A question for arts and humanities people, especially those for whom 'research' just means 'reading' (rather than field work etc.):

What sort of balance do you try to strike between reading and writing? I meet my supervisor once a month, and I'm supposed to send her a piece of written work before each meeting for us to talk about. (That's fine by me - 'write early, write often' is good advice, I'm sure.) But I'm also still in the very early stages of getting through all the literature I need to tackle. So obviously there's a trade-off: the longer I spend writing, the less time I can spend reading.

Last month I spent around three weeks mainly reading and one mainly writing, and submitted a pretty good 4,000 word essay, this month I spent four weeks mainly reading - there was a book I promised myself I'd finish! - and turned out a less substantial 2,000 word essay over the weekend. (In my opinion, though, there's still enough there to give the basis of a useful discussion.)

Obviously this is ultimately something for my supervisor and I to work out, but I wondered if anyone had any words of wisdom or rules of thumb to offer. At this stage (first year), should I just be looking to produce quick, short, maybe slightly rough pieces intended just to spark discussion? Or should I be spending a bit longer producing good-quality drafts of material that might ultimately end up being revised for publication or inclusion in my thesis?

I'm social sciences but I never read and write separately. I did try to to begin with but just didn't see the point after several weeks of reading, forgetting, reading AGAIN and then writing. So I tend to have an idea in my mind about a section of writing I want to do and then read around it while writing it. I literally sit with a new journal article and with word up on the screen and just start writing notes. Obviously its often better to start with seminal articles that sum up the area so you get a general overview.

Hey,

I'm in humanities and I actually work much the same way as Sneaks. My first year was slightly different and I would occasionally spend a block few weeks reading, as you mention you have done, but even then I tended to mainly read as I needed to. I might read a book or article which would spark an idea, but then I would only consult the parts of secondary criticism I needed in order to write whatever it was I was aiming at. I would find that I ended up getting through most of the core texts that way, as the bits I had read built up.
I have no idea if cherry picking in this way is the right way to go about things, but it seems to have worked well. I finished my first year with two pieces which will hopefully become chapters in my thesis. I didn't originally intend to take them this far, but I became interested in them and ended up re-drafting numerous times. If they don't end up as chapters, however, I can certainly cut and paste most of it for my introduction, and they've provided me with several conference papers and possibly a publication.
I would advise aiming at lots of short and rough pieces, and don't worry about refining them too much. Allow yourself to gather lots of different ideas. You may find, like me, that one of them grabs your interest and starts to grow into something with more substance.

Thanks guys - some definite food for thought there. Maybe I'm letting myself get too worried by the feeling that there's a mountain of literature to get through, and skewing things too far towards reading.

I like the idea of writing a lot of bits and pieces and then fleshing out the ones that have potential. In fact I'd wondered about asking my supervisor if I should keep working on the essay I've just handed in, and turn in a longer draft next month. I have a feeling there's material in it that could end up in my thesis, and I need to have a chapter finished within a year in order to upgrade, so maybe I should just start working towards that now.

I'm afraid I don't have much advice but I thought I'd add my own thoughts on this which are that my principal problem is building my reading into my writing. At the moment I read things but forget them or can't equate them properly with my own work. I work on literature so interpreting it is the primary content of my writing. Unfortunately that obviously needs to be set into the context of secondary literature. I think the writing you're doing sounds very productive and I need to be doing something similar. In my first year I was producing a piece of writing between 5 and 12,000 words per term but it frequently didn't make much use of the reading I'd done. However, it's still been pretty useful for primary analysis. Now I'm trying to do my upgrade chapter and still have the reading-writing problem though. :-(

I literally do sections of anything up to 7000 words on specific sections of the literature. Mine is quite easy to break into sections. The ones I wrote in the first year seem a bit silly and simplistic now, but SOO useful. It means when it comes to writing a flowing piece I already know the key arguments for each section so I know where I'm going with it. I still haven't written a lit review in full yet - I'm in my 3rd year. But am thinking once I know all my studies I will know which of these sections are relevant and which are not.

I think the best thing is never read without word 2007 on - and endnote and googlescholar so I can immediately go and chase down all those secondary refs (sometimes I never actually finish reading the original paper because I go off looking for the citations).