Re: Outlining stages

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Note: This message is from the outliners.com archive kindly provided by Dave Winer.

Outliners.com Message ID: 3014

Posted by 100341.2151
2005-03-21 17:48:47

Steve C -

What I was trying to do in that final paragraph was to describe a vague uneasiness I sometimes feel when outlining with what I called a second-stage outliner (e.g., GrandView, rather than Brainstorm). It’s hard to articulate this, but it occurs, if I am not careful, at two points in the process. It happens sometimes early on in the planning process, when a set of ideas, or an argument, gets prematurely arranged, sequenced and crystalized. It can happen again - towards the end of the process - where the nature of the software itself permits and almost seems to encourage the drawing of finer and finer distinctions and the elaboration of unnecessary detail. Both problems invoke similar feelings of aridity and loss of spontaneity - boredom, almost.

This is by no means my habitual experience, and when it happens it may simply signal my misuse or over-use of outlining. But I would like to be able to identify better the conditions under which, or the point(s) at which the use of outlining may be, or become, counter-productive - perhaps because it interferes with other important aspects of the writing process. To put it simply, although I am a great fan of outlining, I am not convinced that it is necessarily a win-win activity under all circumstances.

Derek

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