I love this quote Russell Belk gave an ACR Newsletter interviewer in 2002. It brings home just what a major feat of thinking, organising and writing this essay was
“…my project on the meaning of possessions in our lives began with my acquisition and possession of relevant material. Indexing it was the first step in organizing it. As with most research, this wasn’t a linear process of accumulating, sorting, allocating, and assorting materials. It was instead a cyclical iterative hermeneutic tacking between materials, concepts, and the library (always a seductive trap). Similarly, the writing process didn’t flow from outline to draft to manuscript to revision. It was more a continual process of writing, searching, re-writing, and researching. I wrote until I lost inspiration and then turned to something else. Or, troubled by a conceptual dilemma, like how possessions relate to our sense of the past, I pondered or headed off to the library in search of clues. Others’ references led me to more sources. I read, underlined, thought, and then forgot about it as I shifted my attention elsewhere. Ideas woke me from sleep or emerged on my morning run, and I scribbled them down or rehearsed and elaborated on them so they wouldn’t be lost…Unlike the more systematic indexing process, this stage usually results in lots of little Post-it notes and scribblings on the backs of envelopes, napkins, and anything else to hand when the muse visits.”