Today I was going through a paper draft written by one of my students. There were lots of cool figures and citations and excellent formatting, but the core argument was not yet totally worked out.
And it occurred to me that writing a paper is sort of like building a house. You really shouldn’t paint the walls, put in furniture and hang up artwork until you know where all the rooms will go.
I made a draft of the student’s paper that took out everything except his core argument itself, and I invited him to work with me to figure out where to put the rooms and support beams in his house.
After that, I think it will be relatively easy for him to repaint the walls, put back the chairs and tables, and hang up the artwork.