Notes as a crutch

I'm an extensive note-taker.

Anyone who knows me knows how I extol the virtues of Endnote.

I take notes on pretty much every academic paper, book, or presentation that I come into contact with. But I also record those notes, extensively. I know many people use bibliographic software primarily as a way of creating the Works Cited page, but my "Notes" section of my Endnote files are always huge because I use it as a repository for my notes. I write a lot of detailed notes about a text into the computer, including interesting quotes that I think could be useful in the future as well as summaries of the argument. In fact, I've sometimes had to divide a book into two entries in Endnote because I've exhausted the space available for notes.

My notes are invaluable. At the beginning of any project, searching them helps me get a sense of the breadth of the topic or the research I've done on it, revealing gaps that are entry points into the discourse, or gaps that I need to fill by a visit to the library. Without them, I don't think I'd have as comprehensive a view of the topic or text that I want to write about because I would've forgotten much of what I'd read. Now granted, forgetting some of what I've read wouldn't be a bad idea, but even among largely reductive or simplistic arguments, sometimes there's a gem of a useful idea.

So on my trip I decided to take my laptop. I had hoped to start revisions of the chapter that my advisor and I were supposed to discuss when we met up in San Francisco. My advisor never made it to the conference. Leaving aside how frustrating/angering/futile that made my trip, it meant I had dragged my computer with me for no real good reason.

So on the trip home, I decided I needed to use the computer - after all, I was hauling it around, I might as well use it. So I tried to write some of the next chapter. But of course I hadn't brought all the notes and books I would normally be surrounded by as I wrote.

Thing is, I wrote some good stuff.

Without the notes to rely on, I was forced to think beyond the elements of the argument to the larger picture. Yes, there are places in the writing that I did where there's a note to the effect of "find the quote" and "double check the text" but I got some good work done on the argument in a very general day.

So from now on, sometime near the beginning of a writing project, I'm going to force myself and my computer out to a coffee shop - sans notes - to write as much as possible without the crutch of notes. Then I figure it would make sense to come back and refer to the notes and texts to fill in the skeleton.

So maybe the trip wasn't a total waste after all...