Failed Projects: Memoir

I have a lot of trouble with projects that I would categorize as "liberal arts" endeavors. For example, I love music and I am a pretty capable percussionist but when it comes to generating music of my own, I find it intensely difficult. Similarly, I enjoy a good story in the form of a book or a short story but when I try to write my own, I find it very challenging to come up with anything worth while.

My first attempt at writing was during my junior year. I borrowed an old-fashioned mechanical typewriter from my middle school computer teacher as sort of a novelty. I cleaned all the dust our of the lever arms and oiled it up so that it was running smooth. I even got a new ink ribbon for it so that everything was back in working order. Then I decided it would be funny to take it to school and take notes with it. My teachers didn't really appreciate the horrendous racket it produced and asked me to stop or get out within the first 3 minutes of class.

Mine looked something like this...but dustier.

After a day of carrying the 30 pound metal typewriter around school, I decided I'd had my fun so now I should actually do something productive with it. I had played with the idea of starting a memoir before but had never really worked up the motivation to get some words down. I thought using the typewriter was fun so maybe I would enjoy typing up a memoir! I like the idea of chronicling my life so that I can look back when I'm 70 and say "holy crap I can't believe I did that" or "wow I was really stupid back then". I don't want to forget any of the cool stuff I did so a memoir seemed fitting. 

Writing a book is a lot of work. I guess I didn't really appreciate that going into it. People spend years writing books but I thought I could bust out a working draft within a couple of weeks. Pretty much what happened is I sat down in front of the typewriter, got my paper ready and made sure the ink was working. Then stared at the page for 15 minutes. I decided to start with why I was writing the memoir and typed up some junk. I went back and read and realized how repetitive I sounded so I took it out, crumpled it up and threw it away. I'm not sure if I'm not really a good writer or if I'm just to critical of my own work but it took me all afternoon to get a measly two or three pages of content that I was satisfied with. 

Once the novelty of the typewriter wore off and I was focusing more on content, I started loosing interest in the project. Sitting down and trying to write a chapter of material that was worth reading just seemed like to much work and more than I was willing to do. Typewriters are fun, trying to write a whole book in a few weeks was not. So I gave up and decided to revisit the project another time. 

That's pretty much what this blog is I guess. I want to make note of the things I've done so far before I forget about them so that, at some point, I can look back and remember all of my experiences. Blogging is just a less formal way of doing it. In a book, I feel like I have to make the language formal and use ornate phrasing and write long chapters on every experience and get the grammar just right and use engaging literary devices and remember what my English teachers taught me about writing and avoid run-on sentences and avoid using words like junk and stuff and stuff like that. But that's hard. 

So far my revisit to writing a memoir (blog version) seems to be going well. It's a lot easier to just write the way I would talk. I can make entries as long or short as I want depending on what the story I'm telling calls for. It's nice. I just hope this doesn't turn into a failed project too.

-Me, the Wannabe Author

Failed Projects: Dugout Canoe

It was the end of my freshman year. I believe we were studying Native Americans in my History class and we had spent time talking about their techniques for building canoes. It is believed that they lit a fire at the base of a suitable tree and then chopped at the burnt tree with their primitive hatchets to remove material. They did this over and over until the tree fell down then they used a similar technique to shape the tree into a canoe. They essentially dug out (hence the name) the inside of the tree leaving a boat shell. This is what a successful one would look like:

I decided this looked like fun so after school I headed down to the petroleum pipeline that runs through my neighborhood. The pipeline is basically a long skinny field with mature forests on either side. I figured I could cut down a tree on the edge then drive down the field to pick it up. I didn't have an ax at the time, just a hatchet. I hid it in my pants on the way down so no one was suspicious. I convinced my younger brother to come with me to keep me company. There were few trees lining the pipeline that were really suitable. I ended up settling for a tulip poplar, which was really much too small to fit me but I overlooked that at the time I guess. It took me three afternoons to cut it down with my little hatchet. Towards the end, I got sick of swinging. I was pretty close to getting through the tree so I threw a rope around the tree and got it as high as I could. My brother and I both pulled as hard as we could until we heard the tree start to crack and give way....falling right towards us. We both darted out of the way. There's something really great about watching a tree fall. All the leaves provide a lot of air resistance and cause the tree to fall in slow motion. It creaks and snaps on the way down and when it finally touches down, the ground shakes with the impact. I would have felt bad about cutting down a nice healthy tree but tulip poplars grow like weeds and it doesn't take long (comparatively) for a tulip poplar to get big. 

The next step was hacking off the branches and finding a section of the trunk that was nice and straight. Tulip poplars are usually nice and straight anyway so that was another reason I had picked it. I spent another couple afternoons hacking off a section with the hatchet. Now that I had my log, I had to get it home. I didn't have a truck so the next best option was my mom's '95 minivan. I couldn't drive it all the way down to where the tree was because I was afraid I would get it stuck so I had to pull the log about 100 yards up to the top of a hill where I could load it into the back of the van. I used some round sections of branches to put under the log which was pretty damn heavy because it was so green and wet. I tied my rope around the log and, with the help of my hesitant dad, pulled the log up the hill. We could only pull so far until the roller logs came out from under the back end of the tree and we had to put it back up in the front. I got this idea from the way the transported the massive stone heads on Easter Island. Finally, we got the log up to the back of the van. We managed to wrestle the end of the tree up onto the bumper and eventually got the whole log inside. I tied it in nice and tight so that it didn't fall out when I accelerated forward.

Unfortunately the log was a bit too long so we couldn't close the trunk. I'm sure anyone who happened to see us drive by was pretty confused. Whoops.

I used our old red flyer wagon and the frame of a little peddle go cart we had to wheel the log into our backyard. I started a little fire all along the tree with charcoal briquettes. It did surprisingly little. I was pretty discouraged at how little the fire even did to the log. I tried hacking a little trench down the length of the log with my hatchet and tried again with the fire. It did a little more this time but still not much. I gave up when I realized after all this work, the canoe was still going to be much to small for me.

I revisited the project a little later. I decided I needed a bigger log so I went exploring along a public trail near my house. I found a nice big fallen pin. It was massive. At least a yard in diameter. I went out, bought an ax, and returned to start chopping off a good section. I'm not sure how I thought I was going to get it home but I never got that far anyway. After about an hour or two of chopping, some random trail walker and his wife stopped to look at what I was doing. The man began yelling at me in a heavy German accent. He said something about me having a weapon in a public area or some nonsense like that and said he was going back to the park office to report me. He asked what my name was and I struggled to think of a good fake name. "uuuh Steven Smith." I doubt he believed me but he left anyway, headed toward the office. I walked the other way rather quickly and headed towards home. I was probably breaking some sort of law. This wasn't the last time I got caught doing some forestry by a disgruntled trail walker, but I think that's for another story. 

-Me, the Wannabe Indian Shipwright

Failed Projects: Introduction

I estimate that for every 4 or 5 successful projects, I have 1 project that doesn't end up the way I had initially planned. Sometimes I realize half way through how impractical my goals are. Sometimes I get bored. Sometimes I run out of money. Sometimes I just get frustrated and throw all my work into a pile and light it on fire. Whatever the reason for failure, I always learn a lesson that helps my next project be more successful. Failed Projects will be all about, yeah you guessed it, my failed projects.

"Mistakes are the portals of discovery." - James Joyce

-Me, The Discoverer