Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Incompleteness issues

So, in my "draft" queue right now, I've got long posts waiting to be finished on the following:
  1. Building your own AR-15
  2. Carbines and truck guns
  3. Backup and disaster recovery
  4. Photography and digital cameras
  5. Flashlights
  6. Microstamping and other backdoor bans
  7. How people train and learn skills
Unfortunately, they're all in the "aaaargh I just can't seem to finish this damn thing" stage at the moment.

The way I like to write my big posts, is I just sort of stick an idea in the back of my head (or it gets shoved there by something or other), and I think about it for a while, and I sorta build it up in my head; until finally it's ready to just flow out onto the page, and it all sort of floods out all at once.

It's how I manage to write 5000 word posts in a couple hours. The framework of the post, and many of the main points and details, are written up in my head already.

In my professional writing, or when I have a real deadline, I work with a little more structure; I generally have outlines, and fill in from the outlines etc... just to make sure I meet my deadlines. It matches my thought process well, but keeps me on track.

When I'm just writing for my blog though, I don't like putting a deadline on things.

The problem with the way I write is, if I don't have a deadline; sometimes I'll stall out in the middle of a big post, and I can't get restarted 'til my brain pulls in and munges more data into the way I want to write it out.

Theres about 20,000 words sitting up there in posts waiting to be finished, including some that I promised for readers weeks and weeks ago.

I'm semi-ashamed to admit, some of them are a year old.

They'll get done eventually.