Moments of brilliant stupidity

[rebeccmeister]

On Friday and today, I've been working on that leafcutter manuscript I mentioned. I've gotten all the way to the Discussion, but have been feeling stuck on the Discussion. What to talk about, at what length? How to structure the damn thing? My PhD advisor offered one clue, in the form of "talk about your results first, THEN the other literature," based on the material that's currently there under the label of Discussion, but I have still been hung up on something. How to structure it so it all hangs together as a coherent story? What's the most efficient way to bang out a Discussion for an academic paper? In writing about the subject, I tend to wander off into the forest, admiring all the different trees and flowers, reading all the papers that are only remotely related to what I'm working on, and then reading all the interesting papers that are cited in those remote papers. Basically.

Just now, I had a flash of insight, based on something clever I learned from my first postdoc advisor. His strategy is to sketch out the main talking points based around the figures. Bring it back to the data, the heart of the story.

Duh.

I think I can do this now.

Comments

[twoeleven.livejournal.com]

Don't feel bad: I do a surprising amount of thinking on the "Aha! ...duh." model. :P

[rebeccmeister.livejournal.com]

It's true. Me too.

[twoeleven.livejournal.com]

Having mentioned the "Aha! ...duh." model to Dïe Überblønde, she admits she does more science on that basis than she really wants to talk about. Clearly, we must publish this result! :)




...duh.

[shellynoir.livejournal.com]

I have a friend who can help you with this stuff but she's too poor to help you for free. I'm not sure what's fair to charge. She is excellent.

[rebeccmeister.livejournal.com]

I think this is a thing that I am just going to have to bash my head up against repeatedly, but thank you for the suggestion!