Craft of Writing: Plan like you're going to storm Normandy.

 Dear Reader,

This was a bit of advice that my Grandfather gave me as I was struggling with how to write a huge paper in college. He looked over my notes, which were in disorganized piles, and made that statement before walking off. I then looked at my outline and back at my notes. With a measure of despair, I tried to match the piles of notes to the outline.

It wasn't working so well. And then something clicked in my brain. My outline was too vague. So, I sat down and drafted up another outline in greater detail, drawing from some crucial notecards in the messy pile before me. I repeated the process until my notecards were in a stack and my final outline was essentially my paper in bullet points.

I had some people in my life at the time who felt that they knew more about what I was writing on than I did. They had tried earlier to interfere with my efforts to plan out this paper. It was part of the reason why my notes were chaos and my outline was really about as cohesive as cheap washi tape. (You know, the pretty ribbon tape that sticks to nothing but itself, and it even does that badly.) At my Grandfather's advice, I worked in silence and (to a degree) secrecy on this paper. By the time I had that final outline done and it was time to write, I was well away from the persons who were trying to dictate from their assumptions the facts of my paper.

I've since taken that approach to big projects. Do the organizational work on my own, in privacy. Don't allow anyone not directly involved in the project access to it. Don't encourage commentary on your work habits except from persons you trust completely to give you reliable input. If it worked in the storming of Normandy, it will work for the Great Work that you're trying to complete, whatever it may be.