Index, floundering whilst creating an (see also --> Maintaining Sanity, Self-Doubt)

["Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

Jennifer Carey has <<... the great joy of creating my first index... The
document is in Word, though I haven't started the actual indexing within the
doc yet. Right now I'm just listing all the possible combinations I can come
up with in a big table.  I just feel like I'm missing something...>>

What you're missing is that you should be creating the index as you read
through the document, not independently. Although keeping track of the
keywords you're using in a separate document can certainly help you be
consistent, my experience suggests that this simply adds a long, tedious
step to the indexing. Indexing is something that's better to do in a single
pass, without too many distractions by other tasks; once the index is
complete, you can make it consistent and can remove redundancies during the
editing phase. If you're having trouble with consistency, periodically get
Word to create the index for you, and use that as a quick reference tool.
(This is the automatic way of doing what you've been doing manually thus
far.)

One thing that might help would be to create a mini-checklist that you
rigorously apply to each topic until you've internalized the process and can
do it by reflex. For example, you might require yourself to: use 1 main
keyword (details: noun vs. verb? singular vs. plural?) with at least 2
synonyms, and include at least 1 cross-reference. More precisely, your goal
would  be to _try_ to meet these checklist items; some topics won't require
extensive synonyms, whereas others won't require cross-refs. The goal is to
_ponder_ each checklist item to see whether it applies and if so, to do
something about it.

<<my topic list to-date seems simultaneously excessive and incomplete.>>

Because to some extent, you're divorcing the indexing process from the
reading and analyzing process. Doing both at the same time will almost
certainly make the job go more smoothly; you'll have less "excessive"
(because you won't be creating keywords "on spec", in case they're needed)
and you'll have less incompleteness because you'll be analyzing each
paragraph (or topic) in terms of whether it needs a keyword and if so, which
one to use.

<<I'd also be interested to know the average length of your attention span
while performing this task>>

Not relevant. This will vary enormously between people and, for each person,
between days. I'd be surprised if professional indexers can't stick to the
job ca. 8 hours per day, but that's not a realistic target for you and me.
The trick is to know your own habits, and work around them. For instance, I
have a relatively short attention span when I'm not editing (my primary
work), and fight that by taking regular e-mail breaks*. You may find that
you're the same, or that you simply need to tie yourself to the computer and
force yourself to stick to the task. Experiment and see what works!

*As any techwr-l subscriber could probably guess. <g>

--Geoff Hart, FERIC, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
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