How to Write an Article in Six Days (day 1)

 You will have already done research. You will have expertise on your topic. You will not research and write your article in six days, but devote that number of days merely to the writing of it. You will know what sources you will consult (more or less), the ideas you want to present. You will have thought about writing the article on "day zero," before day 1 of the process. Of course, you might discover new ideas, or new ways phrasing things, in the process of writing, but essentially you will know what you want to say. You might have to look up things to tie up lose ends, but you won't discover fundamentally new things. 

(You will already have learned how to write. You will not learn how to write in one day and then write the article in the remaining five days. You will have been a scholar for some amount of time before the process begins. If you were to learn to play a piece on the piano in six you will have already learned to read music and to play other pieces on the piano.) 

The future perfect part of the process is over, what you "will have done." On day 1, you will write the title in a Word document. Do all the necessary formatting. For example, I like to erase the "footnote separation notice" that is not to my liking. I put the "works cited" with a hanging indent.   

Write some phrases and sentences in the document that you know you will include: "folkloric capital." "economies of prestige." "the cultural history of Lorca's American reception."  Do some brainstorming until you have about 100 words in your word count. 

You will also have thought about the purpose of the article (sorry, more future perfect!).  Why are you writing it? Where will you publish it? You have to have an intention here. It could be as simple as "I need to write a paper for Professor Mayhew's class).  In my case, I will present this paper at the Humanities Center in Sept.  

You will also have cleared some time. The first day requires several hours of work.  In my case I am starting on a Sunday. 

{Now go off and do something else. Play piano or wash the dishes.  I will be here when you get back.}

Now you realize that you have several ideas in mind that you can jot down quickly without too much effort. You can write parts of several paragraphs, using phrasing that you might have used to talk about your ideas in other contexts.  By know you will have about 300 words. Now copy and paste some items into your bibliography, from one of your bibliography files.  That will give your 400 words.  

Time for some coffee!  It is late afternoon by now.  

Come back to your document. Finish some sentences or paragraphs. Do some rewording.  You don't have to commit to a thesis statement yet, if you don't quite know what it is going to be.  Keep chipping away that the word count.  By now it is about 600-700 words.  Don't worry about exact wordings of things. You want to have some stylistic vigor without the polish, at this stage. You can write: "The combination of folkloric capital and literary prestige forms a potent cocktail, a 'double whammy' difficult to resist." Or "the cretinous insistence on 'authenticity.'" You can always tame it down later.  Maybe you've forgotten how to spell "synecdoche," as happened to me today.  It doesn't really matter on the first day.  

Keep doing this until you have a word count of about 900-1,100 words. This will be easy because you are writing from your own expertise and not worrying yet about the exact phrasing of everything. Don't overdo it the first day, but make sure you put in some considerable effort to "jump start" the process.  

NEXT: Day 2.