Focus Pocus II

I’m past it. As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve been suffering from a horrible case of writers block.

No more.

In what seemed like the 14,000th perusal of the voluminous notes I’ve accumulated over the past month, a theme actually emerged earlier today. I managed to hack out an outline and churn through 3000 words today which gets me about 1/2 of the way there. Thank goodness, I was starting to think I might never get started. Looking back, the turning point came when I realized that I was dealing with too many ideas. The subject I’m working on is well-trod ground which led me to the realization that I need to write about selecting the best of the available ideas and actually implement them.

In terms of the typical writing process (Idea. Collect. Focus. Draft. Clarify.) I’m somewhere between Draft and Clarify. I’ve finally got a definite idea of what needs to get out of my head and onto paper. The act of drafting it is a clarification of sorts. The second draft is where the real clarity comes in. Hopefully I can wrap up the first draft tomorrow and get to work on the last and hardest bit.