Writing for Research

Writing for Research

But I would say there are advantages to preparing carefully before starting a First Draft.
This has to do, not with how you write the first sentence, but how you write the twenty-
first - that is, how you sustain the writing process.

It’s a great help if you know definitely what is coming next, know what will come after
that, and remember what has gone before. You write each sentence, not as an isolated
unit, but as part of a movement of text that ushers the reader from where your research
began, to where it has now arrived.

This holds also at a micro-level. While I am actually generating text, I find myself
thinking and hearing two or three sentences ahead. I think this is common with
experienced writers. The sentence appearing under my fingers is not a self-contained
unit, but is being written in relation to the sentences immediately to come. It prepares
the ground for them; they develop, complete or quarrel with it. This also works
backwards. My current sentence is written in relation to the sentence or two before –
developing, completing or quarreling with them.

So writing is a bit like working under a moving spotlight, that lights up a few inches on
either side, progressively shifting across the job. What’s lit up, what’s taking shape, is of
the order of a paragraph in length.

A well-tempered paragraph. (Images: JS Bach (Wikimedia Commons) and J.S. Bach: 'The Well-

tempered Clavier', Book II, Fugue in A Flat major, British Library Add. MS 35021, f.14)