Summer writing project (Day One)

During the past year, I joined a group at my school that was working on writing research articles. We were using the book, Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks by Wendy Belcher to help us through the process. One thing we liked about the book is that it's actually more realistic than its title suggests--for me, the 12 weeks has stretched out into something closer to 36 weeks and counting. 

I also found that I wasn't able to keep up with the writing, so I'm now coming back to my paper after a two-month hiatus. (Sorry, Dr. Belcher!) I have a couple of months to work on it before I have to start teaching again (I have a class to teach starting in early July), so I'm going to try to see if I can finish a solid draft by then. First step is to remind myself of what I was writing about!

I reread my introduction draft this morning and was excited at what I was working on, though at the same time I feel as though the introduction is taking me in a different direction than I was originally thinking. That is, it seems to be introducing a different paper from the one I thought I was working on. I'm now considering what I should do about that. One part of me wants to continue on this introduction and see where it takes me, but another part of me wants to go back to the draft of the body of the paper (which is a bit of a mess) and see how I can work my way from there back to a more suitable introduction. Probably I'd have to rewrite the body as part of that process, but I'll have to do that anyway. 

If I did the latter, I suppose I could keep the first introduction for another paper. I like it, though, and at least part of it seems relevant to what I plan to write about for this paper, but I'm not sure how to tame it to get it to move me to where I want to be. 

Well, this is the first day of the summer writing project, so I guess it's OK if I am working through these kinds of questions at this "early" stage.

I'll try to continue with these vague blog posts on my writing process throughout the summer. At least it might force me to keep getting up early and doing some writing.