I have no consistent method of writing a Boidem column. The most common starting point is an envelope of clippings and a file of bookmarks that hold items that seem to be of the sort with which the Boidem might deal. (Often these remain in their respective files as an item in the news takes precedence and demands to be the topic of the next month's column.) When an item in these files seems to reach a certain critical mass (a number of clippings on one central topic, for instance, it gets moved to the research stage - a more active attempt at finding more material. When enough material has accumulated it's time to start writing.

Most of my writing is done straight into a text processor - preferably a graphic web page generator so that I can establish links on the fly, though sometimes I type into a word processor and convert that text into HTML later, mostly via copy and paste. Often, however, much of a column gets written by hand on slips of paper - scribbled thoughts that come to mind when the only tool available is a pen and a note pad.

I don't complete the core text and then decide on the links, but neither do I move from text to link as each idea for a link materializes. More often than not a basic skeleton materializes and I establish the flow of the links in outline form, filling in the content after the skeleton has been established.

Ultimately, writing with an eye on the possibilities of linked text is a technique that one learns to feel comfortable with, and it becomes just one more tool available to the author. When the objective is an essay around an idea, there doesn't seem to be anything particularly different about writing for the web than for any other medium.

Go to: It didn't spring straight out of somebody's forehead, you know!, or
Go to: Trying to make some sense out of all this, or
Go to: An introduction to the extroduction, or
Go to: Web Essays - The evolution of a (personal?) medium