Thoughts on academic writing.

I'm working on my third paper now, whilst I await my boss' comments upon the rewrite of Paper #1 (rejected once, pondering where next to submit) and the third draft of Paper #2 (as yet unsubmitted), and I'm, as ever, experimenting, to see if a modal change in how I write has an effect upon my productivity or clarity of thought and word.

(I've already determined that I need to write in the morning if I'm to get anything done at all... once I go to the lab and come back, my brain goes *fweeeeep!* and I usually have a very hard time re-engaging.)

I'm working over the Discussion section right now, wherein I briefly revisit our findings to summarize and assemble a few interpretations, maybe I'll posit a new disease model, and then I'll likely wrap it all up with a proposal for the field's next steps. Basically, it's a section wherein I apply spin to my work.

This morning I find I'm struck by the layered (or threaded) thoughts I need to keep track of as I'm writing this particular section:

look here, my results are condensed to a paragraph

these are the obvious interpretations based on the immediately relevant other work in the field that my findings now reflect upon

those are the greater implications if you factor in related work A, Q, and z

and that's the pile of info rattling around the back of my head about all the other work I've done that I'm writing up, that I cannot mention here, as the work should appear to be independently designed and developed

then mix in the Really Big Picture review-type document I'm laying out, which will likely serve as both the first and last chapter of my thesis document as well as another submitted paper if someone were to ask our lab for a summation of recent advances in our field, wherein we would highlight our recent contributions.

Keeping them separate so that I can focus on writing the little paragraph I need to write right now is an interesting challenge. What reflection upon this process has shown me, however, is just how fantastically great, in scope and in scale, my training and my education have been, to get me to this level of intellectual comportment. Because I compare myself to the undergrads I'm teaching and asking myself "How the hell did I ever get myself from there to here?"

(Yeah, science PhDs are totally the arch-mages of the modern age--what we do is just so arcane.)