{"id":3811,"date":"2015-03-24T11:45:05","date_gmt":"2015-03-23T22:45:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesislink.aut.ac.nz\/?p=3811"},"modified":"2016-08-01T10:08:13","modified_gmt":"2016-07-31T21:08:13","slug":"manuscript-march-casual-text","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesislink.aut.ac.nz\/?p=3811","title":{"rendered":"Manuscript March: Casual Text"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s an old Ella Fitzgerald song that goes:<\/p>\n

Say, it’s only a paper moon
\nSailing over a cardboard sea
\nBut it wouldn’t be make-believe
\nIf you believed in me<\/p>\n

Do you know the one? Is it now stuck in your head forever? Sorry. It spontaneously played in my brain today because I have a version that I sing when I cull text from my thesis. It goes:<\/p>\n

It was only an afternoon
\nWriting sentences on a screen
\nSo why does it make me grieve
\nWhen words are cleaved from me?<\/p>\n

I call this The Dirge of Deletion. It is my tearful refrain every time I have to cut precious paragraphs from my thesis.<\/p>\n

\"60060445\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Why is it so hard to say goodbye to text? What I’m deleting is literally digital shapes<\/em>. I’m not losing blood, or limbs. No one I love will be harmed by the deletion. I will not become poor, or hungry, or even mildly inconvenienced by cutting text. The labour that created these words has long been over.<\/p>\n

Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. The labour.<\/p>\n

Once, long ago, I worked hard to create those words. “This paragraph is not just a paragraph,” I tell myself, “it was once my afternoon!” This is why editing is so painful to me. If I cut that paragraph, then I know that the afternoon I spent carefully crafting it could have been spent at the movies.<\/p>\n

\"Sharknado-2\"<\/a>
No judgements.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Economists might call my afternoon of work a “sunk cost.” I’m not going to get that time back, no matter how much or how little I delete. It is irretrievable. (And in fact, that’s not a bad thing because all writing is a learning experience, even if the text is deleted.) But I can <\/em>prevent future costs by cutting my losses. If a particular section is not a good investment, I can stop spending my time on it and get rid of it. After all, these are only words. Deleting a few should not be a big deal.<\/p>\n

In fact, I’ve decided that I’m completely in favour of casual text.<\/p>\n

I’ll write it quick, in dark offices, and forget it by the morning. I won’t get too attached to any particular paragraphs. If I see a sentence with its syntax all unravelled, it’s sayonara<\/em> from me.<\/p>\n

One day, I’ll be ready to commit to a draft. When that day comes, I can ensure my text is worthy of the commitment. But in order for that day to arrive, I have to be free to ditch whatever isn’t working for me.<\/p>\n

Today, I’ve writ it and quit it. The section that was lagging has gone. Tomorrow, I’ll write something even better to take its place. But tonight? Well, I do<\/em> still have Sharknado 2 on DVD…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s an old Ella Fitzgerald song that goes: Say, it’s only a paper moon Sailing over a cardboard sea But it wouldn’t be make-believe If you believed in me Do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6725,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[42],"class_list":["post-3811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-category-5","tag-editing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p83npQ-Zt","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesislink.aut.ac.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesislink.aut.ac.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesislink.aut.ac.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesislink.aut.ac.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6725"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesislink.aut.ac.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3811"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/thesislink.aut.ac.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3917,"href":"https:\/\/thesislink.aut.ac.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3811\/revisions\/3917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesislink.aut.ac.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesislink.aut.ac.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesislink.aut.ac.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}