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stephbgI've been rehearsing in my head what I'll say to my new counsellor as an initial info dump ("So why are we here today?" "Well.."). One way of describing my current problem is that I have technical writer's block.
This business of writing for other people seems to have become an irreducible problem, which is crazy talk, because it's infinitely reducible. Except in practice it's not, so I'm hoping this person will do the equivalent of slapping me with a wet fish to get back to nice warm logic.
I'm not hanging about waiting, mind you, so I've been trying a variety of baby steps to get back on the horse, if you get my drift. This includes reading my old material to get the shape of the project back in my mind. I know I can do it; I have in fact done it, for I was working on an upgrade after a 2 year absense.
*Knowing* I can do it appears to be part of the problem. I *know* I can do it, therefore I *should* be able to do it. But I can't. Why? WHY? Because I've become obsessed with and panicked by not being able to do it. Maybe. Dumb, but feasible.
Should is a very dangerous word.
It was odd reading back my professional work, because it wasn't in my voice. Who wrote this stuff? It wasn't in any voice really, which is a big part of the job. The writer needs to be invisble. I need to be able to juggle the imaginary voices of the readers asking questions, the engineers supplying answers, and the cool voice of reason providing the right information to the reader at the right time. I used to/can/will do that very well. Well enough to sneak a bit of dry humour under the radar, so my work wasn't entirely pure, but it was effective.
I need *more* people and *more* voices in my head, not fewer*. I suspect that's not the usual goal of counselling :-)
(*) I'd like to thank the bit of my brain that automatically rejected the word "less" here. I still got somethin'
This business of writing for other people seems to have become an irreducible problem, which is crazy talk, because it's infinitely reducible. Except in practice it's not, so I'm hoping this person will do the equivalent of slapping me with a wet fish to get back to nice warm logic.
I'm not hanging about waiting, mind you, so I've been trying a variety of baby steps to get back on the horse, if you get my drift. This includes reading my old material to get the shape of the project back in my mind. I know I can do it; I have in fact done it, for I was working on an upgrade after a 2 year absense.
*Knowing* I can do it appears to be part of the problem. I *know* I can do it, therefore I *should* be able to do it. But I can't. Why? WHY? Because I've become obsessed with and panicked by not being able to do it. Maybe. Dumb, but feasible.
Should is a very dangerous word.
It was odd reading back my professional work, because it wasn't in my voice. Who wrote this stuff? It wasn't in any voice really, which is a big part of the job. The writer needs to be invisble. I need to be able to juggle the imaginary voices of the readers asking questions, the engineers supplying answers, and the cool voice of reason providing the right information to the reader at the right time. I used to/can/will do that very well. Well enough to sneak a bit of dry humour under the radar, so my work wasn't entirely pure, but it was effective.
I need *more* people and *more* voices in my head, not fewer*. I suspect that's not the usual goal of counselling :-)
(*) I'd like to thank the bit of my brain that automatically rejected the word "less" here. I still got somethin'
