Proof That Writing is Not Dominoes
December 19, 2001
10:51 a.m.
I've said before that I count words because words can be counted. But, of course, word count alone doesn't mean a lot. Take, for example, my progress the past two days. I've created a pretty fair number of words. Enough to fill about two chapters. This is good. But when you look at the big picture, I can't actually say they are good chapters, yet. There's a roadblock before me, and that roadblock is the next chapter. In other words, I can't say the words I've created in these two chapters are bad, either. For the writers who read this site, I wonder if it works this way for you, or not. And if it doesn't, I wonder if it bothers you that it doesn't. The reason I'm thinking this is that I know it didn't work for me that way until recently. Until recently I had basically looked at each chapter for the purpose it served, and tried like mad to make them do their jobs. In this way, writing a book was like laying out a line of dominoes. I don't think this is necessarily wrong--in fact, I think this logic has served me just fine. I also don't know if this situation represents an advancement in my ability, or perhaps a regression. All I really know is that my old way of looking at things is not completely working with this book--which may explain why I'm having such a hard time getting it to work the way I want. The bottom line here is that I have three chapters that all have to work together to perform a series of functions. They need each other. They call on each other to provide specific bits of information. In this way, I'm thinking more along the lines of an object oriented programmer--or maybe a real-time, embedded software programmer is a better analogy. Yes. I still code the system, one word at a time, but when it performs, the "code" does not operate in a linear fashion. Yes, mah friends, there be some multi-tasking goin' on down there! What it really means is that I can't really judge the value of the work I've done the last few days until I'm finished with the next chapter ... So I guess I'll just have to go about doing that.   Have a great day.  Actually, Ron, we compare your work to "Go Fish" Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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