hanneblank (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} hanneblank) wrote,@ 2005-08-02 11:14:00 |
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As I type, I am printing out the 92-page resource/reference document I've compiled for myself for the purpose of writing the last chapter and the epilogue of the virginity book. Mind you, this 92-page research document is for a chapter which I am hoping to keep down to a relatively slender 75 pages or so, but no matter: this is how I have learned that I must do things as an historian-who-writes-books. The biggest and most important step is not just gathering the information, which is its own job, but digesting it to the point where I know roughly how the chapter needs to be structured, and then sifting through all the information I've gathered and digested and making my own personalized reference document containing all the bits of it that I feel I am in fact likely to use when I write.
The writing, when I finally get there, feels a bit like an afterthought. It's definitely anticlimactic. I've already had the thrill of discovery in the research phase, the plodding of coping with other people's statistics, the agony of fumbling toward synthesis (and the occasional joy of intellectual breakthroughs along the way), the optimistic pleasure of outlining, and the overwhelmed monotony of sifting back through all the research to transcribe and compile page upon page of direct quotations from the literature I've been reading. Writing it down, after all that, is a strange process. Throughout it, I must remind myself repeatedly that no, everyone in the world does not know all this stuff, that no, this is not a redundant exercise, it's just that I've been immersed in it 12 hours or more a day, every day, for the past N-number of weeks and after eating, drinking, and breathing it for that long it rather makes sense that I assume it's all old hat.
This afternoon I've got to go look at a few very last-minute resources at the Johns Hopkins libraries -- there may be one more trip, over to the Institute for the History of Medicine libraries, partway through the trip just to check on a few things, but I'm not sure if I'll need it or not. And then?
Well, then, to quote The Boss, and furthermore to cite the very song I'll be quoting from about 3/7 of the way through this last chapter,
"...my car's out back if you're ready to take that long walk
From your front porch to my front seat
The door's open but the ride ain't free..."
-- Hanne
The writing, when I finally get there, feels a bit like an afterthought. It's definitely anticlimactic. I've already had the thrill of discovery in the research phase, the plodding of coping with other people's statistics, the agony of fumbling toward synthesis (and the occasional joy of intellectual breakthroughs along the way), the optimistic pleasure of outlining, and the overwhelmed monotony of sifting back through all the research to transcribe and compile page upon page of direct quotations from the literature I've been reading. Writing it down, after all that, is a strange process. Throughout it, I must remind myself repeatedly that no, everyone in the world does not know all this stuff, that no, this is not a redundant exercise, it's just that I've been immersed in it 12 hours or more a day, every day, for the past N-number of weeks and after eating, drinking, and breathing it for that long it rather makes sense that I assume it's all old hat.
This afternoon I've got to go look at a few very last-minute resources at the Johns Hopkins libraries -- there may be one more trip, over to the Institute for the History of Medicine libraries, partway through the trip just to check on a few things, but I'm not sure if I'll need it or not. And then?
Well, then, to quote The Boss, and furthermore to cite the very song I'll be quoting from about 3/7 of the way through this last chapter,
"...my car's out back if you're ready to take that long walk
From your front porch to my front seat
The door's open but the ride ain't free..."
-- Hanne
