>sam sneed wrote: >> >> It also always helps to have a competent proofreader read your >> paper after >> your done. > >After you're finished. > >Your is a possessive. Done refers to cooked roasts and the like. > >Sorry I just couldn't resist! ;-) > >Priscilla
Well, Priscilla, perhaps we should have a cooking contest one of these days! Let me throw out some snippets of my writing technique. I come up with sets of objectives at the chapter level, often STARTING with a war story or quotable quote. My first chapter is ALWAYS "What problem are you trying to solve," but that theme tends to recur in each chapter, dealing with more detailed problems. My style, to some extent, is a storyteller, even drawing from the sort of tribal memory around the campfire, and I often look for analogies first. When writing consultant reports and the like, I often start with the executive summary to get at the essentials, although I will revise it extensively. One of my tests is what I call "Zen engineering" -- that there is one, or a very view, core concepts that once defined, will make everything fall into place. For example, my experience was that I only really understood BGP when I began to understand the abstraction of routing policy. I only really understood IP addressing when I started thinking in binary, and banished classful thinking. Both of these ideas formed the core of some of my books. I make extensive use of the Word outline facility, moving blocks of text around, to get the flow to flow. Often, I'll then blast in blocks of text to feel out the flow, and then keep moving and rewriting them. Sometimes I get "stuck", have writer's block, etc. At such times, I often find a change of medium can break it up. I might stop typing, and write on paper, even finding benefits from changing among different pens and pencils. I will also often go to the whiteboard and approach a concept graphically, which I may then either turn into text, or formalize as diagrams. Sometimes I will copy a relevant article, putting it into colored text, and rewrite it until it's totally in my words and properly linked into the rest of my flow. I do this not infrequently with CertZone papers, where I take a section out of CCO and...trying to be polite...rewrite it into intelligible and flowing English. Message Posted at: http://www.groupstudy.com/form/read.php?f=7&i=50158&t=50077 -------------------------------------------------- FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
