walls o' text

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I am in awe of people who can do this. I am curious, do the words you want to say come to you easily and in cogent, organized form? This is beyond me. It took several revisions just to write these few sentences. I have quite a lot up there in my noggin, but I can't access it and order it without an exhausting amount of time and revision.

I am the exact same way. Often times I just give up on posting something, because I don't like the way it came out or I don't think people will understand what I meant by it. My biggest problem is my thought stream is often fragments instead of entire sentences. So I find it difficult to form a coherent paragraph that others can follow.

I haven't produced any walls of text on here thus far, partially because I don't expect people to have enough interest to read a wall of text of my creation, however I do write a lot, in the form of blog posts, which are, basically walls of text containing whatever is in my head... I find it easier to "speak" my mind via writing/typing. When I am having emotional/analytical issues I tent to write everything I'm thinking to get it out of my head in something resembling comprehensible information as opposed to the crazy mess it is in my head or if I attempt to say it verbally. Sometimes it still comes out as a crazy mess but at least its not causing as much chaos in my head

I'm not a waller. I don't have the bricks.

I can relate to revising even very tiny posts. I've reworded this one twice.

On the other end, walls of text are an expressive issue as well. Too many words are often used (I'm guilty) in an attempt to accurately express the ideas. But people get bored reading it or you can appear pedantic and stuffy.

Mostly I don't have any big problem in getting my ideas into writing......I usually have to tidy posts up a bit before hitting the send button, but that's about all.

But I do have times when the words just don't flow and I can't seem to express myself properly at all. No idea what causes me to go into that state. It's never lasted longer than a day or two.

With spoken words it can be quite different. Depends on the listener - if I start to feel that they may easily get confused or impatient with what I want to tell them, it can be difficult to know how to phrase things, and the extra load causes me to flounder.

God no, what comes out of my head is a confusing mess. It takes around 4 passes to get it into something coherent. I'm just very used to doing it by now, though I still struggle not to ramble on. I could give examples of how I do each pass, but it's enough text that I won't unless someone asks.

Usually I have notepad or another text editor open and refine stuff there. I also have a notepad 'graveyard' file where things that didn't sound quite right get put. Like thought or experiences I can't quite get a grasp on, I put it in a file for later so that I can work on it sometime when I feel I have a better handle on it. I like thinking about why, why I like that, why I hate that, why this irritates me. Not just so I can make others understand, but also so I understand better.

Thank you. Some times it's so much easier to write a thousand words than it is to write a hundred, other times I can barely get a paragraph out. Usually I end up saying just about as much as seems necessary to get my point across, which is often a lot.

Like Rat_Barzane, it's much easier for me to type out text than it is to speak my thoughts, and once I do this, it is much easier for me to speak these particular thoughts later, although rarely in the same degree of detail.

I actually posted a thread about my own walls of text: http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt149101.html

And this thread kind of goes into the process as well (although indirectly): http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt151907.html

I write walls of text sometimes, but I try to cut it down if I get too long-winded. I know that no one but me is usually patient enough to sift through it all.

When in doubt, short and concise is the way to go.

It's a little hard for me, though. I tend to be long-winded when I have something to say.

I sometimes try to trim it down but I can't figure out where and it just causes a ton of anxiety and frustration, unless something is so obviously irrelevant I can dump it. Usually I just write and post and it works out more easily that way.

What I'm asking is the amount of ease it takes for those who can. How much effort and revision does it take? Do your thoughts come in ordered cogent form? If you're posting about a topic can you easily access all the information in your mind or do you need to stop and look stuff up online and then cobble it together? It would take me all night to write some of what I've read here.

Wall of Text

I tend to think in complete sentences, although I've begun to drop repetitive subjects both internally and externally (spoken and written). By subjects, I mean structurally such as the common "you understood". That previous sentence was also much wordier before being rewritten more concisely. I found the longer sentence easier both to write and understand, but I've learned that many others prefer shorter sentences.

When I write a "train of thought" it usually has relatively correct grammar. If it doesn't, then I go back and add it when I come to a pause in thought. I don't think in pictures, so there isn't any translating to do. I'll admit to skipping many posts on this site because I cannot bring myself to take the time to make sense of what someone else hasn't deemed important enough to express in a commonly understood manner.

Edit: After considering my final sentence, I believe its tone is harsh and illustrating my own bias. Perhaps other people feel an important idea should be expressed however it comes out and that is enough. Someone like me, however, will pass such a post by because one cannot make sense of it (or cannot without more effort than one deems appropriate). I see this on other sites as well, but I've seen it here more frequently.

Last edited by Blue_Star on 15 Feb 2011, 8:58 am, edited 1 time in total.

Most of what I write assembles itself and translates it into language as I write it. A lot of it I don't really think about consciously until I actually write it out. Some of it I have thought out, but my thoughts are sensory impressions (primarily visual images). When I am doing this it is in fact easier than writing a shorter post. I don't bother to revise at all because that causes anxiety and I will probably end up not posting at all and maybe end up frustrated.

Most of it is information I've thought about in bits and pieces over the preceding days or weeks (and some - that I haven't written here yet - might be assembled over months or years), and something triggers the whole thing, and it comes out in a coherent wall of text.

If I need to look anything up online, I usually (but not always) do so after I'm done writing to avoid breaking the flow. This doesn't usually happen here, but I often need to use supporting links elsewhere.

If I am not writing something like that, then my posts are much shorter and often much more difficult to write, especially if I try to push past a few sentences.

Last edited by Verdandi on 15 Feb 2011, 9:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

Are your thoughts really disordered or are they just non-verbal? I have thoughts that can't be translated into words. They are coherent, but resist symbolic representation. The problem with these thoughts is that the only way to communicate them is symbolically. I have a theory that art, poetry and music are attempts to communicate such things with less reliance on symbolic forms.

Can you easily write about things you already know a lot about? Like a special interest?

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In my situation, written words come almost automatically if I take the right FDA approved medicine which works for me a little for ADHD Inattentive including central auditory processing disorder (CAPD). If I do not take the medicine, the written words do not automatically come out. At the same time in my life, there are large differences in my situation between written words vs verbal words. Verbal words (even using the FDA approved medicine) do not, for me, come as easily at all. I tend to feel that persons with learning disabilities/autism/Asperger's and so on tend to have parts of their brains which work alright and other parts of their brains which do not work or do not work perfectly. It's like a string of Christmas tree lights where most of the lights are on but a few, here and there, are not (simplified/oversimplified).

Anything longer than a short post means 4 revisions. I can take up to 2 hours to write something big out, usually less, between 20-50 min. On a few of the gaming boards I frequent I've been known to take a full day just organizing my thoughts into a post. I'm not writing the entire time obviously, I usually have multiple tabs for various sites I'm reading up on and sometimes watch TV or play games while processing what I'm trying to say. I usually reread previous posts couple of times. I rarely look stuff up, I have the curse/gift of a good memory (un)fortunately.

I don't really start by writing everything out in one go though, I start by asking myself what is it I want to answer or say, then I ask myself why I feel that way or reached that conclusion. Sometimes I want to write everything out without that, it always it ends up as a horrible stream of consciousness mess. I can usually untangle that mess but I always have to take a while to sort all the different thoughts out and then throw the irrelevant and repetitious out.