You know how it goes with brilliant ideas. Sometimes there are…complications.
I still think my concept of putting a low-cost e-book on the psychology of writing is a good idea. I think that the fact that I have been writing along those lines for five years in my blog is great. It’s even wonderful that I still have all those blogs, and it’s “simply” a matter of compiling what I wrote on various themes and then publishing it…or so one might think.
I said “simply,” didn’t I? With quotation marks?
Well, not so fast, Sherlock.
I learned that in the past five year I have written more than 300 blog posts on writing. That’s a lot of writing, and when you consider they each average 600 to 1,000 words, that’s a lot of words too. So what’s the problem?
Well I have plenty of material on each of the topics: Fear, Motivation, Writer’s Block, Mind Games, Criticism, Procrastination, Creativity, Honesty, Identity, Vulnerability. I have even have a title, sort of: “Write Thinking: [something-something] for the Productive Indie Writer.” (I put the something-something, because the jury’s still out on it. My wife talked me out of using “Jedi Mind Tricks.”)
The problem comes because I find that I repeat myself. A lot. I find that I tell the same personal stories as illustrations time and time again (why didn’t you tell me?). I also tend to go off on tangents. I feel bad for students in my classes, because I know that if I do it in my writing, I am sure I do it there. Forgive me, students. I will try not to do it again…maybe.
So…out of the more than 300 blogs that I have written on writing, I have selected a little more than 100 to use. That takes me to 150 pages. That’s still pretty unwieldy for a how-to e-book. So my next step is to go through and tag all the places where I repeat myself, repeat myself, repeat myself….and delete the heck out of them. My original goal was to have about 36-50 postings in the book. We might still end up there.
Anyway, like all works in progress, they go through an ugly phase, what I call the “ugly stepchild phase.” In days to come, I will get out my chainsaw and start chopping. I hope to have the finished product by the end of this month. When I do, you’ll be the first to know.
Later.
The Great Adventure 
That’s exciting. Fitzgerald divided his thoughts into alphabetical sections to organize and collaborate his ideas.
And if I ever become an English professor, I already know I will be apologizing for tangents that I’m notorious for. But an English professor did that at SWAU and I learned the most from him: about humanity, life, as well as English literature and critical thinking.