In Which the Writer Learns that Despite Indications, He's a Control Freak

Those who know me know that I am not, in most ways, an organized or tidy person. Laundry gets done “whenever”; my desks at home and work are horrific masterpieces of “three-dimensional filing”; I’m bad about keeping up with my paper mail, or for that matter much of the non-radioactive correspondence I engage in, whether paper- or electron-based. I do like to keep myself well-groomed and clean (and have been accused of being a snappier-than-necessary dresser on more than one occasion), but on the whole my life is an ever-developing collision of well-adjusted, shrug-and-grin messes.

When writing, though, I find that the smallest questions I can’t answer, the tiniest continuity or worldbuilding niggles that crop up, stop prose production cold while I chase down answers: metallurgy? speciation? optics? orbital mechanics? thermodynamics? story structure? characterization? timeline tweaks? All fodder for my stop-working-and-get-the-plan-right bug.

Analysis paralysis? Oh, yes. But there’s also a surprising perfectionism to the process that tells me I need to smack my internal editor around a bit and just get more writing done.

-Rich