? You’ll probably have less of it later than you do now.”

“What if people don’t like what I have to write?”

“Honestly bro, nobody cares about your writing. And this is a good thing. Now you can write unencumbered, free to explore your innermost thoughts. Anonymity is a blessing, giving you permissions to try unordinary things until you find Truth”, Snowy said.

With Snowy empty of soup and wisdom, I resigned myself to my new reality. I’m going to miss those hard, early mornings with avocado toast and writing podcasts.

As for what I will write for the next 49 weeks, I’m not entirely sure yet, truthfully. I suppose there’s only so many times I can procrastinate writing by writing about how much I don’t want to write. Oh well, that’s future-ajaysabs’ problem, that poor schmuck.

So, you or not-you - whoever is reading this - thanks for keeping me accountable. I hate you <3

Cya next week.