How I Write

When I set out to produce a research paper, I do, in fact, have a method beneath the madness. Generally I find that I am writing about poetry, so the first step is to read the poem, annotate the poem, and come up with an idea or an issue that I'd like to focus my research on. Currently, I am working on a poem about Nature's fallen state in Milton's "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity." I picked that topic by doing a close reading of the poem and choosing a passage that sparked my interest and had to do with my idea for my Master's Thesis. The next step is to gather together all possible primary and secondary sources that could possibly be useful. For this paper, I quickly leafed through the table of contents of my Milton text book to see if any other of Milton's poems jumped out as possibly helpful. I did end up finding one, a Latin poem, that dealt directly with this issue. The bonus in this discovery was the paragraph by the editors that preceded the poem. It listed a number of books and pamphlets written in the early 17th century that were directly dealing with the idea of Nature in a fallen state. This information led me next to EEBO, where I found these primary sources and was able firmly establish a historical context for my idea.

Secondary sources followed these primary sources. Searching on MLAIB, I found a small number of pieces of scholarship dealing directly with my topic. I printed these out and then used their works cited lists to find additional pieces. These were all printed out as well, and a few were ordered from interlibrary loan. My next step, this weekend, will be to skim through this research and make an annotated bibliography so that I can narrow down which sources to use and which to throw away. I will also peruse the books in the library to see if I can find anything else.

The writing begins after the research is mostly finished. I make a list in a Word document of all the useful quotations I have found in my research so they will be easy to copy and paste into my paper. I also make a rough outline of my paper in a separate word document. I then literally expand this outline into the actual paper. This process ensures that I do not forget to address anything and that my paper makes sense even if I end up writing some of it in fits of delirium. I then wait a few days and begin the revision process. These few days allow me to approach the project with a fresh set of eyes so that I do not overlook errors.

At then end of this process, ta da!, the paper is finished. I'm not sure if my process is the most efficient, as it does take a long time. I am definitely open to suggestions on how to smooth-line the process.