How to waste Post-Its®

Every once and a while I get the urge to plot. I develop some hair-brained organizational scheme, convince myself it will solve everything and trot off to the store to buy expensive office supplies.

If you examine the picture below, you will see a hair-brained scheme in action (click for a close-up).

I usually spend one day concocting the hair-brained scheme, one day creating it and one day dismantling it. It does not take one day to realize the scheme is hair-brained. This happens instantly.

I only write well when I hold my nose and jump in, but this is a scary thing to do. My urge to plot probably comes from wanting to mitigate risk. If I am going to spend a few years writing a book, I want to know it will work from the start. Who wouldn't?

Maybe what I need is a white board.

Comments

[Barry]

Hi Claire,

My father did crosswords and would obsess thereon. I promised myself never to be like him and in lots of ways I succeeded. This makes it, of course, that I have many years of repressed desire to tease people on word usage therefore.

So: Isn't it hare-brained?

I'm just jealous really. I found your work looking for how to perhaps use Lulu or something like it to get my word out. That, all the while trying to finish the work and figuring out how to be noticed by a 'real publisher'.

Thanks and best wishes.

Barry

[Claire]

Hi Barry,

It looks like you are right, though I'm not totally wrong.

from dictionary.com: Foolish; flighty: a harebrained scheme.

Usage Note: The first use of harebrained dates to 1548. The spelling hairbrained also has a long history, going back to the 1500s when hair was a variant spelling of hare. The hair variant was preserved in Scotland into the 18th century, and as a result it is impossible to tell exactly when people began writing hairbrained in the belief that the word means “having a hair-sized brain” rather than “with no more sense than a hare.” While hairbrained continues to be used and confused, it should be avoided in favor of harebrained which has been established as the correct spelling.

Which means I've had it wrong my whole life.

Claire