Look who’s back
Looks like Jevon is back among the bloggers again. Nice to see him back! He’s got a post about Real-time blogging and outlining that’s interesting. (permalinks, Jevon? I couldn’t find one) In a nutshell, he wants to use an outliner on his blog because that’s how he tackles technical learning, by writing out an idea, researching it, expounding on it, rewriting it, etc. He thinks he would make a better “real-time” blogger than a “journal” blogger. He might be right in that, but I can tell you he is right about one thing, outlining is not for everyone. There are a number of reasons that I wouldn’t do it. First, I would have a hard time being productive and writing while I work on something. I’m a trial and error person when it comes to tech, I’ll try something, not like it, switch it back, try something else, etc. Stopping to document what I was doing would kill my flow. I have a hard time even talking to someone when I’m messing with something, let alone trying to explain what I’m doing as I go along. No, I need to focus on writing when it’s time to write, and working when it’s time to work.
Secondly, I hate outlines. I have always hated outlines. In school, when you had to do outlines as part of your research papers, I would always write the paper first, then draw up an outline based on the paper. I write by flow, meaning I start writing and my thoughts take me along the path until the paper is finished. I was always a much better creative writer than I was at writing research and technical papers. That’s why doing something as simple as a “readme.txt” for that project I’ve been working on for Geek has taken me forever. It’s a simple text file, yet it takes me weeks to get it right, because I don’t work well trying to document something,. It took me 4 hours to create the thing, 3 weeks to document what it is!
Lastly, I need to think about what I blog because, in this state of writing by “flow” I can, and sometimes do, write things that I shouldn’t write. If I’m outlining, and writing as I go without paying complete attention to what I write, there’s a good possibility I’m going to write something that offends the hell out of someone. I’m an opinionated person, I’m old enough and have seen enough BS in my life to be able to call it that, but I won’t most of the time in as public a forum as this. Too many flames. When I write now, I decide whether or not to take on a particular subject, and how I’m going to take it on before I start writing, and that guides my writing. It keeps this blog from being a center of controversy instead of the sharing of knowledge and ideas I want it to be.
Those would be some of the same reasons I don’t plan to blog events live as they happen. I need to edit myself. *L*
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