>> I'm good at writing short, unstructured things. When trying to explain 
>> big concepts, I have trouble figuring out where to start and what 
>> order to say things in. My writing tends to lack high-level order - 
>> much like my thought processes.
> 
> Yeah, that's a hard thing to get over.  The trick I've found is you need 
> to be able to hold the whole thing in your head at once.  The only way 
> to do that is to abstract it repeatedly until it all fits.
> 
> In other words, write an outline, and then rearrange the outline. Make 
> sure what you want to say is all in the outline. Expand parts of the 
> outline, concentrating on only those sections, until the outline 
> includes enough detail that you know where everything you want to say goes.

I find I tend to sit down, start writing, generate loads of ideas, run 
off at tangents, and end up with a bunch of stuff that makes sense, but 
misses out lots of interesting details that I couldn't fit into the flow 
of the text.

Oddly, even when I write an extensive outline, I still end up managing 
to muddle things up. The text ends up not matching the outline very 
well. :-S

>> Now, if only I knew the magical incantation. [You know, the one that 
>> makes her go from "ok, I'm sitting here with a bunch of people 
>> chatting" to "hey, that boy is cute. I should make out with him..."]
> 
> Heh.  It's not magic. Just be your witty charming self.

Ooo, I've never tried that before.

Oh, wait...

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