For those of you who noticed, I've been deep, deep underground. Between in-laws raiding our small apartment for the inauguration, the flu, writing anxieties, and what has been the worst job market in decades (over half the jobs I applied to were canceled outright), I've been less than productive. The gods have smiled, however, and I've been given an office all to myself at Georgetown were I've been camping out and writing every day.
But there still seems to be too little result for so much work, and I've been forced to reevaluate my work-style. Which brings me to this post: my recent epiphany on note taking.
I wrote some time ago about how I use the DevonThink database to capture all my notes from primary and secondary material. Basically I've been setting up a document for each thing I read, write in quotes and responses as I go, and maybe tag a few words/notes to myself on where these my be useful. After amassing almost three hundred pages/100,000 words of this crap, I was confronted with the fact that I haven't been able to move this material to actual writing. For a while I assumed I was too dumb and not qualified to write this dissertation - hence my recent silence. But after re-reading some books on writing, I realized my whole approach to note-taking was flawed.
Many guide-books build off the old model of using 3x5 cards. They suggest you record only ONE piece of information per card, and on that card perhaps write a response and a few keywords. The keywords component is key (pardon the pun), and the part I was lacking. This way you can easily sort out your notes into categories relevant to YOUR project, not the author's. I spent too much time documenting what the author was arguing and how - not more selfishly organizing the information according to my argument and diss structure.
So this weekend I'm going to rebuild my database. I'm going to instead create a folder for every work I read, and within that folder create a separate page for each quote/paraphrase/response I have, and with that response record a few key terms by which it will be useful.
Columb/Booth/William's books The Craft of Research and Guide to Dissertation Writers spell this out clearly in their note-taking chapters. You can also read the author Steven Berlin Johnson's posts on how he imports info into Devon and then how he makes use of it to write books. (I read the first of these posts some time ago, but missed the message of documenting information usefully rather than comprehensively.) His posts are here and here.
I hope this helps some of you avoid this waste of time. I'm kind of embarrassed it took me so long to discover; but maybe now I can crank the pages?
Speaking of reflections on writing, I've recently read Paul Silvia's How to Write a Lot. It's a calm, honest, and fun reflection on what it takes in the academic world (he's a psychologist, but it applies to all academic writing). Basically I've been reading around quite a bit to supplement the relative silence in graduate school on what it takes to cultivate writing skills and good habits. This seems to be the dirty secret among English professors - as if we all should naturally be excellent, dedicated writers; to have to look for advice is a sign of inadequacy and lack of imagination. And yet so many of us don't get jobs; and so many don't get tenure.
I'm glad to be back; I hope everyone is well.
