JULY 16
A lot of readers have been emailing about the somehow-still-not-finished SpaceX post, so I’m going to just keep anyone who’s interested updated with the progress here.
WBW posts are long, but normally that means 3,000 – 8,000 words. Two posts so far have gone to a whole other insane level—the two-part AI post (24,000 words) and the Tesla post (26,000 words). SpaceX will join them to complete the trifecta of short books that are for some reason on a blog.
Normally, a post process goes like this:
1) Pick a topic
2) Start brainstorming/researching
3) Hit the first “Wait this is hard” wall and change topics
4) Pick a new topic, repeat Steps 2 and 3, returning to the original topic
5) Brainstorm/Research/Pace back and forth in despair
6) Outline—take all the scattered thoughts from Step 5 and design a post, making all the decisions about structure, themes, general angle, etc etc. This is the hardest part and sometimes drags on for many days in a row before it finally clicks.
7) Write
8) Draw
9) Read the whole thing, making minor changes and fixing typos
10) Other annoying shit—citations, sources, formatting, tags, etc. etc.
11) Publish
Depending on how much pre-learning I need to do, how long I hit a wall in Step 6 before it clicks, how long the post is, how many drawings there are, and how much the monkey bullies me throughout the process, getting from Step 1 to Step 11 will take anywhere from 1-3 weeks.
A super-long post is a different thing all together. Step 5 is far more involved than it normally is, and rather than do Steps 5-8 in a nice sequential order, they need to be inter-spliced and done in parts. Step 6 is where long snags happen, but usually, once I get by it, I’m by it—in this case, because Step 6 happens again and again for each section and subsection, random three-day walls have ample opportunity to pop up. Further not helping the situation, with a post this long and built up, my already debilitating perfectionism is on steroids.
Like the Tesla post, SpaceX will have three parts. As of last night, I was finishing up writing Part 2, but then this morning I looked at Part 2 and realized it should have been structured differently (because I came up with something better as I wrote it that I hadn’t thought of when I planned it, which happens sometimes), so now I’m starting Part 2 again. Kill me.
That doesn’t mean I’m one-third of the way through the whole process. The meat of the gargantuan Steps 5 and 6 are behind me already, so I’d say we’re 80% of the way there.
I’ll keep this updated each day till the post is up.
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UPDATE – Fri 7/17
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UPDATE – Sat 7/18
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UPDATE – Sun 7/19
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UPDATE – Mon 7/20
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UPDATE – Tue 7/21
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UPDATE – Wed 7/22
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UPDATE – Thu 7/23
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UPDATE – Fri 7/24
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UPDATE – Sat 7/25
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UPDATE – Sun 7/26
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UPDATE – Mon 7/27
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UPDATE – Tue 7/28
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UPDATE – Wed 7/29
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UPDATE – Thu 7/30
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UPDATE – Fri 7/31
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UPDATE – Sat 8/1
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UPDATE – Sun 8/2
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UPDATE – Mon 8/3
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UPDATE – Tue 8/4
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UPDATE – Wed 8/5
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UPDATE – Thu 8/6
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UPDATE – Fri 8/7
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UPDATE – Sun 8/9
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UPDATE – Mon 8/10
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UPDATE – Tue 8/11
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UPDATE – Wed 8/12
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UPDATE – Thu 8/13
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UPDATE – Fri 8/14
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UPDATE – Sat 8/15
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UPDATE – Sun 8/16
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UPDATE – Wed 8/19
