git ssb

title: "Exploding Articles" date: 2007-11-07 19:11 status: published description: > Ideas and expectations snowball.

tags: writing, The Fear

<p>
I spend a lot of time nowadays writing—or thinking about writing—stuff that I eventually publish on the web. There are two modes of entry-writing that I tend to operate in: </p>
<p>
A lot of the time, I come up with a kernel of an idea and then gradually add thoughts, ideas and turns of phrase, and try to link them all together like a jigsaw, until they become a sensibly-structured, nicely-flowing article. </p>
<p>
Other times, I just start writing, and the whole thing materialises linearly. These entries tend to be a lot quicker to write, but sometimes end up missing important points, or phrasing things awkwardly. </p>
<p>
While the well-thought-out entries are generally actually better, the quick-and-dirty ones are more fun to write—there seems to be less pressure involved in writing them. I think the longer something gestates, the larger it seems. When writing articles, particularly the well-thought-out variety, this is compounded by the number of extra ideas, details and tangents I come up with during the gestation. </p>
<p>
It takes me a particularly long time to write recommendations for <a href="/thefridayfetchit">the Friday Fetch-it</a> because if <em>they</em>'re rubbish, it's not just the <em>article</em> itself that I'm failing to do justice to—it's the <em>song</em> as well. And I <em>like</em> those songs. </p>
<p>
It's the same with other things—I think it's a lot harder to do <em>anything</em> that's been waiting to be finished for a long time. Because you've been thinking about it and (supposedly) working towards it for ages, it takes on mammoth proportions in your mind. </p>
<p>
And I think <em>that's</em> because of the phrase “worth the wait”. When you're made to wait for something, you expect it to be <em>good</em>. An example from the wonderful world of pop music: there's generally a two- to three-year gap between albums by an artist, in which they release little or no new music. A few decades ago, artists would generally release an album every year, maybe even <em>two</em> in a year. Back then, the music industry was less fiercely competitive (I assert without evidence) and a less-than-stellar album could have been more easily taken in a record label's stride; for example, <a href="http://www.last.fm/music/The+Futureheads/News+and+Tributes">News & Tributes by the Futureheads</a> was far from disgraceful, but lost the 'Heads their record deal, because it didn't sell as well as their self-titled début. </p>
<p>
Now, I'm not suggesting that a high output quantity somehow nullifies low quality... but it drastically mitigates it. It's easier to overlook one mediocre <var>whatever</var> when it's in amongst a big pile of generally-very-good <var>whatever</var>s. There's also that idea of not putting all your eggs in one basket—if your work <i>(eggs)</i> is spread across lots of smaller ideas <i>(baskets)</i> then if one idea ends up being rubbish <i>(getting dropped)</i>, there were still plenty of other good ideas <i>(eggs in other baskets)</i>. </p>
<p>
It's not as if each person has a finite amount of inspiration—it's more of a “use it or lose it” deal. </p>
<h2 id="examples">Some examples of things I’ve done that have taken ages</h2>
<p>...or things I've <em>started</em>, at least.</p>
<ol start="0">
<li><ins datetime="2007-11-08T14:15Z"><a href="http://thetwadsbollocks.blogspot.com/2007/11/it-was-so-nearly-called-kirn-kru.html" title="It was so nearly called a “kirn kru”">The latest El Twad HQ update</a> is set in August because that's when I started writing it (and the Fringe happens in August, so it kind of <em>has</em> to be).</ins></li>
<li>
<a href="/brothersorsisters">Brothers or Sisters</a> took me <strong>six-and-a-half weeks</strong> to complete; and this was <em>supposed</em> to be for a “stream-of-consciousness-type” blog. When I finally <em>did</em> publish this, <a href="http://www.postoftheweek.com/posts/159">it actually won an award</a>. So that was nice.</li>
<li>
<strong>That review of Manager by <a href="http://www.natjm.co.uk">Nat JM</a></strong> that she asked me to do a few months ago: I decided I was rubbish at reviewing individual songs, or that any comments I'd make would be superficial if I didn't consider them in the context of the rest of her work. So, I took it upon myself to review her entire back catalogue, which is only about a dozen songs but, unfortunately for me, is increasing at a rate of two a month. I know roughly what I'm going to say; I just need to produce the prose. (Hey, since her style of music is pretty unpolished I could easily justify similarly unpolished prose. And I reckon I shall.) Never before will so much of value have been said about Nat JM...I hope. <ins datetime="2007-11-08T20:43Z"><a href="http://www.last.fm/user/GregKNicholson/journal/2007/11/8/569538/" title="A great big mess of Nat JM">It exists! ...sort of.</a></ins>
</li>
<li>The biggie: <strong>The Perfect World</strong>—a compendium of improvements to <em>the world</em> that Gardner and I've been working on for about <strong>three-and-a-half years</strong> now. That's a decent fraction of a <em>decade</em>. We came up with the idea towards the end of <em>sixth form</em>; we have since left university. When this is finished (and it's about 80% of the way there (only another year to wait, then)), <em>this will rock</em>. They'll invent a new category of Bafta just for us.</li>
</ol>
<hr>
<p>
(The preceding entry was presented in <strong>Hybrid-o-Prose™</strong>: the first few paragraphs were (relatively) well-thought-out and have gestated for five or six weeks; much of the remainder was written, largely linearly, in the space of about an hour.) </p>