It felt like a lot of stuff was happening today. The big thing I wanted to reveal today? I can’t reveal yet, but it became bigger today, and I’ll reveal it very likely next week. I worked quite a while on that thing instead of the book (the thing has nothing to do with the book), but also worked on smaller things – like giving feedback to an article Rose is working on, and reading through & implementing feedback that Eddie prepared for me, for a guide I wrote on how Datawrapper is using social media.
There wasn’t much time left to work on the book, but I did work through some mini-chapters in the “Don’t rely on colors alone” section. Yesterday I talked about how I’m doubting the structure of the accessibility section; today I started to doubt the structure of the – 😱 – whole book.
Which is ok! While working on so many articles over the years, I learned to deal with the “what am I even doing this is all not making sense” feeling that always shows up at some point during the process. Always. Sometimes it shows up as a short 2 second idea. Sometimes it shows up for an hour or two. Sometimes for a week.
Well, what I learned is that stuff does make sense – maybe just not in the order it’s in right now. (A bit of restructuring can go a long way.) Or maybe not with that premise. Or maybe it answers a good question, but not the one I intended to.
The changes that I make as a consequence of this feeling of slight despair have made all my articles better – that I learned, too.
Tomorrow is a holiday in Germany. I’ll write again next Monday! 👋