Can you write in segments?

Make me one.

 

For features, I transcribe all the interviews first and then write around them. Often I make an outline of how it all should be organized as I listen to the quotes.

But yeah, I usually write the lede last, because I discover new things while listening again to the interviews, so much so that the story isn't about what I thought it was about.

Often I think reporters use quotes to support their own view of things, instead of actually listening to people. I try to go in with an open mind and then once I understand, summarize it.

Gamers are completely different -- I write as the game goes on and then rearrange later. I don't like doing gamers except that they are challenging due to deadlines.

 

I almost always start with the ending as well -- great Bastards think alike, I guess. Even if it's not written out in full, I know at least what my ending note is going to be -- a particular scene or moment. Then I'll head up to the top and find my way back to the thumbtack I've already stuck into the map.

Non-fiction books, I think, are almost always written in segments -- there's so much material, if you leave it all to the end to write, you'll forget half of what you've dug up. I imagine fiction is more of a first page to the last kind of thing, but I stand to be corrected on that front.

 

I primarily write in segments.

While I'm writing the body of a piece, something will pop into my head and I'll say, "That's my lede!"

 

I haven't done that, but I have had to go from newspaper writing to academic writing and it's a difficult transition at first. Then try going back to journalism writing after you get used to writing papers at your university. That's also an adjustment period.

 

The lead usually is written first, but then I write in the order stuff appears in my notebook before rearranging them for flow.
I don't like jumping from page to page and back. I'm afraid I may lose something.

 

IJAG - I'm right in the middle of reading To Absent Friends from Red Smith, and there's a column in it about Jimmy Cannon. I thought of that column when I came across this thread. Here's a excerpt:

"[Cannon] might devote half a dozen paragraphs to a description of cellar-door dancers he had seen as a boy in Greenwich Village, and only then get into the splendid meat of a column. "What Jimmy doesn't understand," [Ernest] Hemingway said, "is that stuff up top is just the warm-up. You write it all, then you throw away those first paragraphs.'"

- At that point, I'm thinking 'if it's good enough for Red Smith and Hemmingway...'