I've noticed some things about my work habits and writing/editing style lately. I've been thinking about these things as I've worked on different writing projects and have interviewed a bit for various jobs, answering questions regarding my strengths and weaknesses. Above all, I enjoy the broad efforts of clarifying complex topics, ideas, and software. I believe this is the real challenge in technical writing and for expository writing in general. The actual craft of writing and editing is secondary. I believe this is the way it should be. So often people get caught up in parsing sentences, editing with great precision, and following various "important" standards, guidelines, and rules. This is what so many people out there believe technical writing to be all about. It’s not. Those things are fine after you’ve done the hard work of understanding and then carefully explaining the subject matter, but it comes well afterwards. I enjoy and am pretty good at the hard part. I tend to get a little lazy in the second part—the editing part. Oh, I believe I'm a very good editor when editing the writing of others. I'm careful, detail-oriented, and thorough. But with my own writing I'm lazy. Writing new material is hard. I tend to expend great energy getting my head around the subject and thoroughly understanding what I’m writing about. Then I write about it. Having done this, I don’t really want to go back and edit the writing and put it into a polished form. Reviewing stuff I've written is tedious and dull.

Even in the second part of the writing process—the editing—I've noticed that people don’t really do the important things. They review for grammar, consistency, and style, fussing about minutia. What they don’t do is a structural review—is the information, are the ideas, organized and structured in a clear way. It strikes me that people are intellectually lazy. They don’t want to think too much. Grammar and style are easy; ideas and argumentation are not. I like hard things.

Of course, this applies only to expository writing. More creative forms of writing are different beasts entirely. I think writing poetry is the most difficult form of creative writing. If done well, it should be highly concentrated inspiration or creativity. I really have no interest in reading poetry. It bores me. But writing poetry is appealing in some ways. Lately I've been hearing poems read on public radio as I drive to work in the morning. I groan with displeasure every time it's introduced. Who wants to hear the sort of prosaic musings on scampering squirrels and tufts of autumn winds which the public broadcasting folks believe we clamor to hear? I tend to dismiss large segments of poetry out of hand. So much poetry is simply prose strung into short lines of text. I believe if poetry can be read as prose, with sentences conveying ideas, then it's not doing what poetry should do. Just my opinion. Poetry should not be about ideas; it should be about words, language, and images. Perhaps I'm drawing fine lines, but ... well, I don’t want a poem to read like an essay.

I've been obsessed lately with buying original drawings by Cocteau, first-edition books and signed copies, original music scores, etc. I think I've caught the collector’s bug, but unfortunately, my tastes outsize my bank account. Collecting is an odd enterprise. Why do we collect? There are those who believe they are investing. They imagine, perhaps, that the $55 which the unopened Star Wars figurine will fetch in 25 years will somehow make all the difference in their retirement years. At least I hold no illusions on that count, though I do believe that a Cocteau piece will at least not loose value—I would not be throwing away my money. My impulse to collect comes from a love of the pieces and their associations, together with a snooty "look how cultured I am" attitude. I've always been critical of those who get autographs, mostly because I can't think how such things could be valued—that signature of a dim-witted ball player or the foppish pop singer. In 5 years who will cares? But if it's Steve Reich... a different matter entirely. Clearly I value mementos of things that I hold in high esteem. But at least there is some implicit valuation. Some people cling to anything that has fame or notoriety. These are the truly contemptible people.

I read that if you want to be a collector, you should focus on one area. This may be good advice if you’re interested in creating a body of work, but for what? To increase the value of the things? Isn’t that back to the old investment idea, which I reject? If you like it, why not get it? But I do think focusing a collection might be a good idea simply because you become an expert in the area. Developing expertise is always a good thing. Maybe I will. It’s odd that my interests seem to be developing for art, though. I've always been very non-visual in my interests.