⧉ Years in the making
Welcome to the thirty-first issue of OVERLAP ⧉
Years in the making
I have this theory about writing: There’s no such thing as “just banging out a quick article.” If you produce something quickly and it’s not totally awful, it’s probably because you’ve been thinking about it for a long time. What looks like magic has often been years in the making.
This week at Luminary Labs, the announcement we planned was pushed back, and I was left with a gaping hole in my editorial calendar. I keep a few latent ideas in my back pocket for weeks like this and was able to pull a brief article together on short notice. But the real work on this particular piece started two years ago.
Remember early 2018, when there was a different tech ethics crisis every day? I was sitting in a meeting with my boss, who said something along the lines of “Haven’t these guys seen the Incredibles? Don’t they know the robots get out of control?” This led to a post-lunch brainstorm in the office; my colleagues and I sourced a list of 40 sci-fi stories that should be on every tech ethicist’s radar. (Quartz noticed it and asked to republish it, which helped us get it in front of a few of those tech industry folks.)
Around the same time, Quartz also published an interesting piece about narrative storytelling. Neuroscience researchers found that certain kinds of stories trigger an alignment in brain activity. We are, quite literally, wired for storytelling!
Of course, there’s a certain art to telling stories and getting people to listen. I went to Thread at Yale, a storytelling workshop I’ve mentioned before. Glynn Washington, the host of Snap Judgment, said something that really stuck with me: To tell a big story, tell a small story. Tiny moments are the things that bring big ideas to life.
Later that fall, I went to TEDMED with my colleagues. We met with authors who had written stories for a forthcoming RWJF fiction anthology about human issues that influence our health. People loved these stories and the conversations were thoughtful and productive. Attendees were so much more engaged than I thought they might be; a few even tried to sneak the manuscripts out of the reading area!
Over the past year or so, I’ve been tracking fiction anthologies and other narrative projects that use stories to engage people in conversations about the future. Every time I hear of something interesting, I log it in our company’s internal reading lists. Some of the examples were just glorified user journey maps, with the intention of making a product and/or selling it to people. But some of the projects, like RWJF’s collection, demonstrated the very real power of stories to help diverse groups of people develop a shared vision.
This week, RWJF published “Take Us to a Better Place,” the collection of stories I previewed back in 2018. (The e-book is free to download. You should read it!) The timing couldn’t have been better; it was exactly what I needed to fill that opening in my publishing schedule. The last-minute article only took a couple of years to write.
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It’s Roll Film Week, so I’m burning the proverbial candle at both ends. I rarely hear people talk about the physical exhaustion that follows short bursts of creative work. Do other writers and artists feel tired after meeting a deadline or completing a project? I’m glad it’s Friday.
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Auntie Jess recommends:
Custom keytags. The key I leave for my pet sitter has my cat’s name on it; the possibilities are infinite.
Duralex tumblers. These drinking glasses are durable and inexpensive — but still feel nice enough for a Friday evening cocktail.
Uncle Val’s gin. Welcome the weekend with a shot of this in your Duralex glass; add an ice cube, tonic or seltzer, and a lemon twist. Cheers!
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Thanks for reading. I’d love to hear from you — hit reply or send a message through my website to tell me about your favorite end-of-week drink or anything else that’s on your mind. You can also forward this to a friend or two and invite them to subscribe. If you missed a previous issue, all the archives are online.
Until next time,
Jessica
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