On Not Sounding Like Oneself

I sent this message as part of the email instructions to members of the Disquiet Junto, via the juntoletter.disquiet.com, on April 10, 2025:

We’re seven weeks from the 700th consecutive weekly Disquiet Junto project, which makes for a pretty great feeling. This week’s project — the 693rd — is extra abstract, and occasionally they go that way. It’s good to mix it up. I wanted to mention two related things to participants who sometimes may sense that a given project doesn’t “sound” like them — people say this to me privately, and also express it on the discussion boards, so this encouragement isn’t aimed at anyone in particular. First, if you are concerned some of your Junto projects are distinct from your work, you might set up a separate account when posting the results. Second, I like to paraphrase a writing exercise I believe I read in something Douglas Coupland (Generation X, Microserfs) published a long time ago, which is to try to write a character in a story as unlike you as possible and put it in an envelope for six months. Then open the envelope, and see how much of yourself you actually do see in that character.

Separately, we’ll be doing the trio project we do each year pretty soon. I may start it just before the 700th project, so the trios are complete coincident with that milestone, but I may take a different route. We’ll see.