Why writer John McPhee is starting a project that will never end

Many of us are drawn to tasks with a natural completion, or at least we’ve chosen those for our New Year’s resolutions.

For example: read a certain number of books (or finish one particularly challenging one), for example; train for a specific athletic event; complete a home renovation project.

But nonfiction writer John McPhee is embarking on the exact opposite of that.

At age eighty-eight, he’s writing about the various story bits he’s considered but not picked up over the years.

It’s a “project meant never to end, something you could keep going and keep going and, therefore, keep yourself going,” he explained to NPR’s Audie Cornish.

Listen to him describe the inspiration for and contents of this project below, or read a transcript of it on NPR’s website.