Tag: fiction

1,200 Letters

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Day 62 of 280 | The 7-40 Challenge

In A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Donald Miller tells the story of the first time he met Bob Goff.

Miller and his friends had been paddling through an inlet somewhere near British Columbia when they came across a house tucked back in the water — a retreat that Bob had built for visiting world leaders. Bob saw them coming. He didn’t know who they were. He waved them in anyway.

They were wet. They smelled horrible. They had planned to stay for an hour. They stayed for almost eight.

What Miller learned during those eight hours is one of the best stories I’ve ever heard about what happens when you throw your family into a better narrative.

Bob Goff had become — I forget the official title — essentially the honorary consul for Uganda. Part of the job meant meeting with foreign diplomats, and he’d come home and told his kids he was a little nervous about it. So he asked them what they would do.

His youngest son said he’d invite them over for a sleepover. Because you get to know people better when they stay with you.

His daughter said she’d ask them what they hoped in. Which might be the best question you can ask any human being — not what do you do, not where are you from, but what do you hope in? What’s your vision for the future, and how do you hope it will happen?

Their oldest son said he’d want to record it.

And Bob, being Bob, took all three ideas and turned them into a mission. His kids wrote twelve hundred letters to world leaders around the world. The letters said, essentially: we want to know you, and we want you to know us. If you’d like to come visit, here’s a key to our home in San Diego. And if you’d rather we come to you — we will.

Twenty-nine responded. Out of twelve hundred.

And Bob kept his promise. He flew his children to every country where a leader said yes. Those kids got to hand world leaders a key to their home, ask them what they hoped in, and film the conversation. One leader actually came and stayed with them in San Diego.

What Bob realized was simple and profound: people are people, no matter where they’re from. Get past the hype, and we’re more alike than we are different.

But here’s what hit me about the story.

Bob didn’t just teach his kids about diplomacy. He gave them an inciting incident. He threw them into a story where what they thought mattered — and where what they thought led them halfway across the world to make connections they never would have made otherwise.

The children were changed by the journey. Not by reading about it. Not by watching someone else do it. By doing it themselves.

Twelve hundred letters. Twenty-nine yeses. A lifetime of stories.

I have to look at my own life right now.

Am I writing letters to dignitaries? No. But I’m standing at the edge of my own inciting incident, and it’s one I’ve been avoiding.

I am not uncomfortable with writing. I’ve been blogging for years. I have hundreds of posts out there with my opinions on everything from faith to fatherhood to data management. I am not afraid to write a book and put it online. I’m not afraid to sing a song and upload it. I’ve done these things.

When I create something and put it out into the world, it feels like giving a gift. Here it is. If it does good for you, I’d love for you to see it. I’d love for you to have it. I’d love for you to experience it the way I have.

That part doesn’t scare me.

The part that scares me is asking.

Not just “it’s here if you want it,” but “will you go look at this? Will you actually take time to consider reading what I’ve written? Will you consider buying what I’ve published? Because I think it will do good for you.”

That’s a different sentence. That’s not leaving a gift on a doorstep and walking away. That’s standing on the porch, knocking, and saying — I made this, and I believe it has value, and I’m asking you to give it your attention.

So here’s what I’m going to do.

Instead of twelve hundred letters to world leaders, I’m going to start posting to the people in my life — and the ones I haven’t met yet — and saying something I’ve never quite said before:

In case we haven’t talked in a while, this is who I am.

I may never have shown you this side of me. I may never have mentioned that I write novels, or that I’m sixty-one days into a personal transformation experiment, or that I’ve been creating daily Bible illustrations since January 1st.

But this is genuinely who I am. And I’ve done some things that I think, if you’ll go check them out, you’d really like.

Would you do that for me?

I’ll be honest. That freaks me out a little.

Not because I don’t think the work is good. I know it’s good. I’ve put too much into it to doubt that.

It’s because asking is a different kind of vulnerability than creating. Creating is between me and the work. Asking is between me and you. And “no” hits different when you’re the one who extended the invitation.

But I have a feeling — the same kind of feeling Bob Goff must have had when his kids started sealing those envelopes — that if I do this, I’ll be changed by the journey.

I’ll continue to write and create and produce things I believe are valuable. I’ll continue to want to get them in front of people who can use them. But I think something else will happen too. I’ll learn what I’m capable of. I’ll develop a confidence that can only come from stepping out and declaring to the world: this is what I want to do, and this is who I am.

Bob Goff threw his children into a story. Twelve hundred letters. Twenty-nine yeses. Changed forever.

I’m throwing myself into one. Day 62. The inciting incident isn’t the creating. It’s the asking.

Here’s my letter. I hope you open it.

Day 62 Scorecard:

✅ Bible study and prayer ✅ Gratitude ✅ Reading (A Million Miles in a Thousand Years) ✅ Calories tracked ✅ Water (100 oz) ✅ BiblePictures365 (Numbers 31, 32) ✅ Exercise (Workout A with my son) ✅ Creative hour

The Art of Asking (for Feedback): What Amanda Palmer’s TED Talk Teaches Us About Preparation

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Day 30 of the 7-40 Challenge
Friday, January 30, 2026

“Put in the time. Your ideas are worth the effort.”

That’s Carmine Gallo in Talk Like TED, talking about the preparation that goes into great speeches. I’m on Day 30 of the 7-40 Challenge, reading Gallo’s book, and learning that what separates good ideas from great ones isn’t just having the idea—it’s being willing to test it.

But what does that actually look like in practice?

Let me show you what it looked like for Amanda Palmer.

The Tour Before the Tour

If you’ve watched Palmer’s TED talk “The Art of Asking,” you know how it feels—raw, authentic, like she’s having a conversation with 1,400 of her closest friends. She tells stories about being a living statue, about crowdfunding her album, about the vulnerability of asking. It doesn’t feel rehearsed. It feels real.

That’s exactly what great preparation is supposed to look like.

But here’s what you don’t see: the tour before the tour. Palmer didn’t just show up at TED and wing it. She took that talk on the road. Different venues. Different audiences. She gave variations of her prepared speech over and over, using each performance as a testing ground. Every time she delivered it, she was watching for what landed, what fell flat, where people leaned in, where they checked out.

And then—and this is the brilliant part—she used her community as her feedback engine. Palmer has spent years building genuine relationships with her fans, and she enlisted them in making this talk better. She asked them what worked. What didn’t. What confused them. What moved them. She treated her community not as passive consumers but as collaborators in refining her ideas.

This is the opposite of the lone genius model. This is preparation as conversation. Iteration as relationship. The speech got better because she let people help her make it better.

The Risk of Real Feedback

Think about what that actually means: Palmer valued her idea enough to test it. To expose it to feedback when it was still rough. To risk hearing that parts of it didn’t work.

Most people are so protective of their ideas that they either never share them at all, or they wait until they think it’s “perfect”—which usually means they’ve polished it in isolation until it’s lost all its rough, human edges.

Palmer did the opposite. She put her rough draft in front of real people and let them tell her the truth.

This applies to so much more than public speaking.

Writers do this with beta readers—trusted people who read your manuscript before it’s finished and tell you what’s working. Stand-up comics do this every single night in small clubs, working out new material in front of live audiences, adjusting based on what gets laughs. Software developers do this with user testing. Artists do this with gallery shows and studio visits.

The best work comes from feedback loops, not from isolated genius.

What This Looks Like for Me

Right now, I’m waiting for my wife and son to finish reading my novel manuscript before I dive back into revisions. I could have ignored their feedback and just polished it on my own. But my idea—this story I’ve spent so much time on—is worth the effort of getting real feedback from people I trust. Their insights will make it better than anything I could do alone.

And the 7-40 Challenge itself is a feedback loop. Every blog post I publish gets responses. Every video on social media gets views. I’m documenting my transformation in real-time, and feedback tells me what’s resonating and what’s not. I’m not waiting until Day 280 to share “perfect” results. I’m sharing the messy middle right now and letting the feedback help shape what this becomes.

That’s preparation as conversation. That’s using community as my feedback engine.

The Takeaway

Your community, your beta readers, your test audiences—they’re not a weakness in your process. They’re not a sign that you couldn’t figure it out on your own. They’re part of the preparation. They’re how good ideas become great ones.

So here’s what Day 30 taught me: If your idea is worth doing, it’s worth testing. Put it in front of people before you think it’s ready. Use your community as your feedback engine. Be willing to hear what’s not working. Iterate.

Put in the time. Your ideas are worth the effort.

And sometimes that effort looks like asking for help.

Day 30: Complete ✓

All seven habits executed. Three-quarters through Round 1.

Round 1 Progress: 30/40 days (75%)

Assessment Week begins in 11 days.

See you tomorrow for Day 31.

Day 13: One Brick at a Time (And Why Compound Interest Changes Everything)

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

One of the things I’m learning most on the 7-40 Challenge—and what excites me most—is seeing how daily goals turn into long-term progress.

Here’s the math: A 1% improvement every single day compounds to a 37x return in a year. That’s not motivation speak. That’s mathematics.

You can erode a foundation one brick at a time. Well, you can also build one brick at a time. The principle is the same—small, consistent actions create massive results over time.

The Thirty-Year Dream

I’ve wanted to write a novel since I was fourteen years old. That’s over thirty years of “someday I’ll do that.”

Thirty years of wishing. Failed attempts. Abandoned drafts. Good intentions that never materialized.

In the late 2000s, I wrote a small children’s Christmas book—about ten to fifteen pages. I was proud of it. I think it sold two copies. But that wasn’t the dream. I wanted a full-on, full-length novel.

Last year, I finally decided I was going to do it.

It didn’t take nearly as long as I thought.

How It Actually Happened

Here’s the thing about writing a novel: you write a scene. You read it over. You write some more. The story keeps building. You have a decent idea, you turn it into a better idea through revision and notes. And gradually, something really cool emerges.

But it still follows this principle: you have to have repeatable daily goals and tangible milestones you can accomplish every single day to build toward larger goals.

They don’t just happen. You have to actually make time for them.

I started small. One scene at a time. One chapter at a time. I kept building, and before I knew it, I had a complete first draft: 105 chapters.

Where I Am Now

It’s a YA novel about teens with superpowers in the nineties. I’m not going to tell you more than that yet—I’m in the editing process and want to roll it out properly. But here’s what matters:

I’m currently revising chapters 61 through 65. That means I’m over halfway through the revision process on a 105-chapter manuscript.

Thirty years of “someday.” One year of actual work. And now, halfway through polishing something I’m genuinely proud of.

Why The 7-40 Challenge Made This Possible

This is why the 7-40 Challenge has been perfect for this season. I work on seven daily habits. I’ll keep working on these seven daily habits. And in my creative hour, I continue to refine and revise this novel.

One chapter at a time. One day at a time. Compound interest in action.

By early this year, I’ll be working on getting it submitted for publication or publishing it myself. We’ll see what unfolds.

But what I know for sure is this: the dream didn’t change. My daily actions did.

For thirty years, I talked about writing a novel. Last year, I started. This year, I’m finishing.

That’s not luck. That’s compound interest. That’s one brick at a time.

Day 13 Scorecard: ✅ Bible study ✅ Exercise (Walking) ✅ Reading ✅ Calories ✅ Water ✅ Gratitude ✅ Creative hour (chapters 61-65 )

Thirteen consecutive perfect days. One brick at a time.

The best time to start building? Not looking back to what I should have done thirty years ago. Not someday. Now.

See you tomorrow for Day 14.