Anti-Climacus

DISPATCHES FROM PAPER-WRITING: (or: I am so not getting to sleep until 5:00am tonight)

A number of my friends and colleagues are now putting together their dissertation prospectuses. As I defended in May, I have semi-accidentally become the person who is turned to occasionally for advice. When frustration is expressed to me that they're not sure what they're doing, or how to frame their question, or what order to put their chapters in,* I generally remind them that this is not surprising: "None of us has ever written a book before, so it's not really strange that we don't already know how to do it."

This is the biggest frustration in this phase of grad school: I no longer write term papers, I write conference papers. Thus I have to adopt the methodological and argumentative rules of political theory--a considerably harder task when it's your professional reputation on the line--or, more correctly, when you're attempting to create any kind of professional reputation whatsoever--rather than just a grade. As easy as it was when I was a whippersnap to criticize someone else's faulty method or reading, doing it well is a difficult task. Everything is cultivating the right habits and practices--but you don't know which are the right ones until after you've succeeded or failed.**

One day, I know this will not matter: writing papers and books will be old hat, and I will wonder how it was that I could ever not just sit down and do it.*** But for now, it's read, and try to put together the argument, and get mad because the parts don't fit. And read more, and try and put the argument together another way. And read more, and finally just start writing to have something--anything--even half-formed notes to myself about what I want to eventually write. And read. And write. And read. And write.

And then sometimes, you chase your pots of tea with pots of coffee and keep this up for several hours, and all of a sudden the pieces all start fitting together, and it's clear how you frame your argument, and move from one section to the next, and you can see it and talk about it in a way that might not confuse anyone you tried to explain it to. We call these 'good days.'


* 'or, or, or, or,' as Jim Skillen of the Center for Public Justice said on Friday evening, a pretty good verbal tic I may have to borrow
** I learned more about how to frame a paper attending panels at McGill than I did from several years of reading political theory. There's nothing so useful as the 'oh, that's good, I should do that' moment, especially when your response to your own paper is 'this isn't quite right, but I'm not entirely sure why.' Mature poets steal, after all.
*** In my more reasonable moments, I don't expect this will be the case--if research was easy, we'd all be putting out books every year. But a fair amount of my experience is idiosyncratic to youth. Or so I hope.