Read what you need

I find I'm writing and researching a bit more effectively these days. Part of it is that it's now so important to be published, and so catastrophic not to be published, that I care less about potential weaknesses in my writing or argument. But I've also become more disciplined about what I read. I've come to trust my own sense of what is or is not relevant to a paper I'm writing, and I'm not afraid to stop reading something if it won't help me.

I think sometimes we bring to our research a doggedness about reading scholarship that's left over from our graduate seminar days. We start reading an article for our diss., get the sense that it's not going to be too helpful, but we feel like we should finish because we're used to making ourselves finish articles for seminar discussions.

And it's not that we can never return to that mode of 'just seeing what's out there.' But I have come to see that taking that attitude during a work in progress is a recipe for not finishing.

Sorry if I'm stating the obvious. I've always known there were flaws in my reading and writing process, and I'm pleased to have figured one of them out.

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