I'm drowning in research
It's great and fun until you remember you have a deadline
I had a goal to finish writing a chapter this month. That has not happened, and I’m trying to give myself some grace -- I HATE missing deadlines, even those set by myself.
The problem? Research. I’m wrestling with several competing (or are they?) writing and reporting adages:
1) Just write a shitty first draft.
2) If writing’s not going well that means you haven’t done enough reporting or research.
3) “Turn every page,” the Robert Caro aphorism that I feel in my bones, an internal, constitutional directive, a cousin of perfectionism and sense of duty (even if I’m not writing about the corrosive effects of political power).
An estimated 1600 pages of research reading in (5 full books, multiple book chunks and articles, and countless internet rabbit holes, just for one chapter!!!!), I don’t feel ready to write even a shitty first draft. I only found my perfect primary source about 100 pages ago, which proved to me that you need to “turn every page” indeed. Problem is, I have another many hundreds of pages on my TBR, just for this chapter. Research begets research.
My research is fascinating, and I’m having so much fun (is that the right word? I am giggling often!) doing it. It’s about the history of the personal ad, an early chapter in my book. I’m reading 18th and 19th century material that alternates between sounding outlandish to the modern ear, and shockingly contemporary and relevant. That it’s so interesting is one reason it’s hard to stop. (I’m finding it nearly impossible not to include spoilers here. Let’s just say the Hinge profiles of yesteryear included “must have full set of teeth”).
There’s also not a ton of secondary sources written about this topic, and some of the most-cited ones are very unreliable (shoutout to the multiple librarians who have tried and failed to help me find a couple of original sources that simply… don’t exist?). But that just makes me want to read everything that is out there, in addition to digging through newspaper archives. I need to get it right.
Since I decided I’d be handwriting my research notes, it’s all taking even longer. I could just be highlighting things in ebooks and exporting them (the Ezra Klein method, apparently) but a) lot of my books are physical b) like
I find that things absolutely don’t stick well this way, exporting is a pain, and I forget why I highlighted something. I could be retyping quotes and marginalia, and I probably will with some sources, but again, I just don’t think the content sinks into my brain as well.But that brings me to the good news about my slow, inefficient method. Halfway through the month, worried that I didn’t have anything actually written down on the page, I gave myself a goal of just doodling 1000 words of general reflections about what the chapter will be about. It came very, very easily. The material was, in fact, nicely embedded in my brain folds. It wasn’t a shitty first draft, but a shitty first… doodle?
A week or so later, after another moment of slight panic about the fact that I do have a deadline, I brain dumped, in an associative, slightly manic state, on 41 pieces of cut up printer paper, themes, references, ideas, stories from those 1600 pages of reading and 60 pages of notes. This itself was cathartic. My brain exhaled a bit, relieved of the pressure of all these ideas and facts and connections that were churning in there. Pinning it all onto a large cork board (writing long things on small pieces of paper forever!!!) in a loosely organized manner helped me see that there was a chapter in there, that I already knew so much of what I wanted to write.
Now, will it stop me from completing my TBR? Nope. But I am much more aware of the gaps in the research, what I can skim over and where I have to dive deep. I have a mental map that just needs to be sketched in. And I’m a bit more at ease. And that’s always worth it.
Relatedly: know anyone who met or dated through a personal ad in the 1970s, 80s, or 90s? Let me know!
