Tiruncula has an interesting discussion about writing process going on at Practica. I blathered on there about how I spend a lot of time freewriting, just spewing material onto the page to clean up later. Which is what I’m currently doing with the Chapter of Mammothness (cleaning up, that is; I’ve done the spewing already).
But I kind of feel like I’m losing my mind, because I keep going through this draft to figure out where everything should go, and then I realize that a crucial section is missing – and not in the sense of just saying, "Oh, I need to write up X now," but in the sense of, "I was absolutely sure I’d actually said this somewhere! Do you mean I didn’t actually say it, I just thought it was there?" This is about the third time that I’ve realized I just thought I’d said something, when in fact I hadn’t. These aren’t little additional add-ons, either – these are important, central points that I had to have made in my head to be able to go on and talk about everything else that’s here.
Apparently I just didn’t feel it necessary to write them down.
Like I said – losing my mind. (If you find it, will you send it home?)
New Kid on the Hallway 
Well, then you’re not the only one losing your mind, because I do that all the time. I tend to do it more with e-mails — thinking I’ve replied to one, for instance — than with academic writing, but it’s still about thinking I wrote something (sometimes at imaginary length!) when I didn’t! Weird, isn’t it?
I do a lot of this as well… and find myself being uber-redundant at times…
Yes, a classic problem. Sometimes it’s shocking to realize the brilliance in your head has not transferred itself to the document.
Well, you did the right thing by blogging about it. Don’t you know that everything you blog that’s lost is found? 🙂