So today, we're going to jump into a project that I have been working on on and off for years now,

the life of legendary Disney artist Mary Blair. In the past, I've explained some of my process

to create these longer series. I have a set of files over on my computer where I collect up

documents, notes, recordings for a number of files over on my computer where I collect up documents, notes, recordings

for a number of different topics.

And when I feel that those files are relatively full and have enough material to create an interesting project,

I start to outline it.

The first outline is a basic overview, typically to understand the scope of a person's life

or the evolution of a project. And then I expand out that topical outline to a far more detailed

outline that has all of the individual quotes and descriptions that I plan to incorporate into

the series.

For this series here, there are many thousands of raw pages that I went through, interviews,

essays, letters, travel diaries, and other materials to find the quotes and descriptions

that I wanted to use.

At some places in that longer outline, I also start to write out paragraphs

that I think will likely show up in the series. The longer outline for this new series, which again

is mainly the quotes and footnotes to the original sources, is presently 151 pages or a little

over 70,000 words. Long time listeners know that I am absolutely

terrible at guessing how long or how many parts a series will have based on that expanded outline.

I try to give each series the space it needs to fully explore key aspects of an artist's life

or key elements of a project.

Most weeks all write out another part of this series, essentially converting over another

...