On rereading myself (again?).
It's logical to think that after more than one hundred columns the writing of
these columns becomes almost automatic, or at least pretty easy. And at least
on the technical level, even though I change my tools every so often, I've developed
habits that (other than the perennial danger of throwing something out when, clicking
on Save and immediately realizing that that should have been Save As,
I save over something else that I didn't want to lose) make the process rather
simple.
There are, however, problems that arise precisely because I've written more than
one hundred of these columns. The most obvious of these is the danger of repeating
myself.
In order to try and avoid this pitfall, I've made a habit of running a search
on these columns as a preliminary act of organizing my thoughts and writing. Via
this search I try to determine whether I've written about a particular topic before.
(Admittedly, often I have. In that case, I have to determine whether I have anything
new or different to write on that topic now.) This is often more time consuming
than I might like, basically because as I search I find myself reading
previous columns. And sometimes when I do that I even find myself exclaiming
(as I did when I read a page that long ago asked some
related questions): "hey! did I write that? That's actually pretty good!".
Maybe I should send myself mail telling me that I like what I read.
Go to: The history of being unfinished, or
Go to: On completing a web site