I have been a librarian for almost 30 years. This is the best, and most exciting, description of the process of how we want to help students practice the craft of reading, thinking, and writing that I have ever read. I think I call census reading the hunter-gatherer approach. Collect lots of stuff, read it, and hope it creates an argument. It starts with "I need information on." I ask students to start with: What do I know about this? What do I want to know? Why? Thank you for a great start to my day!
I have an exercise with my college creative nonfiction classes where students have to find online a library book they want to use in an essay. Then during class we all go to the stacks, and they learn the next step is to browse the titles around the one they originally wanted; many end up checking out a book other than (or in addition to) the one they walked in expecting to get. I can totally see assigning this essay alongside this exercise when we're back together in person. Love love love it :)
This piece resonated strongly with me, especially the fact that those "aha's" can be few and far between but oh so satisfying when you find 'em. I also love the longitudinal component to this kind of connecting-the-dots, back door approach, i.e. when some random nugget that's been rattling around—sometimes for years!—finally clicks into place and finds a home, or provides a new frame for a current topic. Thank you for this!
I...was literally waiting for you to start an argument about sleeping around before marriage. I blame this migraine because wow my brain is not coming through for this cultural project in the way I want it to.
When I was an editorial asst at Simon & Schuster (a million years ago ... before the Earth cooled ...) I worked on Blonde Like Me! I really enjoyed working with Natalia. It was a fun project and I learned the phenomenon of suddenly noticing something *everywhere* after you've been made aware of it. She was also a semiotics professor which made me feel very smart many years later when The DaVinci Code came out ...
Even how you have described the process is oh so obvious but no one has written about it. I have been mulling (despairing?) over a journal article for a year now...it was supposedly pretty much ready when I pulled it out of my dissertation. But having spent a year reading around it, I found what I think is an understudied area to approach the work with. Thank you for articulating the process!
I so appreciate your perspective on writer's block. Thank you for elucidating something I have been trying to say! One of my journalism professors in undergrad used to say that journalists don't procrastinate, they prepare and practice. That ties together in my head with what you said.
Just have to say that this was so great. The thrill of finding the hole in the literature!!! Yes!!! Thinking "How was this not done before, how has anyone not asked this question?"
One of my favorite Dolly Moments was on 60 Minutes when she took Mike Wallace up to the holler where she grew up in a cabin and told him the story of her toddler self wandering into the barn and a Mama pig nursing her piglets. And Dolly moved one of the piglets aside and lay down nursing at the sow’s teat when her older siblings came and discovered Dolly half asleep suckling from the Mama pig. Mike Wallace’s eyes were wide with wonderment and awe.
One of the great joys of retirement and academic unaffiliation is letting random associations that pop up along the looking-for-more way lead me astray -- sometimes in multiple directions, sometimes even back again. Intellectual promiscuity and succumbing to any mindworm that comes alongs. Essaying, including threads, is a exciting hotbed of them.
I have few deadlines, even fewer critical ones. I pause along the way, more intermittently than consistently, to share nuggets (Zorba's stone comes to mind). I have a whole sidetrip of "blondness" associations that I keep meaning to drop into the Dolly thread. I did bring some of them up in a less than organized blog post on a teacher/writing oriented March blog challenge. It fell flat with that particular audience.
I keep thinking about how much fun it is to chase and find those unexpected threads when you read around a thing. Made me realize that none of my arguments arrive when I actually am reading about the topic. Often, that moment of discovery (aka when the spirit hits ;-)) comes when I am reading something very unrelated. I know I'm there when I want to throw something across the room b/c the AHA is just that good. Reminds me of this quote from Imani Perry on 'slow writing': What it is one wants to say, how one wants to say it: Sometimes figuring these things out takes time. We cannot consider an idea failed too soon. Some need time to age.
This made me think of Whoopi Goldberg’s character piece from her Broadway performance - young black 7 year old girl wearing a white button up shirt on her head and insisting it was her long luxurious blonde hair - and she needed it to get on the Love Boat. No one on the Love Boat looked like her.
I have been a librarian for almost 30 years. This is the best, and most exciting, description of the process of how we want to help students practice the craft of reading, thinking, and writing that I have ever read. I think I call census reading the hunter-gatherer approach. Collect lots of stuff, read it, and hope it creates an argument. It starts with "I need information on." I ask students to start with: What do I know about this? What do I want to know? Why? Thank you for a great start to my day!
I have an exercise with my college creative nonfiction classes where students have to find online a library book they want to use in an essay. Then during class we all go to the stacks, and they learn the next step is to browse the titles around the one they originally wanted; many end up checking out a book other than (or in addition to) the one they walked in expecting to get. I can totally see assigning this essay alongside this exercise when we're back together in person. Love love love it :)
This piece resonated strongly with me, especially the fact that those "aha's" can be few and far between but oh so satisfying when you find 'em. I also love the longitudinal component to this kind of connecting-the-dots, back door approach, i.e. when some random nugget that's been rattling around—sometimes for years!—finally clicks into place and finds a home, or provides a new frame for a current topic. Thank you for this!
I...was literally waiting for you to start an argument about sleeping around before marriage. I blame this migraine because wow my brain is not coming through for this cultural project in the way I want it to.
When I was an editorial asst at Simon & Schuster (a million years ago ... before the Earth cooled ...) I worked on Blonde Like Me! I really enjoyed working with Natalia. It was a fun project and I learned the phenomenon of suddenly noticing something *everywhere* after you've been made aware of it. She was also a semiotics professor which made me feel very smart many years later when The DaVinci Code came out ...
Even how you have described the process is oh so obvious but no one has written about it. I have been mulling (despairing?) over a journal article for a year now...it was supposedly pretty much ready when I pulled it out of my dissertation. But having spent a year reading around it, I found what I think is an understudied area to approach the work with. Thank you for articulating the process!
I so appreciate your perspective on writer's block. Thank you for elucidating something I have been trying to say! One of my journalism professors in undergrad used to say that journalists don't procrastinate, they prepare and practice. That ties together in my head with what you said.
Just have to say that this was so great. The thrill of finding the hole in the literature!!! Yes!!! Thinking "How was this not done before, how has anyone not asked this question?"
One of my favorite Dolly Moments was on 60 Minutes when she took Mike Wallace up to the holler where she grew up in a cabin and told him the story of her toddler self wandering into the barn and a Mama pig nursing her piglets. And Dolly moved one of the piglets aside and lay down nursing at the sow’s teat when her older siblings came and discovered Dolly half asleep suckling from the Mama pig. Mike Wallace’s eyes were wide with wonderment and awe.
One of the great joys of retirement and academic unaffiliation is letting random associations that pop up along the looking-for-more way lead me astray -- sometimes in multiple directions, sometimes even back again. Intellectual promiscuity and succumbing to any mindworm that comes alongs. Essaying, including threads, is a exciting hotbed of them.
I have few deadlines, even fewer critical ones. I pause along the way, more intermittently than consistently, to share nuggets (Zorba's stone comes to mind). I have a whole sidetrip of "blondness" associations that I keep meaning to drop into the Dolly thread. I did bring some of them up in a less than organized blog post on a teacher/writing oriented March blog challenge. It fell flat with that particular audience.
I keep thinking about how much fun it is to chase and find those unexpected threads when you read around a thing. Made me realize that none of my arguments arrive when I actually am reading about the topic. Often, that moment of discovery (aka when the spirit hits ;-)) comes when I am reading something very unrelated. I know I'm there when I want to throw something across the room b/c the AHA is just that good. Reminds me of this quote from Imani Perry on 'slow writing': What it is one wants to say, how one wants to say it: Sometimes figuring these things out takes time. We cannot consider an idea failed too soon. Some need time to age.
https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/the-long-slow-constant-mindful-writing-life
This made me think of Whoopi Goldberg’s character piece from her Broadway performance - young black 7 year old girl wearing a white button up shirt on her head and insisting it was her long luxurious blonde hair - and she needed it to get on the Love Boat. No one on the Love Boat looked like her.