My biggest weakness as a scholar is a lack of organization in my citations. So for the new project that is going to be one of my strong points. I'm going to put in all the citations and bibliography as I go along, rather than fixing it at all at the end, and sometimes doing so imperfectly.
The reason for this is because I work fast, in order to write down all my ideas, so I cannot be bothered to stop and cite something. This is obviously the wrong way of doing things, and I have no excuse except that I can sometimes get a way with it a bit.
Now I will see bibliography as the hard part, and put in my work there. That will make the writing all that much easier.
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6 comments:
Another one for my side. Before I destroyed my working methods, I did this. It improved thought and composition, too. It meant working a bit slower, but saved time at the end, obviously.
I'm sure all serious scholars do this except me. But maybe they have other weaknesses I don't have?
Actually, I think most don't do it. I kept being told I was weird to do it and that it was impractical and so on. Now one of my big impediments in life is losing references, or not working them in in the right way. I hate not doing them as I go the way I hate so-called free writing.
That makes me feel better about being a slob, I guess. If you were told you were weird maybe you had a weird experience with mentors, not having good ones, etc...
I don't think I've had any mentors, just the random professor making comments on writing profess, and then the random person saying things when I was trying to write a book I didn't believe in in an impossible situation. But I do know this is a very standard recommendation: don't do references, just write. This is all part of the write a bad first draft mentality, though.
*process, not profess
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