Writing ahead

So, this morning I interviewed two of the three people I need, and now I'm killing time waiting for the last person to call before I start writing my story. I ran out to do an errand, updated my story budget, ate lunch, organized my to-do lists, checked e-mail, checked Facebook, checked Twitter, read Dear Abby, checked Twitter again, and finally decided to write a blog -- all the things I usually do to make time pass faster while I'm waiting.

Probably the next thing I'll do will be to half-heartedly start writing my story, or at least try to write what I can with the notes I took this morning, with the plan that I can "plug in" notes from the third interview when I finally get it.

Trouble is, writing ahead just never works for me. Oh, I may get what passes for a reasonable "draft" of my story ready to go, but when the final piece of the puzzle comes in, the draft goes out the window and it all gets rewritten from scratch anyway. So why bother starting it sooner? At least in my writing process, a story doesn't come in pieces that can simply be lined up next to one another. It all has to happen together. You can't make soup by cooking all the ingredients separately and then combining them right before you're ready to eat. They've all got to simmer in the same pot.

That's not to say writing in sections or using an outline can't be a useful way to organize a story chunk by chunk. But, for me, if I'm waiting on some key information, I'm usually better off reading the paper, working on other projects, checking e-mail or using pieces of tape to fish the dust out of my keyboard clump by clump (tedious but sooooo satisfying) -- doing anything but writing, until the last piece comes in.