Like pulling teeth

Writing the wiki article at the moment is like pulling teeth… excruciating and bloody and I keep wanting to bolt from my chair.

Edit: Pfffft… Here I am needing to write say 3000 words, while Meredith has a whole book due!

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5 Comments

Iris 29 May 2006

And here I had such happy visions of you just flying through this “easy” article. But have no fear. You’ll get it finished.

mooiness 30 May 2006

Do you like the topic that you are writing about? I forgot what was it. 😛

Or is it a case of juggling being condascending by dumbing it down too much, and assuming too much prior knowledge?

CW 30 May 2006

Thanks Iris, I know I will. I have to!!!

Mooiness, just writing about our experience of using a wiki. I don’t think I am dumbing it down too much (I’m assuming many people won’t know how it works or why it’s useful), but I think I’ve done my dash having just finished writing another article (on blogging)… The blogging article was fun to write, but I am finding this wiki article a bit ho hum because it’s more descriptive: this is what we did… Never mind, it must be done by the end of this week, then I can have a bit of a break!

Meredith 30 May 2006

It sounds like you’re overthinking things. I like to create an outline of the article or chapter where I write a sentence or a few descriptive words for each paragraph (kind of the point I want to make for that paragraph). I then expand outward. So figure out what you want to say first, and then write. When you write before you really know for sure what your point is or exactly what you want to say, you’ll end up going around in circles.

The big problem I have with writing is keeping things short. If I have a 3000 word article to write, it usually ends up being somewhere between 5,000-6,000 or more. You should see my manuscript — it’s ridiculously long.

Good luck with the article and STOP driving yourself crazy over it.

CW 30 May 2006

Thanks Meredith 🙂 I always overthink! And like your way of outlining – I have to might try that. My outline is a loooooooooong line of words and I think I am writing to join them up, rather than to expand. Clustering them into sections might work better….