The first third of every project is building scaffolding. Don’t fear waste. Don’t fear redundancy. Don’t fear inefficiency. Yet.”

Frank Chimero

The balance between scaffolding and the finished product is tricky.

I recently shipped a large project (the scaffolding of which is pictured above). It’s a training course on the essentials of website design for people who who are building their own business. It’s that rare connection of “something I care a great deal about” + “something I know a great deal about.” (There’s a video from the course and more about info about it here).

Throughout the project I moved back and forth between scaffolding (notes on a card or post-it note) and polished words a few times as the structure of the thing emerged over time.

I’d create the bones and say, “yea, that’s good.”

And then I’d write it out and stumble on something that was unclear. I’d work to push through the ambiguity and realize I need to restructure the scaffolding a bit.

This back and forth is a bit harrowing. There’s (more…)

Goddamn it, FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS and the hiding of feelings.”

Jack Kerouac

‘God made a single sheet of foolscap to be exactly the right length to hold the outline of an entire novel.’ (foolscap is 8.5 x 14 inch legal paper)

[…]

Outline the sucker.

Break it down to its fundamentals.

Identify its theme.

Do it on one page. Do it without preciousness. Do it now.

Don’t start the actual writing until you know where you’re going and what you’re trying to accomplish.”

Stephen Pressfield

I think for the first time I just read a thing and knew full well it was going to change the way I worked forever.

This tip has that “ugh, duh! goddamit, of course” quality; like something in me already knew it was true, I just needed someone to articulate it for me.

As I’m in the middle of creating a large and {hopefully) important course for business builders, this tip is about 4 days late.

But I’ll be prepared for next time. (I’ll try that one and go for these if I like it more than using blank printer paper).

One piece of paper… hand written. Duh!

“What helped me achieve artistic distance was I stopped writing about myself. I made a conscious decision that I would never again write anything that was “true.” I would work from the imagination only and from universes that had nothing to do with “mine.”

I also, though it took me years to realize this, made the decision to write for the reader, not for myself. I learned how to bounce back and forth in the working process between the right brain and the left, between the stuff that was coming unfiltered from the Muse and the stuff that I would ultimately put on the page.

I stopped caring what the reader thought of “me.” I took “me” out of the equation entirely.”

Stephen Pressfield

“The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it -honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.”

Neil Gaiman