Incremental writing: Problem of schooling

This text is part of: "I would never send my kids to school" by Piotr Wozniak (2017)

Problem of Schooling was written using a technique called incremental writing. All texts were compiled and organized using SuperMemo 17 for Windows.

Here is the outline of the process:

• all ideas and short texts are written as separate topics in SuperMemo
• those topics are subject to review and creative elaboration in incremental reading
• the structure of the book is organized using the knowledge tree (Contents) in SuperMemo
• the process begins with the creative phase in which ideas are written down, elaborated, reviewed, reshuffled, etc.
• the process ends with the consolidation phase when ideas are combined into sections and then chapters

Creative and consolidation phases in incremental writing

Figure: Incremental writing begins with an ascending creative phase that increases the count of elements, and ends with a descending consolidation phase, in which notes are combined into longer texts. In the example, the ideas for a book peak in 5 months of creative elaborations, only to consolidate into a 180-chapter Problem of Schooling, 10 months later