A brief comment on writing

Tiruncula has an interesting discussion about writing process going on at Practica. I blathered on there about how I spend a lot of time freewriting, just spewing material onto the page to clean up later. Which is what I'm currently doing with the Chapter of Mammothness (cleaning up, that is; I've done the spewing already).

But I kind of feel like I'm losing my mind, because I keep going through this draft to figure out where everything should go, and then I realize that a crucial section is missing - and not in the sense of just saying, "Oh, I need to write up X now," but in the sense of, "I was absolutely sure I'd actually said this somewhere! Do you mean I didn't actually say it, I just thought it was there?" This is about the third time that I've realized I just thought I'd said something, when in fact I hadn't. These aren't little additional add-ons, either - these are important, central points that I had to have made in my head to be able to go on and talk about everything else that's here.

Apparently I just didn't feel it necessary to write them down.

Like I said - losing my mind. (If you find it, will you send it home?)

Comments

[Dr. Virago]

Well, then you're not the only one losing your mind, because I do that all the time. I tend to do it more with e-mails -- thinking I've replied to one, for instance -- than with academic writing, but it's still about thinking I wrote something (sometimes at imaginary length!) when I didn't! Weird, isn't it?

[Philosophy Factory]

I do a lot of this as well... and find myself being uber-redundant at times...

[BlondebutBright]

Yes, a classic problem. Sometimes it's shocking to realize the brilliance in your head has not transferred itself to the document.

[Kate]

Well, you did the right thing by blogging about it. Don't you know that everything you blog that's lost is found? :)