The following are notes I made on my writing process yesterday while I was working. I like to “catch” such stray thoughts to make them pay later, for sharing and/or for my own learning.
I am moving from the precis to the outline after a rough outline, using the comments field in OmniOutliner to hold parts of my precis and begin expanding upon them.
I am developing essentially the same idea since I began writing this, but it’s difficult to express it without lots of reorganizing, adding, and suchlike revisions for which I need an oultine. In expressing I find refinements, but it’s hard to recognize them when they come because they come in a crowd of like thoughts that may not be as fruitful. If I relax and enjoy this process, I am much happier. But the constant pressure to produce a product makes it difficult to enjoy this, to allow myself to do it. But I can’t write well without it. Pleasurable exploration, joyful waste, is a necessary part of my writing. Pain, no gain. I have to slow down or catch my thoughts in lists, diagrams, and prose. Then I have to evaluate them. This evaluation can also be pleasurable. But once again that critic can block the words (Boice).
I am working very productively and happily today. And that is in part because I’m allowing myself to make these notes on my writing process while envisioning sharing them. This gives me some of that community Boice suggests is so important and which is often difficult to otherwise get because of my own insecurities and my feeling that I don’t want to ask my friends to do even more work.
I get my first transposition of the precis to the outline comments fields done. Then I go back and start putting my extra ideas from the end of the precis that i didn’t know how to accommodate as footnotes in the precis at the appropriate spot, which I mean to signify that these ideas belong to a deeper layer of the outline than is signified in the precis. So now I’ll go and start putting these footnotes into those deeper areas as my first forays into those depths of the text a-borning.
Doing this helps me see if my new organizational idea is right, if it can help me find out if these “extra” ideas that seem important are actually important.
I posted these quickly now because I find myself making more notes on my writing today that seem like they would be useful if shaped up into a better commentary on the act of academic writing. So there may be more tomorrow.
I am moving from the precis to the outline after a rough outline, using the comments field in OmniOutliner to hold parts of my precis and begin expanding upon them.
I am developing essentially the same idea since I began writing this, but it’s difficult to express it without lots of reorganizing, adding, and suchlike revisions for which I need an oultine. In expressing I find refinements, but it’s hard to recognize them when they come because they come in a crowd of like thoughts that may not be as fruitful. If I relax and enjoy this process, I am much happier. But the constant pressure to produce a product makes it difficult to enjoy this, to allow myself to do it. But I can’t write well without it. Pleasurable exploration, joyful waste, is a necessary part of my writing. Pain, no gain. I have to slow down or catch my thoughts in lists, diagrams, and prose. Then I have to evaluate them. This evaluation can also be pleasurable. But once again that critic can block the words (Boice).
I am working very productively and happily today. And that is in part because I’m allowing myself to make these notes on my writing process while envisioning sharing them. This gives me some of that community Boice suggests is so important and which is often difficult to otherwise get because of my own insecurities and my feeling that I don’t want to ask my friends to do even more work.
I get my first transposition of the precis to the outline comments fields done. Then I go back and start putting my extra ideas from the end of the precis that i didn’t know how to accommodate as footnotes in the precis at the appropriate spot, which I mean to signify that these ideas belong to a deeper layer of the outline than is signified in the precis. So now I’ll go and start putting these footnotes into those deeper areas as my first forays into those depths of the text a-borning.
Doing this helps me see if my new organizational idea is right, if it can help me find out if these “extra” ideas that seem important are actually important.
I posted these quickly now because I find myself making more notes on my writing today that seem like they would be useful if shaped up into a better commentary on the act of academic writing. So there may be more tomorrow.
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