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[bewilderedta]

I'm beginning my second semester and realized last December (at 2 in the morning of the due date for one of my seminar papers) that I really need to change my writing process. So I would like to hear how other people attack their seminar papers. At what point do you start your research? When do you start writing? When do you feel like you're ready to talk to your professors about your ideas, and what do you give them to look at?

My current idea is to get started and have something - say, a 7-10 page draft version - that I can then take to my professors for discussion, get feedback and expand/revise up to the needed length. Last semester I tried writing detailed outlines and found it didn't really work for me very well, hence the short draft idea.

I did a search and didn't find this topic precisely, so hopefully it hasn't been done to death.

[contemporary_]

How about a rough idea of your discipline?  I am in the Humanities.

For me, it depends on the project.  If it involves research I read everything, early and synthesize ideas while I read.  I also do projects that are more 'inspired' which have a different process that focuses more on the text as an object.

My current idea is to get started and have something - say, a 7-10 page draft version - that I can then take to my professors for discussion, get feedback and expand/revise up to the needed length.

This approach won me a strong supporter and a new mentor with enthusiasm for my ideas and several conferences and publications to submit the paper to when it is polished.  Give it a try.

I have not written an outline since I was in JR High. 

[bewilderedta]

I'm in a literature-focused second language program.

[katherineparr]

I do write outlines.

Generally, I begin with a question, draft an outline of some ideas, then write up portions of those ideas. That gives me a skeleton, usually about 1/3 the total length I want.

Then I take a break from it (for a while, a week on short notice, longer if possible) and think about other things. I go back, read through my stuff, and see whether the emerging structure makes sense.

Usually, I then add to various places, draft a rough introduction and conclusion, and begin finding ways to polish the language and strengthen the evidence.

Eh, voila. Not easy, but not a killer and rarely up at 2am unless things are going quite well and I just can't imagine stopping.

[carebearstare]

I never outline until after I have something on paper.

In classes, I always picked the topic of my final research paper in the first or second session, and started doing research immediately. I usually begin writing the paper about a month before it's due.

[contemporary_]

I'm in a literature-focused second language program.

Some of my teachers would suggest that an outline is the death of both writing and thinking, because writing is thinking itself. If you have an outline there will be no thought.  Obviously, these people are literary extremists.

Let the writing be a journey and give yourself plenty of time.   Optimally, you will make a few friends to form a writing group.

Are you still feeling bewildered in your teaching?

[tamina]

I try to write a little bit every day. Today, I will be working on a draft of a paper for two hours. This afternoon, I have time blocked off to finish making revisions to a manuscript that needs to be resubmitted. If there is time, I will spend an hour or so working on a different manuscript.

If I can write/revise two-three pages a day then I have a decent draft within one-two months (depends on how challenging the paper is). A couple of pages a day doesn't seem like much, but it does add up. I'm a slow and steady kind of person. I always write even if I don't want to, and I keep my butt in the seat for the designated time.

I don't worry - initially - if my writing is good or bad. Bad writing is still writing, and I am still getting my ideas down on paper. Revisions can fix the bad writing, but revisions cannot fix what is not there. Do not be too judgmental when you are getting that initial draft going. It gets better with each revision.

I share drafts with people when they reach a certain level of quality and need a little kick to move forward.

Hope that helps.

[dr_prephd]

It depends on what the project is, and how committed I am to said project.

For a paper less that's 10 pages or less for a seminar, I'll usually sit down and write a bunch of crap one weekend, forget it over the week while I continue to read for it, and revise it the next weekend. Tamina is right... you can fix crappy writing, but you can't fix nothing. When I get pretty close to feeling done, I'll do an outline (of what I've already written), to make sure everything in each paragraph goes there and that I'm making my points clearly. Then I'll give it to someone to read, who knows nothing about my subject. If s/he can read it and understand it, anyone can, and that person ususally catches a few editing mistakes that I can't. Then I'll go immediately home, fix it, and turn it in without a second thought.   

For a longer paper (say, culminating project of 20-40 pages), I'll start with an idea. Do research. Open a file and write a potential thesis statement and a rough outline of where I want to go. Insert quotations beneath appropriate sections on the outline. By the time I've got five or six pages of outine and quotations, I know it's time for me to fill in the gaps with my own words and ideas. This easily stretches the content to about 15 pages. This is the point that I put the paper away for a week, do some more reading, and come back the next weekend ready to expand some more. I can usually get about 20 pages easily this way. Then I finish up the same way I do with smaller papers. Match sentence by sentence to an outline, have an outside person read my draft, and send it in quickly after I feel I'm done.

For what it's worth, I usually end up with about 6 to 8 drafts of any one paper... several more for an article.

Now, don't get me started on the writing process for the diss. I'm still way, way bogged down with the organizing process. I've got 5 notebooks full of articles and still don't feel like I'm ready to read until I have everything I need in the right place, with the right files, and arranged in an orderly fashion. Of course, this could just be a procrastination device. But I don't want to spend 8 hours looking for the one article I need just because I didn't name it the right thing or file it in the right place. Writing? That seems so far away.

[bewilderedta]

Thanks for all the input, everyone. It really is helpful for me to hear what others do.

Some of my teachers would suggest that an outline is the death of both writing and thinking, because writing is thinking itself. If you have an outline there will be no thought.  Obviously, these people are literary extremists.

I don't know if I'd call it the "death", but I would certainly agree that for me writing is thinking - I never feel like I've fully thought something through until I've written it out. Which is why outlines didn't work for me; when I tried to turn them into papers they ended up being a lot of half-supported half-ideas.

Are you still feeling bewildered in your teaching?

I've been on break since December (until tomorrow), so technically no. I'm teaching the same class again this semester so I think things should go more smoothly. I am quite sure there will be some bewilderment at some point, though!

[msadjunct]

As someone else from a literature program, here's what I did: I tried to have a paper topic selection in the first 3-4 weeks of the course. I presented my prof's with a sciences-style prospectus around weeks 5-8 (depending on progress). A rough draft is a lot of reading and sloppy-ness, but a prospectus lets them see whether your next step will be a mis-step. Then, unless I had to start over (did more than once - sometimes on advice, sometimes because I went in a different direction because of then-boredom with the topic), I figured out how many pages per week after that (two pages per week generally, so that if you have three courses - that's one page per class per day). I know most people don't do this - but it helped to retain my sanity.