After nearly two weeks of reading – specifically revisiting known material and finding some new information, I’ve probably got enough to start planning out a structure to the article.
In fact, I paused on day 6 (after the dishwasher, and the birds) to write a brief outline. That held yesterday as I was dipping more deeply into the translation, but this morning as I’ve worked on it, it’s clear that I need to tweak it. Not a huge amount, I was on the right track, but just a bit.
The shift has been from being able to explain what my argument needs to achieve, to how I’m going to make it.
I find that increasingly tightening the focus like this is crucial to my writing. I find it hard to work out what to include and what to leave out. Any clarity I can get on the boundaries of what I’ll actually cover is really important.
There’s usually a pattern to what’s happening which I’m learning to recognise. Until this point, as I’ve been reading, I’ve been taking in information: simply capturing, noting, storing, understanding. Now, as I read something I find myself starting to think whether I’ll include it, or how I might present that information in a narrative. As I’m making notes, I’m starting to add comments like “use this at the beginning when justifying X”, or “bring this in as a way to soften Y”.
I’m too full of information now, and my brain is too tired to try working up a structure now – I’d only get frustrated and I might even lose the thread and throw myself into a muddle. But I think (particularly after the weekend’s given me time to digest it) Monday’s first job is going to be preparing a more-or-less final structure including the main narrative and the argument (which will almost certainly get tweaked again, but) which I can then start to populate next week, before taking a week off the week after.
The Garage of Books 