Stream of Consciousness makes for lousy reading.
Excuse me while I talk to myself for a bit…
I have decided that I will start publishing weekly on Medium. But, so far, that seems to be more of a New Year’s resolution kind of wishful thinking.
I seem to be approaching it like I produced creative writing papers for English 101 so many years ago — assignment in mind, typewriter in front of me, a short flurry of activity between work and class, pulling the unedited draft out as I headed off to turn it in. The only real difference is that, now, I sit down to my MacBook at 0600 on a Saturday morning, cup of coffee by my side, and don’t hit the publish button before the world awakens and I’m off to do other things.
I may have been a faster thinker as a younger man. I doubt it. I simply may have been tormenting the visiting professor with my top of the head output.
I recall listening to a presentation by LeRoy Eims a few years back (maybe it was Lorne Sanny — I’ll enjoy going back into the archives to find the talk). He was giving an object lesson on making disciples in which he said, “You can’t build a building without a plan.” He then gave various examples of details that would likely be poorly executed if one attempted to build a building without a plan.
The application to me today relates to this and any future articles. I am not that fast. In conversations, I don’t usually have the ‘perfect’ retort until sometime after everyone has walked away. So, to prevent my stories from sounding like so much stream of consciousness screed, (I know some people are able to produce good work spontaneously. I’m not), I now seem to have to ruminate over stuff for a while. Which leads to LeRoy’s second object lesson point about making disciples — “You can’t build a building with a plan.”
While I’m sure everyone in the audience tilted their head a little when he said it, he went on to obviate that this wasn’t a direct contradiction of the first statement. Building isn’t simply a thought exercise any more than writing a story is. In order to actually build something, you have to take tools in hand and, following the plan, gather the material, take the measurements, make the cuts, order and attach the constituent parts (making adjustments as reality defies the plan), and do so until the work is finished.
The application to my approach to publishing, as I’m currently thinking about it, is that I likely have to maintain deliberate, sustained thought on a topic during the week, taking notes, researching in the snippets of time available, mulling over the purpose or worthiness of subjecting others to it, then deciding to do so anyway and pulling it together next Saturday morning.
There are decades of experiences piled up on the counters of my mind. There a lots of new experiences and knowledge to discover. They all just need a little organizational help.
Thanks for enduring my stream of consciousness self talk this morning. Have a great week. Hopefully next week’s output will be informative and enjoyable — for you as well.
