writing & pre-writing.

it was a week or so ago when i thought to start a draft of a research paper. for those loyal readers out there, yes: it's that one -- the one that i've been delaying and feeling uneasy about. however, now is the time to write, if not sooner.

so i'm following two main principles: the first is some advice i remembered -- but i forget who told it to me; it might have even been a comment on an old blog post -- and i've decided to stick to the format of the talk i gave on that topic, one year ago. if anything, it does give me an outline to begin my writing.

i've also decided to "start from scratch," so to speak: in the first section, titled "Introduction" there is a statement of a theorem from 1966, which motivates the work. in the second section, there is a statement of a new version of that theorem, and then come the preparations and definitions, the details and techniques.

there's much to flesh out, and even when i was preparing the talk, it had been a year since i did that research. now it's coming back with a vengeful, vengeful bite.

i made it to 2 pages of AMS-style LaTeX before i realised that i couldn't remember it all, and then remembered how intricate the argument was.

(to clarify, i'm not sounding my own horn; many of the ideas can be attributed to f. gehring, a rather clever and able man. only a few results are new.)

so now i'm pre-writing: trying to make sense of my notes, remembering why something is true, detecting if what i thought, two years ago, was really a proof. you see, when you've made one error which cost you a few theorems, you begin to fear errors .. everywhere.

at some point .. maybe tomorrow, i'll return to LaTeX again. but now i have to redo the maths that i should have done well when i was first doing them!