Fucking Finished!

I just finished 950 words for OnSite magazine about the ideology of Google's geo-spatial applications. It was a mean bastard to write. I guess I have to explain how I go about these things. Many many years of essay writing (mostly in school) have been turned into a set way of doing things I don't seem able to avoid.

First. I start writing any damned thing that comes into my head. Paragraph after paragraph, page after page. I don't think. I type as fast as I can. When I reach a thought that doesn't connect in even the slightest way to the one before it, I change the colour of the letters. And on and on. I usually let this continue until I have about 5 times as many words as I will need for the final product. Then I open a new file and start again, from a completely different perspective, with a completely different point. Sometimes this continues until I have 6 or 7 unrelated documents. Then I stop writing and try to think about what the fuck I actually want to say. The piece I did immediately before this one had 9 different versions and almost 20 000 words for a final product of only 800 (that I later cut down to 500 without sacrificing very much).

Some people might think it would be more useful and efficient to think first and then start writing. Every experience I have ever had trying to write something tells me this is a bad idea. There is too much pressure. You start to think and then you have a good idea and need to write it down. Then you stop thinking so you can type and BANG, you're fucked. One paragraph (probably a good one) but where does it go? How does it fit? What the fuck am I supposed to do now? Don't fall for thinking just because it seems important. It isn't. If you are writing something, writing is far more important than thinking.

So, once I have all those different nonsense almost-essays written and I have an idea what I am actually trying to say, I'll start a new document. This one will be all bold and just composed of headings. That allows me to go back through all the shit I wrote before and cherrypick the happy accidents - good sentences I have no right to expect but often (somehow) show up anyway. That will be the bare bones of the thing. Then I go at it like it was a new piece, bulk the hell out of it in as many colours as necessary. When it gets to 5 times the length I need, I start cutting.

Erasing big chunks of text is a thrill ride. You know once it's cut, it's gone. Yes, I could get it back with CTRL+Z but I forget what I erased as soon as I erase it. It's important to be a kind of maniac at this stage. Allow myself no regrets. Just cut the shit out of it. Until all I have left are a few paragraphs.

This is when I go through and look for characteristic fuck-ups I have when I write really fast. Every other sentence starts with AND or BUT. This happens because I'm trying to think as I write and the thoughts just keep coming (only if I type too fast to get bogged down with style). Then I look for m-dashes. I use these all the time. I don't know the rules for using them, they are the punctuation of last resort. Not a comma or a semi-colon. So m-dash. Once all the usual flaws are found and fixed I sit on it for a few days - provided I have the time. I didn't for this last thing so I had to keep slogging.

Once the piece is about 90% finished, I have a panic attack. That causes me to start again from a completely new angle. Typically, this is the strangest possible way I can think of for doing the thing. This last one was supposed to be about the ideology of Google Maps so my panic version was some insanity about the possibility everything we see in Google is actually 2 feet to the right of where it is in reality. I called this the "Dexter Conspiracy". Mostly, I just needed to write something that was definitely worse than what I had already to convince me to go back and finish the fucking thing.

The last few days (or hours depending on how long I left myself) are getting rid of all alliteration - I fucking hate alliteration - making certain the paragraphs follow a sensible order and trying to get a few nice sentences into the thing. Then I leave it for a couple hours, re-read it to make certain it's ready to go and I send it off. If I'm being strict with myself, the thing isn't done until there are no words that can be erased (or replaced with shorter words) without changing the meaning of the thing. It makes for a gruelling read on larger pieces but it's how I like my work. Other people can do flowery, I like terse.

There are other, much better, ways to write and I use them when I can. One is to take a digital recorder in my car and dictate while I drive around. That often works. Another is to write the whole thing long-hand. I always do that for things over 5000 words. The best, though, is writing with a beautiful woman in the room. I don't think it's any kind of inspiration and I don't believe in the muses like the Greeks and Romans did. I just perform better when I'm trying to impress someone.

The beautiful woman in the room theory of writing has one significant draw-back. It almost always results in better prose but the woman ends up thinking I'm a crazy person. There is music in words. Put them together and you have rhythm. Be careful with the disposition of hard consonants and sibilants and you get something like a song. But to do this correctly, I have to conduct myself through the composition, waving my arms around like a mad bastard. It's not pretty to watch. And I look insane. I know the people who write better than I do generally do so because A) they write more, B) they read more, and in some cases C) they have a gift for language I do not. I don't think C is really that important unless we are talking about people who have a really spectacular gift. I don't think of myself as a gifted writer because I'm not and because I don't need the pressure.

Anyhow, I'm glad this piece is done. I proposed it because I thought for certain there would be something to it (but I didn't bother to try to figure out what until later). It was harder to find something worth justifying 1000 words in print than I thought it would be.