tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10721624.post200373188223897259..comments2023-10-30T12:26:15.822+01:00Comments on Research as a Second Language: The Act of WritingThomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858865501469168339noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10721624.post-51720376985781411172012-11-02T12:46:00.768+01:002012-11-02T12:46:00.768+01:00Thanks, this is helpful. And I should say that - g...Thanks, this is helpful. And I should say that - given the poles of a strict version of your approach and the kind of disappearance down rabbit holes that I'm sure we've all experienced when trying to write without planning, I would (and in fact do) err much more toward the first.<br /><br />"You want to be writing something you didn't just learn, but something that has been comfortably part of what you know for some time." I could still get better at this - philosophers, I think, can be prone to ignoring this worry.<br /><br />I wish I had privileged 1st-person access to everything I'm supposed to.<br /><br />Helpful exchange - thank you.fjbhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02632401949893110046noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10721624.post-52801008041141752572012-11-02T08:28:02.651+01:002012-11-02T08:28:02.651+01:00Thanks for the example.
First, let me say that I ...Thanks for the example.<br /><br />First, let me say that I never say you should beat yourself up over not succeeding at writing the paragraph you set out to write in any particular 27-minute session. I'll beat you up if you don't sit down and actually work on it, but I understand that success in any given act of writing is always only partial.<br /><br />I like this idea of accurate "whatting". In fact, the point is not to know what you will write so much as <i>that</i> you will write <i>this</i> paragraph (and not some other paragraph). You have privileged, first-person authority about this, by the way, because it's more of a decision or act of willing than a form of empirical knowledge.<br /><br />(An aside: I once wanted to bring Deleuze and Russell together around a notion of "territorial thissing".)<br /><br />So infallibility is not necessary. Nor is it always necessary to be precise in your "whatting" <i>ahead of time</i>. My approach just says don't come up with some new what-to-write <i>in the act</i>. Come up with it before <i>or after</i>, just not during the 27-minutes in which you've committed yourself to one "what" and not another.<br /><br />Then, when your writing is finished for the day, make a list of the other things you now want to say. And write them down in the same way.<br /><br />The reason for this is that you want to write down things that are present to you, in your mind, clearly and distinctly, and relatively unchangingly, for at least half a day. You want to be writing something you didn't just learn, but something that has been comfortably part of what you know for some time. You want to write down ideas that aren't still taking shape, i.e., changing.<br /><br />Or, at the very least, you want to see how changeable they are by taking a firm, steady, unchanging look at them for 27-minutes. Ask them to stay put and see how they react.Thomashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04858865501469168339noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10721624.post-19902562914247021342012-11-02T05:12:36.765+01:002012-11-02T05:12:36.765+01:00The most obvious cases I can think of would be whe...The most obvious cases I can think of would be when responding to an objection require more elaboration than one anticipated in order to be either persuasive, intellectually honest, or both; explication of and selection among multiple interpretations of a passage (whether or not one is objecting to it) might be the genus of which this is a species. In some such cases, the "what" you might have thought (the night before) could be covered in one paragraph might require (let's say) two - or a long one, by your preferred 200 wd/6 sentence unit. I can guess one thing you might say to this: you aren't "whatting" precisely enough; you should have thought about how this bit of the paper is going to go to a sufficiently granular degree to have seen ahead of time that you would have to plan two paragraphs (and corresponding 27-min sessions). One might get better, with practice and experience, at predicting some of this; but I doubt that one could become infallible. You can't be certain that you've gotten everything of this kind (i.e., proportion, how much prose to take to make certain points well) right before you start writing, so I don't see what is gained by beating oneself up for getting it wrong -- or just for not having strictly followed the idea process - on occasion. (And you're right, the fact that I'm mainly concerned with certain kinds of philosophical article determines some of my worries.)fjbhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02632401949893110046noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10721624.post-51288067534527779702012-10-29T18:26:57.329+01:002012-10-29T18:26:57.329+01:00Yes, I was raised as a philosopher too. And I thin...Yes, I was raised as a philosopher too. And I think philosophers are probably the hardest people to sell this approach to because they take objections to be so integral to the formation of their statements.<br /><br />But give me an example. What claim might you plan the night before and then not know "what to say about" until you start writing because what you now want to say involves dealing with objections? Why is dealing with objections not just the "how" in the case of particular kinds of claims (i.e., particularly objectionable or controversial ones)?<br />Thomashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04858865501469168339noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10721624.post-61961446585604161842012-10-29T12:34:09.601+01:002012-10-29T12:34:09.601+01:00I see the what/how distinction, of course, but it&...I see the what/how distinction, of course, but it's clearer some times than others. I'm a philosopher, so the case of coming up with and responding to objections comes to mind - it's hard to anticipate all that except in the course of expressing your arguments. I'm not trying to make some big trouble for your system - I just think this point has some play in it.fjbhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02632401949893110046noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10721624.post-42123339743487564972012-10-29T08:23:25.592+01:002012-10-29T08:23:25.592+01:00@fjb: I think I'd distinguish between the ques...@fjb: I think I'd distinguish between the question of <i>what</i> you're going to say and <i>how</i> you're going to say it.<br /><br />Last night, I decided to write about <a href="http://secondlanguage.blogspot.dk/2012/10/support-your-local-scholar.html" rel="nofollow">that James Garner</a> movie. And I even decided to treat myself to watching the whole movie, not just the relevant scene. I knew the night before, then, that I was going to say that "The writing space is like Garner's prison cell in <i>Support Your Local Sheriff</i>." Since I had just seen the movie, and had been telling (at least a version of) the story in my seminars, I was confident that I could compose a post about it in 30 minutes. Then, a 6:30 this morning I sat down and <i>acted</i>.<br /><br />Now, "in the act" I did of course come up with some ideas that I couldn't have predicted in any detail last night. And some of them didn't even make it into the post. But there's another post tomorrow where they might be useful. My only point is that I stuck to the task of saying <i>what</i> I had decided to say, and I acted specifically to solve the problem of <i>how</i> to say it, for those 27 minutes. I didn't interrupt this task with new questions about what I wanted to say.Thomashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04858865501469168339noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10721624.post-20011467564944704382012-10-29T05:11:21.341+01:002012-10-29T05:11:21.341+01:00fjb - I first invented this for my dissertation an...fjb - I first invented this for my dissertation and I was not thinking in terms of time but words: 250 words 6 days a week for a total of 1500 words a week. This took more than 27 minutes but not terribly much more, i.e. it could be done in half a morning and that did include some musing and looking things up.<br /><br />But, basically, the theory was, when one stopped writing one knew what the next section had to say. So then, there was the rest of the day and the night, while asleep, to have the issue in mind and perhaps look up some more things about it, so that when one came back the next day to write 250 more words, one knew at that point what one wanted to get down.<br /><br />I later moved to 30 minute blocks because of the job I had, where I didn't have as much as half a morning uninterrupted, so I cut back in terms of goals from a page to a paragraph. But in a sense, when you are writing every day you are never not writing; you are just relaxed because you have actually completed something, moved forward, each morning or each 24 hour period; this enables you (or me, at least) to be composing ideas while doing other things and then just sit down for 1/2 hour and write them out.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10721624.post-63760170459674586782012-10-29T04:17:02.815+01:002012-10-29T04:17:02.815+01:00I have no problem with the structural rigidity of ...I have no problem with the structural rigidity of the task, but (since it's a rare day when I don't find your advice helpful) I have to ask: if "there is no time to discover what you want to say" while writing, when do you see that happening. I can't think of anything I've completed and published that didn't include some ideas generated "in the act."fjbhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02632401949893110046noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10721624.post-38015758808553167582012-10-28T21:44:22.817+01:002012-10-28T21:44:22.817+01:00Thanks for the encouragement (and the plugs on you...Thanks for the encouragement (and the plugs on your blog). Yes, it's strange that in the current academic culture valuing disciplined, careful work is almost a counter-culture. Your return to it is heartening to hear about.Thomashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04858865501469168339noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10721624.post-23113590484030234772012-10-28T17:06:11.097+01:002012-10-28T17:06:11.097+01:00This is a fantastic post and truly true. And such...This is a fantastic post and truly true. And such a relief.<br /><br />I did well in school and in 4 years of an assistant professorship working this way, until people with fancier degrees and more confidence than I had convinced me otherwise. I have done poorly on research since and only recently decided to get back to this. It is so pleasant to find someone else thinks I was right all along.Zhttp://profacero.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.com