Earlywood: The Moon & Antarctica

Publisher’s note: Welcome to Earlywood, a free weekly excerpt from one of the thousands of pieces I’ve written since 1996. Sometimes, it’s from a magazine article. Or a book. Or (in this case) a blog post published in 2020. Each entry has been updated or annotated with some modern context or point of view. Enjoy!

When I need to mentally travel from Point A to Point B, I sit down and think hard. I’ll draw it out on paper like this:

1. Steal the underpants. 2. Convert them to face masks. 3. Profit.

When I need to go from Point I’ll Never Have Another Good Idea to Point It’s 4 a.m. And I Can’t Stop Writing, the process is different. I suspect that I am involved somehow, but I don’t feel involved. I discovered years ago that my mind is more agile when it’s AWOL.

This is true: If I deliberately attempt to think of a good idea for a book, I’ll fail (“Why not build little houses for snails?”). But if I drive alone to Minnesota and stare at the dotted lines for 10 hours, my brain makes connection…