The idea for this project came about when I was trying, for maybe the fourth or fifth time in the last couple years, to organize my basement. It’s a mess down there! And I’m always envious of friends who have these pristine, ordered rows of boxes, everything filed away and accounted for.
Going through my own messy, disorganized boxes, I found myself thinking about writing prompts, as I often do, since I teach creative nonfiction and I’m always trying to come up with new and novel prompts for my students, prompts that will get them to think about their lives, and their experiences, from new angles.
So, the genesis of this project was going to be writing prompts for my students, but then I liked the idea so much I decided to keep it for myself.
Here it is, in a nutshell: What if I used these boxed-up items—papers, old books, knicknacks that for some reason I couldn’t quite bring myself to throw away—as jumping-off points for writing about my life? I’ve been on this earth for 46 years at this point (yikes), and I’ve accumulated a lot of stuff. So what does that stuff say about me? What stories could it tell?
That’s the idea; we’ll see where it goes from there. If it sounds interesting to you, please subscribe! It’s free, and I don’t plan to do more than one of these pieces a month, so I promise not to spam your inbox with endless updates about my life (not that I don’t love reading all the lovely personal updates I get in my inbox, from other people’s Substacks, that’s just not what this one’s about).
And maybe you’ll even decide to root through your own archives, and see what stories are hiding beneath all the dust.