Should a Boidem column be coherent?


Too many opening sentences are one thing, too many opening paragraphs another. Just when I felt that perhaps I'd finally gotten my handful of introductory sentences under control, I discovered that in their stead I had a collection of opening paragraphs that were still searching for a central idea that might hold them together. Finding their "proper" order might have been helpful, but within the context of no before or after in cyberspace any attempt to find a "proper" order was highly illogical.

Instead, I found myself dealing with chicken or egg, horse or cart, questions about the entire web surfing process. When I prepare a column have I already outlined to myself a well-defined conceptual backbone to that column, a backbone to which I then seek out, and organize, materials that flesh it out? Do I have a clear outline of the ideas I want to write about, and then, through my various web searches and surfs, collect the evidence to substantiate those ideas? Or perhaps I start out without any pre-defined framework, and simply sculpt the unrelated myriad of materials that I've collected throughout the month into whatever shape those materials seem to want to take, in the hope that the end product looks at least somewhat convincingly like a purposeful construct?



Go to: and that, and that, oh, and that ...