On Writing

Some of you have noted that recently I've been writing a little less frequently than in the months before. For a long time, I did five articles a week; recently, I've been doing three or four most weeks.

One reason for this is that I've been trying to write longer, more detailed articles rather than spreading a topic over several days. I think this allows for a better overall presentation of more complicated topics (such as my posts on screen real-estate, customization, and the PowerPoint Home tab) in which I can cover all aspects of a topic at once.

But it does mean that instead of posting five 400-word articles, sometimes I post a single 2500-word diatribe. I think the Raymond Method of blogging (short and frequent) works well for certain topics, but falls apart when people read Part 4 without having seen the information in Parts 1-3... so I'm still experimenting with the medium, in other words.

Another reason is that I've been spending a lot of my writing time collecting together the over 200 articles I've written so far into a more organized, single resource.

As great as a blog is for keeping up with a topic every day, it's a non-ideal medium for someone to show up new and to try to soak in all of the information here. Where do you start? In what order should you read? By date? By category?

So I'm collecting the articles into a mini-novella, expanding on some points, adding new pictures and updated descriptions in some cases, and generally trying to make something more sustainable out of the content here.

I don't know what the ultimate form will be or how I'll publish it, but I want to end up with a full end-to-end story which documents what we did and the thinking that went into it.

I'm working to create something that can be read by the people who have not yet discovered this blog and who wouldn't spend the time navigating the rather tedious organization to try to read all of the articles here.

So, stay tuned. There's a lot more to come...