Writing Changes

I've been struggling lately to develop a writing method and style that lends itself better to permanence. At work, I read, write, and analyze all day, but I often find myself doing several revisions of my work products before I reach something I remotely like. Sometimes, I return to the things I once thought were good and find I want to revise them again. It's somewhat frustrating and I hope to improve at getting it right the first time.

Recently, I did a good deal of work revising an article that is about to go to print (the Future Dangerousness Comment). I'd written it almost two years ago originally for a class, and I was shocked how much I needed to revise. I use "needed" because some of it I thought was written in a way I just wouldn't want to publish. I really think some of the sections just didn't flow, weren't organized well, or were unclear. After several revisions I feel much better about how it reads. Fortunately, by and large, I still agree with the substantive portions that I wrote originally, so I didn't really revise them. So maybe I wasn't stupid two years ago, but I sure needed some more work on writing well. Maybe I'll say the same two years from now.

Things here have been going pretty well. We've gotten the apartment/duplex/whatever we call it cleaned up a lot. We found a sectional couch we might buy for a reasonable price (read: under $1000). The ferets are getting lots of play time now that I moved my computer into their room (I seem to spend a lot of time on it). I also did some garden pruning two weekends ago and we went and started thinking of what else to do to clean it up this past weekend. Next weekend, we'll do major cleaning out of it and maybe even start planting new things. But we need to level the edge of the garden so it's flush with the driveway first.

Work lately has continued to be enjoyable, though I've had this one case that has been very hard to come up with a recommendation on. I've gone back and forth on it, revised it repeatedly, reread the materials repeatedly, and just struggled to sort out the logistics of it. I think I have identified the suggestion I'm going to give, but I tend to believe it will not attract a unanimous vote from the Court. I just hope they don't vote unanimously against my analysis, because then I'll just feel dumb. I'm continuously impressed by the amount of knowledge Justices must accumulate from hearing so many diverse types of cases.

Nothing else to report for now. Hope to see you all soon.