In celebration of finishing my CTC paper, I present some musings on the process of paper writing.
Writing papers is the delight and bane of my academic existence. I love reading books and summarizing content, organizing ideas and making a logical argument, saying things with just the right word and producing an elegant, well-crafted paper that is interesting, accessible and edifying.
This, perhaps is my problem. When I'm in the midst of researching or writing and really excited, this all just flows and it's exhilarating to do. But reaching that threshold and pushing through seems to take me a long time, partially because objectively, it's a pretty daunting task to reach the standard I set for myself. So many things need to happen and there are so many ways to go wrong. Hardly a relaxing process.
That said I have observed several things about my own process of writing papers:
- I always go for primary sources if possible. They're really helpful.
- One of the benefits of computers is being able to "write" fast. So I take down every single quote that I think might be relevant to my topic. Then they're all gathered into one document, already typed up, and if I need direction, easy to refer to.
- This one is thanks to Regent: start with a good research question. Especially for this last paper, it's done wonders for keeping me on track. Every time I got lost in my ideas and asked "what am DOING," my question pointed me back in the right direction.
- I very rarely worry about the length of papers because I've developed a knack for picking topics that are the "right size."
- I have not yet mastered using outlines effectively--I need to just start writing and that process clarifies my ideas (or at least shows where they're muddled).
- Finally, and this has been the hardest thing to accept about paper-writing and the major reason I have such trouble with procrastination: my method of paper-writing is inherently inefficient and I haven't found any way around that. I will read books with information I don't use. I will redefine my thesis twelve times. I will write nearly three full drafts worth of stuff before I have my ideas under control and can bash out the final version. Not only that, but I have to write out the final version by hand--typing just doesn't work.
Well, that was fun. Now I need to clean up the wreckage that always follows paper writing--gather up all the loose papers and put them away, put library books in a bag to be returned, wash dishes...
