Part Two: Behind the Screen of "Greetings from Kenosha"

If you stand on the corner of 56th Street and 6th Avenue in downtown Kenosha, the street signs only tell part of the story. Long before any code was written or pages were filled, I learned that for me, wandering was writing—that every step taken through the city's changing landscape was directly shaping my creative process.

To your left, the weathered industrial brick of a century-old factory town survives. To your right, the morning light hits the fresh steel of new construction. I walk these blocks every morning. I listen to the lake wind cut through the street grid and watch the colors shift against the shoreline. In my last post, I talked about how wandering these sidewalks with an iPhone turned into the starting point for a new project. Here's what happened when I sat down at the keyboard to actually build it.

A view through the window on the top floor of the Karrick in downtown Kenosha.

Making an interactive map was just like plotting a novel—mostly false starts and dead ends. I knew the stories I wanted to tell, but keeping them organized without the whole thing falling apart was exhausting. There were weeks I almost gave up. I had to teach myself just enough code to keep the interface from breaking.

Architectural scaffolding: I spent weeks locked inside the Antigravity development environment.

If you’ve ever been stuck in the middle of a messy manuscript, you know how unglamorous it is. It’s not romantic inspiration; it’s just brute-force organization. Instead of wrestling with physical binders, I was dealing with thousands of invisible files: vector graphics, archival research folders, and daily photos—all trapped inside one machine.

Digital anchor: I built the visual interactive map because I needed a way to harness and organize that digital chaos.

It looks pretty tidy, but click on any of those files, and a spiderweb of data will spew forth!

Antigravity forced me to engineer a rigid physical structure for my workspace. I anchored the master file directly on the desktop and nested the necessary subfolders securely beneath it. It looks perfectly tidy on the surface. Click that main folder, and the subfolders spill out. It works exactly like pulling open a heavy book cover to reveal the chaotic stories hiding inside.

This interface used to terrify me, sort of like the idea of writing my first novel. And now, when I look at it, I see the bones and the structure that supports something truly amazing!

I did not want a flat blog index where old essays decay under new timestamps. The map turned into a living table of contents that grew as I learned more about the town. Click a pin, and a vintage postcard pops up. Click the card, and it flips over with a sharp click to reveal field notes, audio clips, and history. It is a continuous loop of discovery. You pull the reader in, give them a piece of art, and then drop them directly into the history.

Living table of contents: The map became a dynamic visual spine that expands as my understanding of this footprint deepens.

When an explorer enters the map, they are presented with a collection of map pins that they can choose.

Here is the truth I want to leave with fellow writers. You do not need to write a line of code or build a custom web interface to steal this concept for your own work. The tool does not matter. Your visual table of contents might be an oversized corkboard pinned with index cards and thick yarn. It might be a dedicated sketchbook filled with hand-drawn floor plans or a nested digital folder of character dossiers.

What matters is the physical act of pinning your world down in space. When you build a dedicated container for your curiosity, you force your research, your setting, and your narrative arcs to talk to one another on the same plane. It gives your story a bedrock to stand on. It ensures you understand the world before you ask a reader to step inside.

What does your visual table of contents look like? How do you map the architecture of your stories when the draft gets messy?

If this project intrigues you, tap on the logo and explore the Greetings from Kenosha Project. Maybe it will inspire your next project!

World-Building in Your Own Backyard: Introversion, Exploration, and Why Wandering is Writing by Todd Burleson

Since The Secret War launched back in April, taking readers to 1944 Dayton, Ohio, the months have been a blur. If you had told me then what this summer had in store, I might not have believed you.

In June, I officially wrapped up my 34-year career as an educator. I spent the last 14 of those years exactly where I belonged, serving as the school librarian at Skokie School in Winnetka. Retirement was just the first domino. Erica and I decided to lean fully into our favorite mantra: Carpe Diem! We sold our house, parted with roughly two-thirds of our belongings, and moved into a lovely apartment in downtown Kenosha.

I am naturally an introverted guy. When I retired, I thought I was fully prepared (even eager) for a sudden lack of human contact. Without a school bell schedule to anchor my day, I started walking my new neighborhood. I was not looking for a grand community connection. I just wanted to get some exercise and learn the grid of my new downtown home.

The Art of Looking Closely (and Speaking Up)

I began wandering my new backyard armed with just my iPhone. I was not walking for speed. I was trying to get to know the place better.

As I walked, I started taking detailed photos of heavy cornices, thick wooden doors, and rusted fire escapes. That is when I stumbled onto something that truly spoke to me. I have always been enchanted by the beauty of 1930s WPA National Park screen prints. I admire the way they encapsulate a massive landscape using just a few key colors. There is a calm brutalism to them. They distill a subject down to its absolute bones.

I have longed to find a way to channel that calm feeling into my own work. Applying that limited, earthy color palette and vintage screen-print texture to a historic city like Kenosha felt like a natural connection.

What started as an unpremeditated excuse to get outside quickly blossomed into the Greetings from Kenosha project. I realized I wanted to know the stories behind the cream city brick and the mortar. More importantly, I wanted to know the stories of the people who walked through those spaces.

To uncover those stories, I had to risk my introversion. I had to pull open heavy doors and actually talk to the people keeping these local landmarks alive.

I cannot overstate how delightful these conversations have been. Every time I stepped out of my comfort zone, I was met with an incredible reception. Business owners have shared their grand visions for their spaces. They have pulled out hundred-year-old, silver-gelatin photographs of their storefronts for me to study. Some have taken me on behind-the-scenes tours of hidden rooms and spaces the public never gets to witness.

Wandering Is Writing

Recently, a reader left a comment on my latest Substack dispatch that brought all of this into focus. They wrote, "Any one of these stories would make a great next book for you."

That comment hit me like a ton of bricks. As writers, we often trap ourselves into thinking that writing only happens when we are isolated at a keyboard. We believe it only counts when we are actively increasing our word count. The truth is much broader. Wandering, observing, photographing, and listening to people's stories are the very foundation of the writing process.

When I trace the history of a forgotten harbor basement or run my hand along a century-old brick wall, I am not taking a break from writing. I am gathering the raw clay. I am world-building in my own backyard.

If you are feeling stuck in your current manuscript, close the laptop and go for a walk. Take a camera. Even the one on your phone will do the trick. Look closely at the way the light hits the buildings you pass every day. Push past your comfort zone and talk to the people inside them. You might be surprised at how quickly the narrative threads begin to weave themselves together.

Next time, I will take you behind the scenes of the technical side of this project. Building an interactive map and visual table of contents for Greetings from Kenosha using the Antigravity IDE required the same trial-and-error mindset as plotting a novel. Stay tuned.

How does the idea of ‘Wandering is Writing’ appeal to you? Is there something you do that gets you unstuck and opens up your mind around your writing?