Just as people chided Niklas Luhmann for his obtuseness in writing based on his zettelkasten, Gotthard Deutsch's critics felt he didn't write enough using his.

Intellectual work requires "surfaces" to work against, almost as an exact analogy to substrates in chemistry which help to catalyze reactions. The surfaces may include: - articles, books, or other writing against which one can think and write - colleagues, friends, family, other thinkers, or even imaginary characters (as suggested by C. Wright Mills) - one's past self as instantiated by their (imperfect) memory or by their notes about excerpted ideas or their own thoughts

Are there any other surfaces we're missing?

Thanks for this! I like the framing and general concept of the book.

It seems like its a good follow on to Dan Allosso's OER text How to Make Notes and Write https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/write/ or Sönke Ahrens' How to Take Smart Notes https://amzn.to/3DwJVMz which includes some useful psychology and mental health perspective.

Other similar examples are Umberto Eco's How to Write a Thesis (MIT, 2015) or Gerald Weinberg's The Fieldstone Method https://amzn.to/3DCf6GA These may be some of what we're all missing.

I'm reminded of Mark Robertson's (@calhistorian) discussion of modeling his note taking practice and output in his classroom using Roam Research. https://hyp.is/QuB5NDa0Ee28hUP7ExvFuw/thatsthenorm.com/mark-robertson-history-socratic-dialogue/ Perhaps we need more of this?

Early examples of this sort of note taking can also be seen in the religious studies space with Melanchthon's handbook on commonplaces or Jonathan Edwards' Miscellanies, though missing are the process from notes to writings. https://www.logos.com/grow/jonathan-edwards-organizational-genius/

Other examples of these practices in the wild include @andy_matuschak's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGcs4tyey18 and TheNonPoet's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sdp0jo2Fe4 Though it may be better for students to see this in areas in which they're interested.

Hypothes.is as a potential means of modeling and allowing students to directly "see" this sort of work as it progresses using public/semi-public annotations may be helpful. Then one can separately model re-arranging them and writing a paper. https://web.hypothes.is/

Reply to: https://twitter.com/BenjaminVanDyne/status/1571171086171095042

Harris, Joseph. Rewriting: How To Do Things With Texts. Logan: Utah State University Press, 2006. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/9248

I used to think that taking notes was an important but relatively small part of my work. But now I think of note-taking as my actual work.

I wonder if it would be useful to distinguish between research and scholarship, where formal research is but one type of scholarly practice?

If we look at a journal as a channel for promoting scholarship then there's no reason that we can't include essays as a category of writing.

Bad art and academic writing on parade

Always write with the reader in mind. Good writing isn't a vanity project i.e. it's not about you. If you can't get your message across clearly then you're letting down your reader.

I often see this in my undergraduate and postgraduate students; they make a conceptual move without signalling it to the reader, which leaves the reader feeling discombobulated.

Impact of Social Sciences. ‘How to Run an Academic Writing Retreat and Bring the Campus Back Together’, 9 November 2020. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2020/11/09/how-to-run-an-academic-writing-retreat-and-bring-the-campus-back-together/.

See Silvia, P. J. (2018). How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing (Second Edition). APA LifeTools.

See Pinker, S. (2014, September 26). Why Academics Stink at Writing. Chronicle of Higher Education, 16.

This idea of "identity" is important. Many academics don't even think of themselves as authors let alone bloggers.

I never really got into the habit of writing in the margins of books, it was something that never really occurred to me. While I am still hesitant to write in the margins of physical books, doing so digitally does appeal. Something I am starting to get more into, now that I'm on the journey to getting my Arts and Humanities degree.

classic scholarly move -- I'm appreciating the repeated use of the personal "I" through here. I've noticed (both here and in Paul's class) that scholars of rhetoric seem more amenable to personal insertion into academic writing.

https://zines.barnard.edu/judithbutler-rebellion

Kamler, Barbara. 2008. “Rethinking Doctoral Publication Practices: Writing from and beyond the Thesis.” Studies in Higher Education 33 (3): 283–94. doi:10.1080/03075070802049236.

seriously?