What is the Apollo Project?
How I'm teaching myself to write
I.
Several times in my life I’ve been in a position where I needed to learn something new, but didn’t exactly know how. I usually begin with a broad search for help, drawing from all corners of the internet. I browse course catalogs at my local university, I scan dubious online offerings from digital hawkers. I watch YouTube videos, read articles, and skim Reddit conversations looking for clues. But more often than not, I can't find what I’m looking for. Maybe I haven't been ready, but as a student, the teacher has rarely just appeared. I’ve always had to take my education into my own hands.
I find myself, yet again, in this position. But before I share what I seek to learn this time around, I think it’s important to talk about how I taught myself to code.
II.
Learning how to code was no small feat. As a matter of fact, just defining what “learning to code” meant was a dubious task. I started my journey in what I believed to be the most logical way, by exploring the well-traveled roads—and in the coding world, those are called bootcamps. A cursory search revealed that there were two in-person bootcamps near me that I could take. Each one would cost $20,000—so this option died on the vine pretty early. I decided to get more creative. I began stitching together a Frankenstein coding curriculum of my own making. I took the bones from the in-person bootcamps I couldn’t afford, and found corresponding lessons elsewhere on the internet. I devised my own exercises, and benchmarks. I had flash cards, and projects, and even tests. Towards the end, it became quite an elaborate operation.
After about six months of working in this way—I found something called “The Odin Project”. It was a rigorous, all encompassing coding course, designed to take you from absolute beginner to professional fluency. I mean, even now I hesitate to call it a course at all. It was more like a map. It was self-paced, which meant you could learn the material in ten weeks, or ten years, depending on your schedule, and level of commitment. There were videos to watch, articles to read, and exercises to complete. It did this by curating, synthesizing, and structuring a scaffolding through which one could teach themselves to code. But most surprising of all, was that the course was almost entirely text based. Meaning, it didn't read like a course at all. Instead it felt like a choose your own adventure book. When I discovered The Odin Project, I remember smiling, having realized that I was on the right track all along. Their curriculum and mine were almost an exact match.
Finally, after a year of coding and working on my curriculum—I had arrived. I reached professional proficiency, and had the pay stubs to prove it.
Now, five years later I find myself at yet another beginning. This time the skill I seek to learn is more of an art—and that art is writing. I am going to learn writing from the bones up.
III.
Now, you may be thinking, Zac you already know how to write…you’re doing it right now. To which I would have no reasonable rebuttal—other than the fact that it’s only after you begin a journey, that you can truly see how far you still have to go.
At this point, there's an important omission I need to address. This is not the first time I’ve tried to learn how to write.
Last year, I attempted this very same project halfheartedly. I read Bird by Bird, On Writing, On Writing Well, Draft No. 4, Big Magic, Elements of Style, Elements of Eloquence, and a whole slew of other writing books I can no longer remember. Each one provided me with just a tiny piece of the puzzle. In addition to reading about the craft, I took exactly one writing course. It was amazing, but gathered so infrequently that it’s of little use to mention here. Finally, I did the deed. I wrote over 70 short essays that now live online. But admittedly, I approached the entire operation as a spectator, peeping into a world of which I believed I could never belong. I regret not taking it more seriously at the time.
IV.
So I am once again doing the only thing I know how to do—grabbing a needle and thread, and stitching together a curriculum. As of this week I have dubbed this patchwork, The Apollo Project.1
This first week, I’m laying the foundation—but I think you already understand the basic structure. The curriculum will be a chronicle of my learning experience. Each module will correspond to an essential element of great writing. Right now those are: Sources of Inspiration, Blockages, Structure and Outline, Style and Voice, Story and Plot, Narrator, Characters, Dialogue, Descriptions, World Building, Humor, Editing, and Research.
As I work towards mastery of these domains, I will compile readings, exercises, and projects for myself to complete. The most impactful of those will then become Lessons that live within each Module. By way of creation, organization, and synthesis—I will become an expert in the information, and seriously improve my ability to write.
At least, that’s the idea. It worked for me once, so I’m willing to bet it will work again as I try to master this new skill.
—Zac
Let’s chat in the comments
Now I’d like your opinion on something. As AI-generated content is becoming ubiquitous, people are still eager to learn how to write. Why do think that is?
Anecdotally, I’ve seen $5,000 writing courses sell out, year after year, attracting hundreds of student. Coursera, Gotham Writers Workshop, and Stanford Online writing classes, which cost $500+, and are consistently full. And their audiences are not university-age students either. They’re almost exclusively people in their 30s and beyond.
Interest in this craft should be dead, but it’s not—why do you think this is?
Now technically there were a few other Gods I could have gone with to exemplify the nature of this project. I could have chosen Athena; goddess of wisdom and handicrafts. Or Calliope; goddess of music, song, and epic poetry. Or even Kvasir; Norse god of wisdom, poetry, knowledge. But I like the sound of Apollo; god of poetry, prophecy, and truth—so that’s what I’m going with.