i drafted this for another blog shared by colleagues of a writing group of which i am part. i thought i’d post it here as well, as i feel discussion of such matters typically fails to take place. i acknowledge this lives in a kind of internet backwater; nevertheless, i hope it reaches some eyes and minds willing to consider or critique its implications.
-k
Notes on Process
I also thought I’d use this post to begin a discussion on process. I’ll focus on two aspects of my current work: reviewing the “literature” and transitioning from fieldwork to analysis, coding, and interpretation. (I may put the transitioning bits in a subsequent, “part 2,” post.)
“Literature” 1 – Tools
I have a paper and digital library at home. For my paper library, I use 1/2″ post-it flags, which are partially translucent, to mark key passages in my books. I don’t use a colour-coding scheme, though I tend to use the red flags for Marx, Benjamin, and so on. I can’t stand marking in pen or pencil or highlighter – I’ve tried, but I always find it distracting (except on the iPad – see below). For me, the flags indicate what I need to go back to at a later stage, a discrete temporal point from the act of reading (which I try to do quickly to retain the flow of the argument being made).
I like to scan photocopies, and occasionally books, and convert them to PDF to transfer to the iPad. I use Vuescan to scan everything into 1-bit TIFF files at 300 dpi, which I stitch together using Acrobat Pro. (The 1-bit means that everything is either black text or white pixels/paper – no greyscale, and no colour – both for readability, and for file-size.) I also OCR everything, which converts images into roughly usable text that I can cut-and-paste into other programs, like Scrivener (see below). I say roughly usable text, because it really depends on the quality of the scan and the original printing. Sometimes ‘l’s turn into ‘1’s, other times capital ‘O’s become numeral ‘0’s, and vice versa, and so on. Still, even if I have to massage a long quote taken from an OCR-ed image, it’s really much better than typing it in by hand.
Finally, when I have a PDF, I store it in an archive managed by an annotation app called Mendeley. I think Mendeley is a lot like other programs – like Refworks, Zotero, Papers 2, etc. – so I won’t get all snooty about it – it’s cludgy at times, but generally pretty good for me. I like it because it keeps my files visible in/on the harddrive rather than in some strange and hidden folder (so I can use Finder on the Mac to locate a file), and because it auto-magically renames files to something readable, like “Bennett_2003_Culture and Governmentality.pdf” rather than “0857364783.pdf” AND puts it into a folder where I can easily find it, like “Archive/Bennett/Bennett_2003…pdf”.
This organization is great for how I use my iPad. I CANNOT read PDFs on my desktop, nor on Hien’s laptop. There’s something about the iPad – and, I’m guessing, any tablet – that makes it far less of a chore – and even a bit of a pleasure – with which to read from a screen. Maybe it’s the size and format (I read fullscreen in portrait mode, while most LCDs are landscape), or the touch screen rather than mouse and keyboard interface. In any case, I use a program called iAnnotate to transfer PDFs to the iPad, as well as to read and mark them up then automatically sync them back to the archive on the computer when I’m done. Again, I think other readers, like Papers, Goodreader, and so on, would do the job equally well, but I just landed on iAnnotate, and it does the trick.
I should add that in iAnnotate I DO highlight text. I think the reason for this is that it’s such a quick process on a touch screen, and obviously far less permanent than in a book. The other main reason is that when I highlight, the text of what was highlighted gets added to the highlight as a note (Acrobat does this too, but not by default, if I remember correctly.)
Before I talk about Scrivener and iA Writer, my main writing apps, I’ll mention Bento. Bento is a kind of multipurpose database that I use to keep track of what I want to read next, why I need to read it, and where/how it fits into what I’ve already read. I also use it for keeping track of interviews, and for miscellaneous diss. and non-diss stuff (I store recipes there, too). It’s a kind of Excel or Filemaker Pro, spreadsheet database, except a little more visually appealing and technically simpler.
I use Scrivener to store practically everything that’s text-based: from writing snippets to drafts, conference presentations, proposals, and all documents (except literature and media and email) related to my dissertation. Notes I make in Bento, and quotes I pull from books or iAnnotate eventually make their way into Scrivener, for example. I’m still figuring out how to arrange stuff – e.g. using the binder view and/vs. the “collections” view, using keywords, etc. – but it’s the big depository in any event.
I also use it to write when I’m at home; however, when I’m out, I use a simple writing app called iA Writer. I find this works to cut out distraction, and help me just focus on writing, which I can often but not always do in Scrivener. Again, there are other apps like Writer (not, in my experience, like Scrivener, however), but Writer seems to do the trick for me.
Finally, I have a backup drive using Time Machine, and my Scrivener project file is – for better or worse – sitting on Dropbox. Call me paranoid, but I want to make sure nothing irretrievable happens to that cluster of data.
Literature 2 – Process
OK, enough about that. Now to talk about what I do, rather than about what technology I use to support this process.
First, when I read, I’m looking for a few things. Direct relevance to the matter at hand, for one. While I would love to read E.P. Thompson on William Morris, it’s probably better for me to read Liam Kane, Grant Kester, and Arlene Goldbard. Even when I read these, I do so selectively (e.g. Goldbard on policy), rather than comprehensively. This may be treacherous on two counts – Am I reading the right/best things? Am I missing something important or crucial? – but I resolve this (in my mind at least) by treating reading as an iterative process. To put it one way, I always feel I’m in an act of re-reading rather than reading; that is, in a process of returning to a text rather than coming at it anew (chances are anyway that I’ve heard about it somewhere before, which is why I’m reading it anyway). To put it another way, I always feel I could do a still closer read – there’s always something I’ll miss or downplay the importance of, whether due to negligence or necessity. I don’t like to get bunged up in the process, in short – the purists among us can cluck their tongues all they want.
Secondly, I read for definitions (including problematizations and contestations of definitions), and wayfinders. By the latter I mean statements like “In this essay, I intend to argue that…” – statements that help clarify intention and direction – but also typesetting conventions like paragraph and section headers (it drives me crazy when authors use opaque numerals, roman or otherwise: “I.,” “VI.” – erg!) Good definitions and wayfinders are often useful quotes, I’m sure it’s obvious to state, since they are also condensations of thought and analysis, and constitute a text’s most accessible points of encounter (for critique or otherwise).
Thirdly, I read for imagery. This is when my claim to “direct relevance” breaks down, because I might find something by George Orwell or John Berger that’s far more evocative than in an analysis of Richard Florida by Graeme Evans. Needless to say, the reading will change as my notion of “directly relevant” changes at varying stages. In addition, I try to remain open to whatever I read, and try to strike a balance between the possibility that everything is potentially emblematic of the neoliberal, biopolitical, commodity-culture, (etc., etc.) context from which the dissertation springs, yet only a select few of these is really capable of speaking to and with the substance of the dissertation (the rest being far more spurious).
OK – I’d appreciate comments and criticisms of this – I get the sense I’m not the only one who likes to “talk shop” like this. (In the meantime, I’ll get cracking on part 2.)
thinking practice 