Maps e.g., etc.

Posted by 22111
Jul 17, 2022 at 11:11 AM

Seems that some (more or less) contributors to this forum are unhappy with my recent drift to literary writing, and they’ve got very unhappy indeed when I said, ultra, if you don’t meet your expectations in yourself in that field, just be a good family person (i.e. man, for about 98 p.c. of the readers here, cf. infra), and you’ll be tenderly remembered by offspring generations: no need to try to fight luring death with means beyond your means. - So be it.

While some co-contributor here, in his wordpress blog welcometosherwood, continues to inform you about almost everything appearing as (mostly online?) “outliners” and the like, even those more-or-less me-too- fleeting stars for which there doesn’t seem to be so much room indeed, mid-and-long-term in the - quite crowded - market, another co-contributor here, in his wordpress blog drandus, seems to have ceased to inform the public re his “toolbox”, the last post, one more re “Chromebook” - what else? - having being posted over there more than 4 years ago.

But then, in his more-than-6-years-old post, “Solving writing problems by physically pushing through and letting yourself go”, he wrote, “I feel this is a process of “letting go” of some things and liberating my mind to be open to some other things.”, and that’s spot-on re what I’ve tried to express above:

You cherish something (i.e. some “scene” (o.k., I’ll stop! Scrivener is it, for the “writing” guys, end of discussion…), some idea(l??), some e.g. commercial concept), and you’ll have to let go… but before mourning and sorrow’s got a chance to overwhelm you, paralyzing your further, alternative inspiration (for your marketing strategy or whatever, mind you), be aware that you don’t throw away your “ideal”, your real “thru-line” (oops! I seemed to do it again… but then no, I’m speaking of a real thru-line here, applicable to any field), you remain loyal to your spirit…

you just open your mind to pursue your objective differently now… ideally even better than before, but at the very least, more stringently, with obviously better chances to attain it - more “suitable” (analyze the term: “suitable” > “suite”...) -; in other words, the journey’s NOT the reward: You might get smitten by some phenomena on your way, and when you cling to them, your way will mislead you: is it worth it? obviously not.

What I named “writing” above, you easily can rename it “planning”, be it your marketing strategy, your career, your life, whatever: Don’t cling to details, even if you might be besotted with them, and it’s not by accident that many a fairy tale - ain’t they considered to keep alive collective wisdom? - warns you about clinging to ideas that should better be done away with, in order to save the spirit.

Thus, at the end of the day, you have to discern, about real mourning (re deaths in your immediate family), and that very harmful, false “mourning” (for people stepping out of your life, for ideas, for “elements”) just holds you back within unnecessary inertia (and what drandus calls “writer’s block” in his post)...

and (i.e. the “at the end of the day” continued), “outlining” is not only about finding the elements that “logically” will follow, but also, and ideally - but you have to pay attention to do so, and that’s the secret in that -, about identifying those elements which would harm the ideal suite… which’s a mean to the guiding idea… and you can even outline and hopefully perfect that one.

Outlining’s about the spirit then, and elements are means.

Even in your possible campaign to sell some crap, but perhaps, while thinking about it, you get even some idea for product quality? O.k., the latter just applies to individuals, or to pop-n-mom ventures; for corporations, our now-traditional division of labor and “competence” is opposed to that resort. On the other hand, the “creative writing” individual has no such excuse. And yes, erratic - physical - outlining might become largely dispensable when your (e.g. commercial) intuition already will have discarded any dead-ends or moribund-ends, subconsciously, when you start writing out (your business plan or whatever). ;)