the dangerous ailment of bibliophilia!
I don't appear to be receiving comment notifications, and perhaps you aren't either, so while I think I've responded to all the comments I ought to have responded to, this might not be true, and if it is, I suppose you might not know that I've responded!
Anyway. I'm off to the library to pick up books I shouldn't. I wish I didn't feel so much pressure/desire to have to do everything at once, because it mostly results in nothing much getting done at all. For example. I have a new project in mind--just a short one, a potential article or something (because I could really stand to have some of those). It is not at all prudent to be thinking about these sorts of things when I have a dissertation to write, but I still want to go do it anyway--partly because it's new and exciting and I don't know yet what I really think about this new thing, but partly because I feel like I have to start doing the reading right now simply in order to be able to write about it in the future. I have to start the mental stew, which takes a long time for me. Once I know what I think, the writing part, marching one word in front of another, isn't *too* hard--but arriving at that point takes ages, during which very little writing happens (aside from journal notes and blog posts, that is--which I do think are an important part of the stew-making process).
Same with historical fiction (the research part, anyway, since I haven't written any): the reading isn't for now, but for years from now--but if it takes that much time to learn a subject well, then I should be reading a little bit about everything now! About anything I think or know I might want to write about someday! And on and on. Focus gets divided, I accomplish nothing. I've been working on the dissertation the same way; instead of focusing the reading on one chapter at a time, I've been scatter-shot about the process, trying to get a sense of the whole thing by dipping in here and there.
I need to be better about this--only I'm not sure how.
How do you all do it? Or maybe you don't have this problem at all?
Anyway. I'm off to the library to pick up books I shouldn't. I wish I didn't feel so much pressure/desire to have to do everything at once, because it mostly results in nothing much getting done at all. For example. I have a new project in mind--just a short one, a potential article or something (because I could really stand to have some of those). It is not at all prudent to be thinking about these sorts of things when I have a dissertation to write, but I still want to go do it anyway--partly because it's new and exciting and I don't know yet what I really think about this new thing, but partly because I feel like I have to start doing the reading right now simply in order to be able to write about it in the future. I have to start the mental stew, which takes a long time for me. Once I know what I think, the writing part, marching one word in front of another, isn't *too* hard--but arriving at that point takes ages, during which very little writing happens (aside from journal notes and blog posts, that is--which I do think are an important part of the stew-making process).
Same with historical fiction (the research part, anyway, since I haven't written any): the reading isn't for now, but for years from now--but if it takes that much time to learn a subject well, then I should be reading a little bit about everything now! About anything I think or know I might want to write about someday! And on and on. Focus gets divided, I accomplish nothing. I've been working on the dissertation the same way; instead of focusing the reading on one chapter at a time, I've been scatter-shot about the process, trying to get a sense of the whole thing by dipping in here and there.
I need to be better about this--only I'm not sure how.
How do you all do it? Or maybe you don't have this problem at all?