Silences And Sounds: From Draft to Done

Wednesday, October 8, 2025

From Draft to Done

Many writers talk about the "ugly draft." I'm here with images to confirm that drafts can, indeed, be ugly! Three months ago, this was the article, in its summative glory (?):

As you can see, I was working (as per usual) in a bound book. Not that I didn't have about 17 different computer files going. And a kindle with highlights. And a handwritten table a few pages before. And about 20 pages of hand-written notes on the articles I'd read. And a couple of other brainstorms.

But when push came to shove, this was the set of pages that I'd keep coming back to:

In orange on the left is the lit review. Well, not its formal version, but the ideas and the people I wanted to engage with, and, numerically, the order I decided to take them. Yeah, some midstream figure-it-out happened: 1.7 became 1.7a and 1.7b, and to be honest, 1.1 to 1.3 are on the previous page in the notebook. But the bulk of the content and the ordering got worked out, first by throwing stuff on the page, and then working with what order and what flow of ideas needed to happen.

Down at the bottom on the right is the outline of the method. That was the work that reminded me what I was covering and why. This section is the part that didn't really make it into the final paper, but it drove its direction. For me, the emphasis on close reading and the content of the prayers in question was something I reviewed iteratively -- first (A), about these prayers, first as sensorial compilations, then (A1) as their place in the space to which women had access, and finally (A2) in dialogue with the literature on performative reading. By having the method written out in front of me, I held myself accountable to the themes I was engaging.

The last bit, in yellow on the top right, is the part I originally thought this notebook opening was going to cover: it was my list of "emo words," the emotional and affective vocabulary that leapt out from my readings of these poems. This became a table in the article. Doing that word-count was the moment at which I knew where the article was headed.

In my own head, this article follows a format similar to the one I teach my students:

It starts with the question of scholarly conversation, moves through several types of evidence, including a nerd table in section three, and concludes with an engagement with the question of what this all means. I've spoken to these kinds of formulas here and here, so this is my contribution on "how it applies in real life."

There were, as always, important edits that came between the bare-bones outline and submitted draft, and even more edits with the assistance of the anonymous readers (thank you, kind souls -- and thanks too for the speed of turn-around!). Edits and page proofs all went smoothly; this was a project that found its groove and kept to it.

And so, here it is, the published article!

From idea to delivery, this project was the fastest I have ever worked. But the cribs and habits that I've developed facilitated the careful integration into the literature, the original and -- perhaps quirky? -- assessment of what's going on in these prayers, and the big takeaway that is the whole point of writing such things.

This morning, I've written my "thank-you's." a part of my process that I require of myself before moving an article to the done and delivered stack. I *always* thank the library, and this time had several scholars whose "big ideas" informed my own; acknowledging those debts is a citation practice, but it also makes a nice email exchange. Plus, I shared the citation to professional colleagues -- and to family, of course.

And then I closed out the files, took the "AA" header off the front of the file folder name that kept it at the top of the search stack, moved the line from the works-in-progress sheet to the one of projects that are done. And then I wandered through my kitchen, singing "done, done done done DONE!"

The citation to the finished project:

Cyrus, Cynthia J. 2025. "Praying Before the Image of Mary: Nuns’ Prayerbooks and the Mapping of Sacred Space" Religions 16, no. 10: 1277. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16101277