Lists
In listing, we join a venerable list of listers, people like Susan Sontag, who wrote down 10 Rules for Raising a Child (“do not discourage childish fantasies”); Charles Perec, whose lists include “Attempt at an Inventory of the Liquid and Solid Foodstuffs Ingurgitated by Me in the Course of the Year Nineteen Hundred and Seventy-Four”; Jorge Luis Borges, who makes reference to a list of animals that includes “fabulous ones” and “those that tremble as if they were mad”; Carmen Maria Machado’s “Especially Heinous: 272 Views of Law & Order SVU,” a list of capsule synopses from the very violent police show; and even a list of lists in Bill Keaggy’s Milk Eggs Vodka: Grocery Lists Lost and Found.
Lists are great because they’re often quite mundane or personal to their maker, but oddly intriguing to the voyeur. They hint at an organizing structure that makes sense to someone but might be opaque to others. They suggest order and finitude even when both are impossible. And they’re so full of story-ness. That said, sometimes a list can just be a list and be quite satisfying as is… Anyway, our task is to make a list (or a few), and then play with these capacities of the list to keep the reader engaged, with wonder.
Some steps: you could start with Lynda Barry’s guide to a daily practice of listing from her book Syllabus , which is attached. Simply draw a grid on a notebook page, list 7 you did, 7 things you saw, 1 thing you overheard and then include a drawing from the day. Do this for a week and then take a look: is there something intriguing in the mix? If so, compile your list and send it along.
Or: find a list - or the hated listicle - and rewrite, annotate or fuck with it:
• 10 Important Life Lessons You Can Learn From Cats
• Top 10 Weird Things That Happened in 2020
• Signs of the Apocalypse List
Or: pick something - anything - that you love and get granular; sometimes obscuring the framework can amp up the mystery:
• 25 colors of the ocean
• some strange names of trees
• weird song titles that spark joy
And let’s add in some REWRITING with two (optional) deadlines this time:
- add a list or two to this folder;
- take anything from the folder and Re/Re/Rewrite it, remake it, reimagine it, remediate it;