[brains.self-awareness] writing

[wispfox]

Writing documentation for stuff, at least in my head (regardless of what the stuff is) also involves checking to make sure that what is supposed to be happening does. (I do documentation and testing for bugs pretty much simultaneously. Always have. It's a large part of why I'm good at documenting things that I understand well enough to test them or use them. I have to write things down to remember them _anyway_!)

Oddly, this appears to relate _strongly_ to the process I use to figure out the things in my head.

1) write something down
2) read it, see if it's accurate, clear, and covers everything
3) if missing any of the above, go back to one and modify the original writings. Alternately, if I can't figure out where things aren't quite right, have someone else take a look. When they find something or question something, go back to one and modify.

It's not that I do drafts, because I don't. Drafts always killed me in school, because if I saw things as not being accurate, I would want to fix them _then_. (well, also because drafts were writing by hand, which is hell for me) It's more like... writing an outline of what I want by putting basic concepts on paper, with little to no organization, then filling them out and moving things around as necessary.

Because, for me, organizing is _last_, and happens when I think a piece of what I'm writing has enough words to be clear. So outlines are... worthless to me. Entirely. Drafts almost as much so, since at least drafts have the useful aspect of encouraging me to come back to an idea after a bit of time has passed, and see if it still makes sense.

I do often wonder how entertaining it might be to watch the process I use to write things, if they are things which require a lot of effort to write (usually, these things are heralded by a total inability to interact with people until I've at least written down the initial basic concepts, although I tend to prefer to at least fill some of the words around them in, as well.).

Organizing is very much a learned, not automatic, thing for me. On the plus side, it appears to be tied thoroughly into my mild OCD.

Comments

[dancingwolfgrrl.livejournal.com]

I hate outlines for the same reason. I might as well just write the darn paper at that point :)

I find drafts useful in two ways:
1) When doing very long pieces of writing (more than 25 pages, at least), it seems be useful to write the pieces (which are all of a no-draft size) and then consider them as drafts and go back over them all together.
2) When I can write the draft as a random collection of thoughts -- kind of like "thinking out loud" on paper :)

I imagine the second is less useful to you, as you're less verbal than I am.

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

1) When doing very long pieces of writing (more than 25 pages, at least), it seems be useful to write the pieces (which are all of a no-draft size) and then consider them as drafts and go back over them all together.

This makes sense to me. I've not had to deal with it yet, but I will when I get back to school, so I'm glad you've mentioned it.

I imagine the second is less useful to you, as you're less verbal than I am.

If you mean less oriented toward speaking instead of writing, yes, writing is better for me. Verbal, though, seems... not quite accurate, although I don't actually know how verbal you are.

[dancingwolfgrrl.livejournal.com]

I will when I get back to school, so I'm glad you've mentioned it.

I was boggled to discovere there were papers so long I couldn't hold them in my head when I wrote my first thesis :)

I don't actually know how verbal you are.

Well, I mostly think in words, which is what I meant -- if this weren't true, I imagine there would be some translation effort involved in trying to write even a stream-of-consciousness draft that could make it less useful.

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

Oh. You know, I think my idea of stream-of-consciousness is really, really strange. Probably because I don't mostly think in words (although my indexing is verbal).

I was just saying that I kinda do this, when I write down what is basically indexes for what I want to say. But that's more outliney than stream-of-consciousnessy. I'm not sure I _can_ do stream-of-consciousness... at least not easily. I lose too many ideas if I try.

Huh!

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

I was boggled to discovere there were papers so long I couldn't hold them in my head when I wrote my first thesis :)

Well, I can't hold any paper in my head. Just the core ideas, which need to be expanded on paper. Huh.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

I think step #2 is the part that daunts most people. It's *hard* to edit your own writing -- if you're able to do it, that's probably a big part of the reason you're good at documenting things...

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

Huh.

As long as it's something that I either do or can understand well enough to _know_ if I'm not quite there yet, sure.

I can't quite... get the idea of _not_ being able to. But I accept that your explanation is true. :)

[bridgetester.livejournal.com]

I'd be interested in seeing said process. No idea how this could be accomplished, mind you.