Flowbies
October 4, 2011
and another thing. Going to PubMed to find some cite to support my logic chain because I don’t have it in my reference manager database already doesn’t break the flow either.
It enhances and reinforces the thrust of the point you are contemplating, and working on making concretely in academese, because you refresh yourself on all the relevant and irrelevant titles/abstract, perhaps find a new paper or two and remember an old one. That allows you to wrap up that paragraph or page in a trice so that you can move on.
Instead of spinning your wheels writing up a bunch of sheist that you later have to “revise” because your memory of the paper(s) that you thought supported a particular point was erroneous.
DrugMonkey 
October 4, 2011 at 7:52 am
I love it when something enhances and reinforces the thrust.
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October 4, 2011 at 8:00 am
I like to do this, but I still don’t put in references. I will read and make a comment note what to put in. I just can’t make myself actually get them all in.
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October 4, 2011 at 8:07 am
I thought you got a new haircut http://www.flowbee.com/
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October 4, 2011 at 8:35 am
Nice try. No.
You always amend and revise. When I dive in to papers I might do them 1-2 paragraphs at a time if it is intro and conclusion. I will have already have my rough draft [in a flow, possibly a torrent], and then when refamiliarizing myself with lit, maybe that will be an hour or so going through papers and updating searches and making sure I’ve covered new things that weren’t in the memory. Revising and cogitating doesn’t need the flow of the initial opening of the spigot, so back and forth is much easier. Never interrupt the flow of the spigot!
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October 4, 2011 at 8:57 am
… what Pinko said.
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October 4, 2011 at 9:22 am
Revising text later isn’t some terrible failure. If a reference is incidental to the larger story, I’d rather right out the text with parentheticals of a probable refs and come back to paste them in later. If, on a deeper recheck of a reference, I realize there is a better reference or the story is a more complex, I can revise the text.
Perhaps this is just me, but I find, particularly for citations that are background rather than the core of the story, a quick reference search can lead down the rabbit hole of reference comparisons & background reading. That’s a good thing, but I’d rather do it after I have text on paper.
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October 4, 2011 at 10:05 am
This is the stupidest fucken discussion ever. Different people write most efficiently in different ways. Some people are most efficient when they just “let it flow” and pour out thousands of words in a non-stop session, and then refine later. Some people (like me) are most efficient when they write a few sentences or a paragraph at a time–but almost fully formed and with on-the-fly tuning and editing and citing–with breaks to do e-mail or whatthefuckever in between. There is no one right way to write.
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October 4, 2011 at 3:13 pm
CPP: “There is no one right way to write.”
Word. To each their own really. I never put in references right away, but I can see why some may prefer not to.
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October 4, 2011 at 4:55 pm
Except for every other discussion where Le CPP says “THIS IS HOW IT IS”- also, this is the commento sectione of a blog, on the internet (where something is wrong, somewhere!).
Carry on!
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October 4, 2011 at 10:42 pm
Dude, for someone who claims to be a scientist, you have a lot of trouble with simple logic. The fact that there is no single correct way to engage the task of writing bears no relation to whether there is a single correct way to do anything else, nor to whether there is a single correct structure for a particular type of document, once the words are on the page.
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October 7, 2011 at 8:38 pm
What do you mean, Flash Gordon approaching?
Open fire, all weapons!
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October 7, 2011 at 8:43 pm
There’s only one stupidest fucking discussion ever, and that one thing is this, every…
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