Writing with scissors and tape

Today was a good reminder to me of my own childhood training as a writer. I was taught the sunflower approach to paper organization: a series of notecards arrayed in a lovely pattern surrounding my seat on the floor. Ah, beauty. At the center, I sat with the thesis. Topics ran along each of the outward-bending rays. I could sort the order within each line of cards before picking them up to move to the typewriter. What emerged was (supposedly) a logical progression of ideas – happily generated by the simple act of sorting.

You would think in these days of computer-assisted writing practices that I would have outgrown such practices, but at heart, I’m a geographical thinker. I like to put things into spaces where they belong. This piece belongs on THAT side of the table. (Yes, I’m older now; I sometimes use a table and chair instead of sitting for hours on the floor. Not without some regret.)

I have learned to work faster in at least some ways. I come at that whole “gathering of information” with a different set of tools – notes in files, especially spreadsheets (see my notes on managing bibliography by spreadsheet); rough drafts on computer with comments in the margins; slidedecks and tables for managing visual information, and so on. I sometimes write (in ink) on cards the size of business cards, but not the 3x5 card, my once-upon-a-time most favorite tool. In other words, my information comes in various sizes and textures, and you would think that I’d just plug each bit into a proper outline and move on.

But no, that doesn’t fit with how my brain works. No, I like to use externalities to represent the internalities of my thinking. Which brings me to this morning.

I have a continuity draft of a collaborative article – the complete article, with footnotes, and I am fairly sure that I agree with our conclusions. (Always a positive step.) The argument, however, tended to spin from idea to idea since they all intersect with one another. Clarity? Missing in action! Bits of detail would pop up in one part of the discussion, and we’d have to mention them again over there. Bah. I’ve read plenty of articles like that, but would prefer not to inflict one of my own on the reading public.

To be honest, I put two afternoons into trying to tackle our edits in a mature scholarly way – with comment boxes and line edits. I’ve had dental surgery that was more fun.

So I gave into my impulses, pulled out the coffee pot, and hefted my lovely kitchen scissors. I took our draft and cut it into strips. Each sentence or two became a “thing,” and the “things” moved around the table. I got to about page four and realized that I actually could start seeing a shape to it.

I grabbed some of those business-card blanks and started jotting notes. Again, it was one note per card, so those could join the fray, moving hither and thither. I looked. I pondered. And then I grabbed my computer and wrote up the hook paragraph. It *resembles* the first paragraph that we’d had in the rough draft, but it gets at the content with a different tone and a clearer purpose.

I celebrated this early-morning productivity with a social-media toot, as one does, and then took my walk and tended to the day’s weeding.

In the second sit-down of the day, I moved a bunch of papers around. The completed bits went face down on the table, and then moved down to the bench. I sorted out content areas and used my lovely blue felt-tip pen to write cards about our findings. What were key topics? What caught my eye? What phrases stuck in my memory? This was largely an “away from the draft” process – my goal was to understand what my morning brain thought was most important about what we’d done. 

I think this kind of process is important. They say the devil’s in the details, but I wanted to know the choreography of the paper, not its flutter of words and details. For instance, a large chunk of the paper was represented by the word “Chart.” Right? I know exactly what content that covers, and what it does for the paper. I didn’t need to workshop its words, or even its paragraphs. I just wanted to know where in the paper it needed to emerge for the reader’s attention.

So I played a weird kind of scholarly solitaire, moving this strip onto that card, and shuffling those three cards into a different order, and looking through the remnants for that fact that was cool but didn’t belong but could illuminate this bit over here. I didn’t do the whole paper – like I said, I’d stopped cutting strips around the end of page 4. But I felt like this gave me control over the broad outlines of what we were doing.

At this point, I did two things. First, I made a list in an open document about what points I thought were mission critical, in the order in which I’d decided they probably should go. Now if a windstorm came up and blew through my open screen door and messed up my beautiful collage – which wasn’t yet taped down! – I would still have a record of the morning’s work.

Next, I wrote the framing paragraph. So and so has done this; that other person added that. We build on this by doing these things. Strategically, this paragraph defines the state of the scholarly conversation and the gap we are filling. Plus, it provides a bit of a road-map to what is about to follow. I didn’t polish this paragraph – I still have reminders like INSERT SCHOLAR K and QUOTE / RESPOND as placeholders. (The shouty caps are important. You never want to leave those reminders in a draft at the moment of submission!) But the reminders are just pointers to details, and most of that information already exists in extractable form in the continuity draft. That kind of cut-and-paste can come later. The goal for the day was simply to start creating the pathway for the reader – to onboard them to what they’re about to read.

And then it was time to turn to other things, the regular meetings and emails and urgent questions from students that are to Monday what peaceful murmurs are to hiking. True, I’d rather be hiking, but as Mondays go, I’d call it a success.

The take-away? Returning to your writing roots can be a remarkably soothing way to break through a paper-writing hurdle. As they say, writing is hard. The trick I used this morning was to avoid “writing” by reframing it as a slicing-and-sorting task. I *like* slicing and sorting. It was a pleasant way to get 777 words up and on their way. Of course, my co-author will need to sign on. But I think she’ll like it. After all, clarity counts!

And, at the end of the day (or at least the end of the morning), it turns out that scissors and tape weren’t just tools for rearranging text, but for restoring perspective. My humble kitchen tools turn out to be a tangible reminder that clarity in writing often begins with clarity in thought.

How To Jump-Start a Scholarly Article: The Plan

Elements of article planning: beginning stages

 

I’m newly collaborating with a colleague and it’s made me hyper aware of my own system of article writing. We all have quirky shortcuts, and writing is ALWAYS a case of “you do you” (and I do mean that in the nicest way possible: you really should follow the thing that works for you as a writer!). But I also love hearing how other people approach things, so thought I might usefully share my own standard ramp-up.

First, of course, is the good idea or the new data point. Something important enough to be written up, something bright and shiny, something interesting enough to pause a colleague in the hallway and talk about it. (Brainstorming ideas is a separate process, and not the subject of today’s post.)

And then, it’s time to do something with it, and that’s where we begin.

WHERE TO TARGET:

First, I figure out where I might like to write about it. I am a bonafide nerd; I keep a spreadsheet of possible venues, categorized by area. Oooo, this is medieval. No, it’s musicological. Gee, I should write for the regional history crowd. This one is definitely monastic. Whatever it is, there’s an outlet for that. (Fun fact, I also scrutinize my own article bibliographies for venues that might be a possible future locale where my words might reside. Where do my so-interesting colleagues publish? Write that place down!)

So, I generally try to envision two or three different journals where this future “thing” might go. That will be shaped by style, by content, by my current proclivity for footnotes, and by the capacity to write mere words, or to include images/tables/figures, depending on my mood and on the nature of the bright idea.

I then sit with recent issues of each, getting a sense for what the current editor/editorial team seems to like. From that, I usually find a clear target, the place I want to publish this bright shiny thing. First task in writing is always to know your audience. Done!

HOW TO START:

Starting the writing is hard, I know. So, shortcuts help. I use that “sit with the journal” time to get a sense of the shape of articles from that journal. 

• How many intro paragraphs?
• Does the article use sub-headers or continuous narrative?
• How much space devoted to the author’s method and how detailed does it get?
• How many “big sections” are typically in the main body?
• How many images / tables / figures are there?
• What kind of conclusion does it use, and how “big picture” does it get?
• What’s the total word count for each article?
• How many sources are cited? Is this one of those tour-de-force places demonstrating complete bibliographic control, or is it more “here are a bunch of related books”? I have sometimes switched target journal based on those practices. Ahem.

I make a little table from 3 to 5 of the recent articles, and I also use that time to capture the citation conventions (and translation habits) that are typical. Yes, I know that most journals have a style guide for authors, but I am here to tell you that they are … uneven … in their level of detail.

Why do all that work on topics unrelated to my bright shiny thing? Because these become your formulaic guide to how to approach your own writing.

BUILDING THE (BROAD, VERY BROAD) OUTLINE

For me, the next step is building my own article’s broad outline – capture the content in 5 to 7 big strokes, and distribute the number of paragraphs according to the shape you want it to have. Is there a climax to the article? A place where that treasured story needs to go?

Here’s where math comes in. My standard default article length is around 35 paragraphs, though my most recent article was actually 52 paragraphs after revisions, so, yeah. Choose a number somewhere between 30 and 60 paragraphs – those tables you built will help.

Of those 35 paragraphs, I figure I’ll spend about 3 paragraphs for the intro and 3 to 5 for the conclusion. Method might fall in intro or in main body, depending on my thinking and on the habits of the journal. We’re in the humanities; there is no one journalistic formula.

Then 25 to 28 “main body” paragraphs gives me space for about three categories of supporting data.  What are they? I try to come up with provisional sub-headers, since that will shape content disposition.

As a frame of reference, that collaborative article that got me thinking about this? We have 6 “content points” identified, one of which has 4 subtopics. We’ll do more extensive outlining next week, but I already feel good about where this is going.

This is also a good moment to just free associate. Do I already know of subtopics? Are there authors I should cite? Can I bullet point any of this? Whatever you have an answer to, and this is important, WRITE IT DOWN. At this point, my “progress” might look like a bullet-point list, or a mind map, or a scrawled flowchart, or several pages of word-doodles in my notebook. But it’s a first-round “capture” of what I think I might be doing.

BUILDING THE BIBLIOGRAPHY

Then comes my favorite part: building out my reading list. I do love to go trolling through the literature. I want one of those, and one of those, and three of those… My habit is to have bibliography in at least two and maybe three areas.

One is the content area, obviously, and that often includes going through my old bibliographic lists. Is this a case of “go deep” on the monastic element? The musical one? The “cool thinking about contemporary topics using the past as a case study”? The list of citations will vary depending on the answer to that question.

But the part that’s the most fun is the “how could I approach this topic” reading. There’s a whole set of topic-adjacent literature to draw on, some from people whose work I know, and others who are new to me. That’s the real permissive joy of scholarship: the adding something new to one’s own perspective.

What that looks like for me is usually thinking about one of two things: methods that match, but content that differs, or content that’s similar but spaces or times that are different. For the former, it’s reading about community music – a scholarship largely focused on 20th/21st century musicking experiences – and then applying it to 15th century Vorarlberg. For the latter, it’s reading about chaplains in England and Bavaria in order to write about chaplains in Bregenz. (Austrian-focused chaplain lit would already be in my own content area.)

This “breadth” gives me a focus for reading. My lists of “new lit” typically run from 30 to 90 items for an article, though the handbook article I wrote recently wound up at 125 items or so. (Yikes!) 

I would like to take this moment to thank the staff of the Interlibrary Loan Office without whom life would be much much much more complicated. You make what we do possible.

Not all of these articles and book chapters are going to be in the bibliography, obviously, but it gives me a chance to poke at the shape of the field. I’ll cruise through them at the rate of about 10 articles a week. Some just get the “AIC treatment” – Abstract, Introduction, Conclusion, and a bit of “what is this doing” by flipping through the middle sections of the article. Others I read fully. Still others get extensive notes and make it into my everything notebook. But all of them bring me joy. (Except that one. That one was terrible. That gives me an excuse to grump about the state of scholarship. Grump grump grump. Which brings me a bit of joy. Plus, I now get to DELIBERATELY omit it from my bibliography.)

Once I’m into reading, I’m into writing. And with an outline in hand and a bunch of notes from my reading, I’m no longer facing the proverbial “scary blank page” that causes me angst. (Note: if you came here hoping for actual writing strategies, you might look at my discussions of  strategies to avoid writer's block or strategies to organize writing tasks so you'll actually do them.)

And that, friends, is how I get started with an article. Figure out the “where,” and how it does its business; map out a high-level overview of this current project, and generate the bibliography to support that work. Then it's time to go play with your material and do more formal writing. GOOD LUCK!