It All Depends on What You Know

Writing up a storm here recently. This writing in short bursts is really working. I can push out about 2 to 4 pages in a half hour, spitting it all out at once makes it less painful, and it actually makes me feel successful when I stand up. That in turn, makes me feel good about getting back into it. There's another side benefit. Writing three different papers at a couple of different times during the day makes me think about what I'm going to write all the time. That makes me more creative and thoughful.

So that's going well, but it's not what I wanted to talk about. Rather, its the expreience I had talking to a friend of mine who's a diplomatic historian about this book on Vietnam. He knows the arguments, knows the historical players, and thus can understand the book in about 2 hours. I don't know squat about it. I read it and have a few ideas about it, but talking to him was a bit intimidating. But then I started to think about the paper I'm writing about the historiography of legal decision-making. I can put these arguments together pretty quick, and provide examples of arguments, and talk about the important people. Bensel, late 19th century industrialization, and law as party politics, Melnick, Federalism, and law as political science, most judges and law as, well, law, and Barry Cushman, the New Deal, and law as philosophy. So I guess I do know something. But I still need to know more.

Don't know where that leaves me, but I told you this blog would have some half baked stuff up.