Shooting the Sacred Cow

[clehrich]

Sharp.  I wish I'd had you as a teacher for one of the many writing classes I took.  I've stubbornly refused to outline since the day my junior high english teacher first asked for one and now I find it very difficult to conceptually think in outline form.

People usually talk about outlining as a way to plan one's work, which is dandy if you're quite stupid and can't keep a 5 paragraph essay in your head for three days, but is vaguely insulting to most people with a brain.  By the time you actually need outlining for planning, i.e. when you start writing big things, you've already acquired a block against the method.  Believe me, I know -- I still have that block a bit!

Any good texts you know of that tackle this notion in some depth.  Might be advantageous of me to try to learn some new tricks if I'm going to be writing alot in the future?

Sorry, I don't know what you mean.  Texts on how to revise or something?  Don't bother.  Just re-jigger the method I lay out here to fit your Bold Heading thing, then crank through a few blocks and bits here and there.  Pretty soon you will see both the advantage of the method and its tedium.  Then you just do it enough times that you learn how to get around the tedium and maximize the advantages, but this will depend on the particular problems you personally have.  In essence, you have two problems for every problem: (1) you do something you shouldn't, and (2) you can't see yourself doing it.  Depending on what exactly the issues are for you, you will restructure the outlining method to get something that works well for you.

Chris Lehrich