Organization, Shmorganization
So, the bad thing about being the last to post is that I feel like I don't have much left to add. The good thing is that I get to read everyone else's fabulous posts, and there's a good chance no one will read mine. (Come on, you know you never scroll down past Dr. Rogers' latest post).
This week's discussion (and the suggestions and ideas that accompanied it) was good for me, like one of those huge horse-pill-sized multivitamins you know you should really take, but somehow you always conveniently knock it off the bathroom counter into the toilet instead. I am not a naturally organized person--I have to work really hard at it (you should see my laundry room--my greatest fear is that I will die and no one will know which clothes are clean, which are dirty, and which ones need to go to the D.I.). So when it came to writing papers, I used to just toss organization out the window, sit down in front of the blinking cursor, and hope everything sorted itself out. I'm an overly recursive writer (this is not a good thing). I write a sentence, reread it, delete it, write another, delete half of it, delete all of it, write another, delete it...and so on, until 4:30 a.m. when I'm too tired to delete anymore and I just spit it out.
Luckily, since starting work on my master's degree, the length of paper and the amount of research that often goes into it (and the demands of my three insane children) make it nearly impossible to work this way. So I often resort to the "spread everything out on the living room floor" technique that Cheyney mentioned (this is a little more difficult--and awkward--when I'm working at Lampros Hall). I've also tried writing main points and quotes from my sources on notecards and organizing that way. The problem is that I often change my mind as I write, realizing that some ideas need to come sooner than others, and some don't fit in my paper at all; as a result, since my brain is about as organized as the back of my fridge (which, at this moment, happens to be full of what my two-year-old calls "Moldy Monsters"), I lose my place and spend several hours shuffling cards and rereading to figure it all out again.
The trouble with teaching organization, even if you've got a pretty good handle on it yourself, is that "flow" is fairly intuitive. As a writer, you develop a sort of sixth sense about it (instead of "I see dead people..." it's "I see transitions..."), so that you have a feel for where the next breadcrumb needs to drop, as well as what kind of breadcrumb it needs to be (whole wheat, rye, or pumpernickle). Sometimes it seems like teaching a less-organizationally-intuitive person to organize a paper is as hopeless as, say, teaching a tone-deaf person to sing a Sondheim score.
But I agree that laying it all out visually can be helpful--I like the sticky note idea, and I've also heard of writers "storyboarding" the way animators do, tacking sections of writing along a wall to have a visual and physical representation of their paper's organization. I've also used different colored markers or crayons to show which ideas, quotes, and sources go together (crayons are usually pretty handy at my house). But, as an organizationally-challenged individual, I'm always looking for new ideas.
So if any of you Super-Organizers out there (I think Adrian must be, like, the Charles Xavier of organization) come up with the ultimate solution, let me know. Then maybe you can come clean out my fridge.
This week's discussion (and the suggestions and ideas that accompanied it) was good for me, like one of those huge horse-pill-sized multivitamins you know you should really take, but somehow you always conveniently knock it off the bathroom counter into the toilet instead. I am not a naturally organized person--I have to work really hard at it (you should see my laundry room--my greatest fear is that I will die and no one will know which clothes are clean, which are dirty, and which ones need to go to the D.I.). So when it came to writing papers, I used to just toss organization out the window, sit down in front of the blinking cursor, and hope everything sorted itself out. I'm an overly recursive writer (this is not a good thing). I write a sentence, reread it, delete it, write another, delete half of it, delete all of it, write another, delete it...and so on, until 4:30 a.m. when I'm too tired to delete anymore and I just spit it out.
Luckily, since starting work on my master's degree, the length of paper and the amount of research that often goes into it (and the demands of my three insane children) make it nearly impossible to work this way. So I often resort to the "spread everything out on the living room floor" technique that Cheyney mentioned (this is a little more difficult--and awkward--when I'm working at Lampros Hall). I've also tried writing main points and quotes from my sources on notecards and organizing that way. The problem is that I often change my mind as I write, realizing that some ideas need to come sooner than others, and some don't fit in my paper at all; as a result, since my brain is about as organized as the back of my fridge (which, at this moment, happens to be full of what my two-year-old calls "Moldy Monsters"), I lose my place and spend several hours shuffling cards and rereading to figure it all out again.
The trouble with teaching organization, even if you've got a pretty good handle on it yourself, is that "flow" is fairly intuitive. As a writer, you develop a sort of sixth sense about it (instead of "I see dead people..." it's "I see transitions..."), so that you have a feel for where the next breadcrumb needs to drop, as well as what kind of breadcrumb it needs to be (whole wheat, rye, or pumpernickle). Sometimes it seems like teaching a less-organizationally-intuitive person to organize a paper is as hopeless as, say, teaching a tone-deaf person to sing a Sondheim score.
But I agree that laying it all out visually can be helpful--I like the sticky note idea, and I've also heard of writers "storyboarding" the way animators do, tacking sections of writing along a wall to have a visual and physical representation of their paper's organization. I've also used different colored markers or crayons to show which ideas, quotes, and sources go together (crayons are usually pretty handy at my house). But, as an organizationally-challenged individual, I'm always looking for new ideas.
So if any of you Super-Organizers out there (I think Adrian must be, like, the Charles Xavier of organization) come up with the ultimate solution, let me know. Then maybe you can come clean out my fridge.
posted by Em at 4:50 PM
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