Interlude: About Inspirations
(or, a road-lagged writer talks about some stuff he likes)
NOT QUITE READY TO START THE NEW YEAR
Well… so, I’m halfway across the country right now, and... Well ok, more than halfway; I just reached he edge of Idaho and Washington State; I ain’t to Seattle yet and I’m not ready to sum up this wild, madcap dash across the country quite yet. But my weekly publishing cadence is off; ideally I’ll tell you about my first week HEADING WEST after the week is done and I’ve had a couple days to collate my thoughts- but that time is not quite yet.
I’m still in the middle of it. I ain’t ready to write about it yet; that will probably happen next week. So in the meantime, so I’m not letting this little corner of the internet lie fallow for too long… Let’s talk about some shit I like!
(this is your warning: there will be no Tales From The Road in this post. I’m just going to talk about a few things that inspired me to do it; a few projects that gave me some of the inspiration and motivation to climb into a van and drive it across the country. Feel free to skip this one; there won’t be any disasters or deep emotional journeys here. But for those of you that stay- You’re the cool ones. You know who you are.)
A LOT CAN HAPPEN IN A YEAR
A lot can happen in a year; this time last year I was in Scotland with these two hotties for the world’s biggest book convention and my book had just come out. It was literally the coolest trip of my life but I was too sad that I hadn’t immediately shot to the top of the New York Times Bestseller list to enjoy it as much as I should have.
Anyways; a year is a long time, is what I’m saying. But it’s a cool length of time to try to accomplish something.
I’ve always liked year-long projects; there’s something about that (limited) commitment that appeals to me. I have tried to start several year-long projects in my life, including one where I was going to write a new story every week for a year, one where I was going to put out one song every week for a year, one where I was going to make a short film every week for a year… Well, you get it. I like these long-term stunt projects! I loved the ‘Year of Living Biblically’. There was a band that spent a year putting out music every (day? week? I can’t remember) and then at the end of it they took the best of it and made an amazing album. Can’t remember the band, but it was fun.
I like long-term projects, is what I’m saying. The World’s Longest Book Tour wasn’t much of a surprise to my close friends, I don’t think. Likely the only surprise is that I haven’t given up on this yet, because none of my other year-long projects made it past the month-mark. Commitment is hard! Just ask my ex-girlfriends HEYOooooo
But there’s a few projects that I think were fundamental to me doing this thing- selling or giving away all my shit, moving into a van, eating a lot of McDonalds, ect.- a few long-term projects that consistently inspired me through the long dark post-covid and post-breakup years where mostly I just turned to jelly and played factory games in my dank apartment and wished to have any life but the one I had. Sparks of light in the big dark, if you will. A thread of gold to follow in the wet dungeon. If you’ll indulge me, I’ll tell you about them.
A TALE OF TWO BOATS
Is it weird that a very direct inspiration for the beat-up construction van I’m driving around the country is two completely separate boat-building projects that happened on two opposite ends of the country? No?
Ok, well… Cool, then.
So: Listen. I’m about to get nerdy. I’m about to get the second-weirdest kind of nerdy you can get: I’m about to get Wooden Boat Nerdy.
Dudes, I never used to give no shit about boats! My family didn’t have boat money. My first experience with boats was when the Boat Cousins(tm) dragged me out on a little fishing one to (apparently) fish, which I discovered is mostly just drinking Natural Light and listening to country music. Which might, from my tone, sound like I’m shitting on those two things- nothing could be further from the truth. If you don’t deeply love country music and Natural Light Beer (together), it’s because you haven’t been out on a flat-bottomed fishing boat in some artificial lake in Southern Ohio recently. Add those things together and it comes up happiness. Many parts of the culture war could be solved by just getting SOME folks out on some fishing boats listening to country and chugging a natty, and getting some OTHER folks into a really good drag club and feeding ‘em some Molly.
Should I be president? I mean, that’s up to you. But, yes.
Anyways. I couldn’t tell you exactly when I discovered Wooden Boats- or, wait, I can. It’s when I saw this video:
And I was caught. Just some Maine hillbilly (the best kind of hillbilly, if you ask me) just deciding one day they he was gonna cut down some of his grandfather’s timber and build a boat that he could sail around the world in. No experience, no knowledge of how to build a boat, just some basic woodworking shit and some fuckin grit.
And some fuckin’ commitment.
And THEN the all-powerful YouTube algorithm suggested a different channel to me: Sampson Boat Co. Y’all, there were TWO different scrappy kids on two different coasts trying to do something incredible: Build a wooden boat (more or less) from scratch. In the context of my hipster/bartender/writer life, it was such a weird thing to get obsessed with, but I got OBSESSED.
I don’t expect you to watch the literally hundreds of hours of videos detailing every step of the process of trying to build a wooden sailing vessel from scratch, but let me sum it up for you: IT’S MORE WORK THAN YOU CAN POSSIBLY IMAGINE. And every part of it is fascinating! Get one thing wrong, carve a dumb wooden doo-hickey the wrong shape, and guess what? You’re drowning in the middle of the Atlantic!
Fun, right?
So the stakes are high, but what captivated me with both of these projects was just the scale: These dudes were committing to years- and years- of back-breaking, nonstop work, funded entirely by how interested fickle YouTube people were in seeing it, launching themselves off a metaphorical cliff in the hopes that they could build something seaworthy before they hit the bottom…
Well, okay, this is all making a lot of sense, actually. But sitting in my shitty apartment, having worked so hard to achieve something (a book) but feeling as if I’d ground to a stop personally… These fuckin’ boat videos gave me hope. On a sad Tuesday morning, sometimes these boat videos are what made me go write words instead of playing factory games. These dudes just did not give up. Trials and tribulations that make my silly little troubles with roof vents and electrical systems look like a fuckin hiccup barely slowed these boys down. They gathered like-minded people around them to achieve their goal; they fought, they struggled… and they won.
Both of these boats are in the water as we speak; both of these fuckers have achieved their dreams and are sailing around the world right now. And I am not- in any way- correlating the struggle of tossing some shitty IKEA furniture away and driving a construction van around the country to the YEARS LONG, IMMENSELY MONUMENTAL task of building a wooden sailing vessel that can go around the world.
But I will absolutely correlate that struggle with what it takes to write a book.
Ha! Gotcha. Pulled you around. This shit IS about books! Well, sometimes.
BEN RECOMMENDS: WOODEN BOAT EDITION
If you are at ALL intrigued, few things would make me happier than you going and giving these Wooden Boat Titans some views, and maybe some love. If you happen to be the sort that likes to put on something on a second screen while you’re working on something else, I humbly submit both of these channels; they are both- in different ways- some of the most gripping, heartbreaking, and heartwearming reality TV you will ever put in your eyes.
If I had to pick, I would recommend Sampson Boat Co. Sampson got pretty popular pretty early, and Leo was a sailor and shipwright before he started the project. He’s also rebuilding a very famous boat from the bottom up so that he can go race it in the same race the original boat won way back a hundred years ago or whatever- it’s a great hook! He’s also hilarious, genuine, and makes really incredibly engaging videos- the Sampson stuff is extremely high quality. And he was popular enough, and supported enough, that he was able to build his boat in the absolute best possible way; the Tally Ho is a masterpiece and if you like watching how the very best of the best is made (with the best crew ever, tons of humor, and the world’s cutest macaw) then Sampson Boat Co. is for you.
HOWEVER. I want to make a quick case for Acorn to Arabella.
Steve was a fitness instructor that had built a few cabinets, had a grandfather with a bunch of land (and trees) and one day he decided he was tired of his mundane life and wanted to build a boat that he could sail around the world and have adventures in.
Right?
Did Steve have even the tiniest bit of shipbuilding knowledge? NO. Had Steve ever been on a sailboat? NO. Had Steve ever been on a boat larger than a canoe?
No. But this motherfucker, you guys. This motherfucker. He just didn’t quit. He read books, he figured things out, he just didn’t quit. He was just some hick from Maine, and he fucking built a SAILBOAT in the woods, with no experience, with no fucking clue of how to do it, he just did it. It’s not like the Sampson Boat Co dude didn’t run into heartbreaking problems; he did! He almost had to quit a bunch of times!
But this motherfucker? This Steve motherfucker?
It was nothing but problems. If he had experienced my roof vent issues, that would have been the best part of his Tuesday. His partner quit, his girlfriend dumped him, his freaking mom died during the build process. He never was as popular as Sampson Boat Co- though he absolutely did have support- you can tell he had to fight for every penny that went into that boat.
The thing that people feel when a sports team comes from behind and wins? The only way I can relate to that is think about Steve. That motherfucker.
He’s sailing around the Bahamas right now, with his new amazing fiance, his adorable dog, and his kickass handmade boat. If I had 1/8 of Steve’s determination and drive, I would OWN THE WORLD. Or, at least have Book 2 done. Which would probably feel about the same to me.
Anyways.
It’s probably obvious, but these two boat projects were immensely affecting to me. I think of my van as a little land-bound boat. If you watch any of the videos, you can see that the woodworking is similar; finding ways to make use of weird curved surfaces. Though my van thing could only ever be a tiny fraction of what Steve and Leo accomplished, it feels damn good to look around my little wheeled wooden boat and think I channeled even a tiny fraction of what these LEGENDS brought into the world with- literally- nothing more than drive and the absolute unwillingness to give up.
And that brings us to: (cue collective groan from anyone who’s drank with me in the last five years and is SO SICK of hearing about:)
THE MARBLE MACHINE
Look, I’m sorry that all these examples are dudes. It’s not fair! Simone Gertz is a freaking beacon of hardcore ingenuity; Xyla Foxlin is a wunderkind, Nerdforge does shit that I can’t even wrap my dumb brain around. But if we’re talking direct inspirations for the World’s Longest Book Tour, as Shawn Connery once put it in the world’s worst accent: There Can Be Only One.
Hey, remember this video?
Right? This crazy Swedish dude built a machine out of plywood and lego parts that played a song with marbles. It was a huge YouTube hit! One of the essential viral videos. Everybody loves it.
Only, the problem was, the cute Swedish dude in the video was actually a very accomplished musician with a history of building his own instruments. And the video was so popular, he got asked to go on Conan’ Late Night with the machine; he was being asked to go on tour, asked to take the machine all over the world and show it off… but he couldn’t. The fact was that the machine in the video barely held together even long enough to play the song once; there was no way it could manage a transatlantic flight and live television.
Much less this crazy swede’s true dream: to have a Marble Machine that he could take on a World Tour; travel around the world and play in front of audiences in all kinds of places and states. So, he did what any self-respecting artist would do: He started chasing his dreams.
And, of course, documenting that journey exhaustively on YouTube.
I’ll skip over much of it: this dude- who’s name is Martin- spent three years trying to build a machine that could be relied upon to go on a World Tour. It might not seem apparent, but trying to get marbles to play music precisely and consistently enough to take on tour is a SIGNIFICANT ENGINEERING CHALLENGE. Many, many engineers that followed the project tried to tell Martin so, but he was very much ‘form over function’ and in the end, the Marble Machine 2 failed. It was beautiful, it was awesome, it could do awesome stuff…
But it wasn’t even close to reliable enough to go on tour. It failed.
Kids, I feel this. I know this. I know this feeling. You build this incredibly complex machine (in my case, a novel) spend years on it, and then… it just doesn’t work. It just doesn’t… fucking… work.
So what do you do? Well, most people quit. I did, for a while. So did Martin.
But then both of us kept fucking going. He spent three more years trying things, failing hard- and very publicly- making plans and hopes and goals and dreams and having to admit to the world that he was wrong, and scrapping his plans, and going back to the drawing board. Learning a little more about how to do what he wanted, the way he wanted. Learning the discipline that what he wanted required.
Again; I feel this. This is what writing The Failures felt like. This is what writing every book feels like for me.
And then… And then! Martin spent years DIGGING DEEP. He learned his craft (engineering; he is already an incredibly accomplished musician) learned the very hard lesson of being practical- and then the even harder lesson that practicality isn’t everything and you still need to make things beautiful. And now, he is finally building the Marble Machine 3, in Stockholm, Sweden, and there is 0% hyperbole in me saying I am fucking REVVED UP FOR IT.
He just built the first part of the MM3; this video is actually why you are reading this post! I’m so proud of my boy.
Will I be there, in the audience, when this fucker finally gets this crazy machine ready for a world tour?
YES.
Is trying to make music with marbles a fundamentally silly thing to devote this much time, care, and attention to?
Well, yeah. But isn’t building a wooden boat, in this day and age of computer-designed fiberglass hulls, also silly? Isn’t writing a song, when AI can do it for you, fundamentally silly? Isn’t the years-long effort of bringing a novel into the world- a world where most people don’t read- kind of silly?
Yeah, it is. But it’s fucking human. It’s fucking beautiful. Trying to say something about the power of friendship and the danger of institutional power dynamics but set in a made-up fantasy world is SILLY. It’s dumb! But I’ve devoted my life to it. And trying to build a machine that can make music with marbles- or build a completely antiquated kind of boat- is also silly.
You know what else is silly? Trashing your life at 50 and driving around the country in a beat-up construction van. I am making the argument that devoting your life- hard- to something that is fundamentally a little dumb can be a beautiful, wonderful thing.
Seriously. Watch those videos. Any of them! Pick one of the three. You will see somebody that had a weird, crazy idea, and just never fucking let go of it, and they brought tens- even hundreds- of people into their project; brought countless hours of joy into not only their own lives, but the people working on the project, and the people watching as well; brought something new into the world, brought days and weeks and months and years of genuine, heartbreaking, heartwarming human moments into the world that would have never existed if they hadn’t been so goddamn driven; so goddamn stubborn, so goddamn committed.
If they’d quit, how poorer would the world be? I’d argue, quite a bit. Or maybe I’m just talking about me; I know I’d fucking be poorer. I would be less of what I want to be without these three people.
And if I didn’t hammer this point home enough already, I can’t stress enough that each of these three projects, in their own way, is exactly how I feel about writing books. Like Leo, I am often on a years long quest to rebuild and recontexualize something famous that I love (The Dark Tower, Hyperion, Stations of the Tide). Like Steve, I had a crazy idea that I have no idea how to make work but am willing to just bang my head against it until it does. Like Martin, I am usually trying to do something that nobody has ever done before (sort of) and like Martin, I mostly fail at it.
But the failure is kind of beautiful, right?
These are a few of the people that inspired me. None of these people could have done what they’ve done without the support of others; all three of these projects rested upon the shoulders of those willing to help; and of course this is true here as well. This is not me shilling for subscribers; this is me thanking the ones who have.
It’s not hyperbole to say that my adventure would have come to a halt without that support; I was only able to overcome my (relatively small) bumps in the road and get myself some solar and reliable electricity because some folks were very generous with my version of a wooden boat. Acorn to Arabella, The Sampson Boat Co, and Wintergatan are all gracious enough to thank their Patrons at the end of every video; could I do any less?
THANK YOU. I wouldn’t be here without you.
Next week: Actual adventure, and not just an exhaustive love-fest of what are clearly my main man-crushes. BUT C’MON THEY’RE SO CUTE
Love it. Thanks for sharing some of your inspirations.
I digress (from boats) but Yes, some failures are beautiful