Nothing informs the writing process like writing

I took this with the custard Cream Camera over at Ross’s place. I added the colours later.

I’m putting together an article about the custard cream camera and I’m grappling with how I’m going to structure it, and what I’m going to have space to talk about. I’ve had this problem lots of times, and I’ve discovered that the best way to structure an article is to start writing stuff that you think might make sense. After I’ve written a bit, walked away from it, come back to it and read it a few times a structure emerges that works. Trying to build the thing in my head just doesn’t work. I have to have something to play with first.

This might mean that I throw away quite a bit of the stuff that I wrote, but I never actually discard any of it. Instead, everything I throw away is stored in a “scrap” folder so that I can go back to it later, perhaps for another article or a blog post. In fact, I only really consider myself to be making progress on something when I have a few pages in the scrap folder…