4/15: Using Sources and Time Well

On Monday, we covered the basic structure your P3 essay can have, and the choices you have to make about organization to suit your audience's needs well. Today, we're going to talk about two other hurdles to writing P3: using sources and managing your own writing and research time.

The removal of the on-campus experience from your first year has likely made the second point--time management--a significant problem. While impediments to your time would have been just as common on campus as they likely are at home (commuting or dorm drama vs. your parents being loud and your dog being...a dog), the process of working on a long project, like an end-of-semester paper or exam prep, can make heavy demands of your time and self-discipline. To that end, the second half of this lesson post is a checklist meant to keep you on-track for this class (and a checklist you can adapt to future writing projects).

But first: note that the signup sheet for optional conferences next week (4/19 to 4/22) has been emailed to you. You do not need a meeting unless you are stuck or having trouble. Otherwise, treat next week as a writing week for this class, and don't forget to turn a partial draft (just whatever you have) on Canvas to prove you're not just waiting until the last minute to start.

Okay, now, let's briefly talk about using sources well:

Evidence: Designating Evidence by Strengths

A short note on integrating evidence into the chunks and steps of your paper. The first time you mention a source, you should say something like “In [authors’ last names]’s [kind of evidence] from [year or publication], they detail/investigate [summary].” You don’t generally want to drop evidence into a paper without some sort of basic introduction. If you’re using a single source a lot, it is often worth mentioning it in detail in the Background Section of your paper, so that your reader is familiar with it by the time you get into the argument part.

You should definitely learn to properly identify source types: is it an article, a study, a survey, a news article, a blog post, a tweet, an experiment, a government report, a website, an interview? You can google what these are, but as you have probably noticed, some of those sound more legit than others. Different sources have different impact and “weight,” so don’t call a textbook a novel or an article a journal. If you don't know what to call something, email me.

Don’t use evidence you don’t need just to sound smart (you’ll sound insecure instead). Having good ethos/authority in your voice comes from using evidence when you need it, and explaining it confidently in your own terms to your reader. That’s why the warrant part of every paragraph (see this post) is so important: your smartness comes in connecting your sources to your claims clearly. Don’t use so many quotes that the reader never hears your voice.

Don't use a report on a source when you can use the source. In other words, if you read a CNN article about a new study, go and find the study using the university library's resources. If you cite the news report about a source in the paper, you're basically passing on an interpretation of that source by a non-expert, and doing it secondhand. That's weaksauce. Get real quotes, and do the interpreting for your audience yourself. That's where you win over your readers.

Under no circumstances should you ever take a secondhand report (a source reporting on another source) at face value. They could be interpreting the source incorrectly. Do the interpreting yourself.*

*The only exception to this is within expert sources, where experts may summarize previous work by other experts as a basis for their own work (essentially, they use the forwarding method described in this class). That's generally okay, since they're building on that work, rather than just talking about it, and are therefore motivated to report accurately.

If the summary seems really mean or dismissive or mocking though, that's a red flag. Some experts are massive jerks, but most are just nerds trying to make friends with other nerds.

Getting Your P3 Life Together

Okay, so the rest of this lesson post is a checklist/step-by-step guide to doing a research paper. You should read the whole checklist today (so you know where you are on it and what the future should look like) and follow along with it as you work on P3. Note that this list is a suggestion, and that you can adjust it to suit your own style. The due-dates are not a style choice, though, obvs.

This list is how I roll, and I've survived this long, so I guess it works?

Step Zero: Getting the Topic Nailed Down

Most of you are already on or past this step, having done the proposal (P2) assignment. But here’s what you should have before starting the next steps:

Identify your objectives in writing this essay: In addition to getting that coveted A grade, why are you writing about this topic? What do you want to do to your audience? What change or renewed attention or activity are you trying to inspire?
Learn the basic terms of that topic area: Know the keywords, do research, learn more key terms, concepts, and ideas in that topic area, use them to go deeper into research.
Having done the research, can you still make a real change in this topic area? What are you contributing? What are you adding that’s new?
Accordingly, is this something you can do in a short (2500-3000w) essay? If not, pick one aspect, or one early step of this situation you want to change, and focus exclusively on that. Don’t throw out your broader research, though–it’ll help later. You’re still talking about the topic, but using one aspect as an anchor or focal point.

Please, please note step #3. This is not high school. Nobody wants to read your report summarizing stuff you found in the library. You are a valid, intelligent adult and you can develop a complex idea, thereby adding something new to the situation, even if it’s not a grand solution or revelation.

Research is your friend, not your bodyguard.

Step One: Do More Research, You Giant Nerd

Now that you’ve done enough research to understand your topic and choose a place where you can say something new and cool, it’s time to nerd out.

Get sources, skim them, read some book introductions, read an article while sitting in a shaft of sunlight (indoors) with your parents’ dog, get a highlighter out and then remember you’re reading on a screen. This is the step where you should spend most of this week.

Do these things:

Identify sources you have to read, ones you want to read, and ones that might be cool. Read the musts, skim the wants, and save the cool ones for when you feel like taking a break from your other work.
If you picked a topic you like, this part should be at least “fun homework”--or, if not fun, then that feeling you get when you watch semi-educational YouTube content because your normal content producers don’t have anything new for you. You know that feeling.
Note the authors, titles, dates, and type of sources somewhere safe, in case you lose the originals, your computer breaks, or the links stop working.
Pick out good quotes you might use in the future. Cite them and save them somewhere safe.

Step Two: Plan the Writing

This is the other step you should have semi-complete by next week. In this phase, you plan the general pattern of your essay, mapping out sections and chunks and steps. It is not a good idea to imagine each step as a paragraph–organically, some concepts take more or fewer paragraphs to express properly, so never commit to a number of paragraphs (a limit or a minimum) beforehand, or you’ll get trapped by the outline, which is bad.

It is normal, in both this step and the previous one, that you might feel enthused to write a particular paragraph or part as you think of it. You can stop and do this writing, and outline around it–there’s no law that says you have to write things in the order they’ll eventually appear, as long as you have a plan.

Identify the sections and chunks and the order they go in. Self-explanatory “outline or flowchart or index cards or something” planning strategies go here. It’s often good to imagine your paper as a conversation between you and your audience, for planning “back-and-forth” organizational moves, like where to discuss dissenting opinions, counterarguments, and weird side-issues.
Identify the genres of your sections. As Wednesday’s class noted, you have different shapes you can use for things like introductions, argument sections, and other parts. Know your audience and your main point, and choose these genres/structures deliberately. You can mix and match as necessary.
Fit your evidence and sources into this plan, so you know when you’ll need to have them handy.

Step Three: Do the Writing

This step seems self-explanatory, but here’s some tips:

You do not have to write in order if you don’t feel like it.
Write the introduction knowing you’ll replace it with something better later.
Get the thoughts out of your head and onto the page, even if it’s ugly, and finish the chunk or section or even the whole paper before revising, or you’ll get trapped in what’s called a recursive editing loop, which kills your writing energy. This is the main trap of most “English isn’t my subject” people: you’re trying to write (creatively) and fix things (technically) at the same time and your brain just can’t do that. Nobody's can.
Use simply formatted notes to yourself to mark when you’re skipping something [I PREFER ALL CAPS IN BRACKETS SINCE YOU CAN SEARCH FOR BRACKETS TO MAKE SURE THEY’RE NOT IN THE FINAL VERSION, SINCE BRACKETS ARE RARELY USED IN NORMAL WRITING]. Skip things that would make you stop writing, like inserting quotes and citations, and do them when you’re done actually writing. Like editing, stopping to flip through a source or find your handwritten notes kills your “flow” and can slow down or even confuse your writing.
Acknowledge that not everything you write has to be in the final version. Sometimes you have a sidebar conversation with a source, or get mad at another person, and write grumpily/enthusiastically about it, but maybe it doesn’t help the end product. That does not mean you shouldn’t write it, just that it’s for you, not your audience.
Avoid revising too much at this stage--revision is easier than writing, and you can trick yourself into feeling that you’ve accomplished something and get the good brain chemicals if your revise before you finish. This will destroy your motivation, since you've already got the satisfying dopamine.
Have a plan so that you can avoid trying to write the whole thing at once. You will burn out, your paragraphs near the end will get shorter and dumber, and you will forget stuff or think of things out of order. Do. Not. Cram. Write.

Step Four: Revise and Reorganize

We have a whole class post about this later in the semester, but some spoilers for your post-peer review (4/29 to 5/3) process:

Revision is not a “bonus” activity--it is an integral part of the process. Reserve some time 24-48 hours before your deadline to make changes based on peer review and your own assessment.
Sometimes you wrote something in a different order than the order your audience needs it to be in. You are allowed to rearrange and reorganize parts. Copy and paste exist for a reason.
Replace rather than fiddle: So, in your draft, there’s a paragraph you’re not “feeling”--it’s just weird, or wrong, your peers say it’s a mess. It is often more time efficient to replace that text than to try and edit it word-by-word. In a separate document, write a fresh version of the bad part that you think is better. Then, when you’re happy, replace the old one with the new text. This goes for sentences, whole paragraphs, and other units of text. This process is, surprisingly, about 30-40% faster than word-by-word revision.**
Everyone revises: Those beautiful, professional writing products you see and are amazed by? The famous people who made them revised the heck out of them a dozen times. Revision, not artistic magic, is where beautiful text and smart argument comes from.

**Super Advanced Strategy Not Recommended for ENGL110: when writing articles, book chapters, or novels, I actually re-type the entire document once. Much like the described replacement strategy, this "second writing" allows me to reorganize points and rephrase things now that I've fully conceptualized the entire piece. This is extremely time-intensive, however, and so I don't recommend doing this except for critical documents, like college/grad school application essays or professionally published pieces.

What this should tell you now, though, is that I'm not BS-ing about point #3 above.

Step Five: Incentivize

When completing any of the prior four steps, it is important to incentivize your progress. This is a fancy way of saying treat yo’ self. Never try to do multiple steps all in one day: plan and pace yourself. Reward yourself for accomplishing these steps and the numbered tasks, and for avoiding pitfalls I’ve noted here.

Ideas:

Eat a cookie. Maybe two cookies.
Take a deep breath. Get some coffee.
Watch a dumb youtuber read reddit comments.
Talk to your friends.
Show your fantastic outline/paragraph/draft to your friends (the ones who won’t make fun of you for being productive and healthy, so like, your actual friends.)
Watch videos of red pandas doing things.
Play video games.
Excitedly email your professor, who will validate your progress even if your friends won’t.
Hug a dog. Sit adjacent to a cat.
Dance indoors by yourself.

Homework

This class post's quiz is especially dumb, but don't forget to do it.

There's no blog post or mandatory Slack discussion this week, though the Slack channel for questions is open and being actively looked-at.

Start writing your P3s.