I strongly agree with this sentiment. I keep a folder for this very purpose; whenever an interesting thought comes to mind I type it up along with as many of the related strands of thought as I can as quickly as possible and then save it to the folder and move on. I’ve found that this is a fairly useful procedure for organizing my thoughts and documenting my progress in my various areas of interest.
Wouldn’t doing that (instead of writing up the whole argument in a full text) make you feel as if you’ve already achieved the materialization of the idea, hence reducing your motivation to write it in the future (which might lead to never actually writing the text)?
I’m only talking about rough sketches, very short, maybe three or four paragraphs. The material in and of itself is not something I would even want use in the future. Think of it as an artist’s sketch pad; I practice (1) the purely technical aspect of my writing (2) my ability to quickly convey ideas (3) I consolidate information that was previously floating about in my skull into a nice package by anchoring it to a single event.
It’s much the same with guitar or visual art (a least for myself): I may work creatively on one technique by using it to write some nice riffs on guitar or I may try to consolidate the technique of pointillism into my repertoire by using it to draw a face or a land scape. The outcomes of each of these mini-studies is not an end in itself, but rather a stepping stone to mastery.
I strongly agree with this sentiment. I keep a folder for this very purpose; whenever an interesting thought comes to mind I type it up along with as many of the related strands of thought as I can as quickly as possible and then save it to the folder and move on. I’ve found that this is a fairly useful procedure for organizing my thoughts and documenting my progress in my various areas of interest.
Wouldn’t doing that (instead of writing up the whole argument in a full text) make you feel as if you’ve already achieved the materialization of the idea, hence reducing your motivation to write it in the future (which might lead to never actually writing the text)?
I’m only talking about rough sketches, very short, maybe three or four paragraphs. The material in and of itself is not something I would even want use in the future. Think of it as an artist’s sketch pad; I practice (1) the purely technical aspect of my writing (2) my ability to quickly convey ideas (3) I consolidate information that was previously floating about in my skull into a nice package by anchoring it to a single event.
It’s much the same with guitar or visual art (a least for myself): I may work creatively on one technique by using it to write some nice riffs on guitar or I may try to consolidate the technique of pointillism into my repertoire by using it to draw a face or a land scape. The outcomes of each of these mini-studies is not an end in itself, but rather a stepping stone to mastery.