Friday, November 12, 2010
This Damn Rough Draft
So here I am thinking that oh hey I have all of this research done and have an idea of what I want to say. I even had about the first two pages done of the paper previous, being just a intro to the paper. Now that I've gotten down to the actually meat of the writing, the important stuff I've realized I barely had any idea before I sat down what I actually wanted my paper to say, or to mean, if anything. I'm not finding it hard to put words on the page. That's easy, the problem I'm having is when I go back and reread it I'm like that just sounds like complete BS and it doesn't matter at all. Basically I'm having trouble to get my paper to have a real meaning, for it to be something that isn't just about Battle Creek but connecting it to something broader that affects people.
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Breath. It's okay. Connections don't have to be crazy elaborate. Ask yourself a so what question and direct it towards a historian. Normal people may not ever care about battle creek, but scholars tend to examen meaning through broad questions.
ReplyDeleteFor example, my project answers the 'so what question' in a single sentence: ultimately, this topic speaks to the greater question of how ethnic identities are constructed.
That's it. The rest of the paper is just a case study.
I wouldn't think too much about it. You probably already know the significance of your paper. Let it come out naturally.