Amalgams

I don't know how I managed it, but somehow I lost sight of the way I write essays until approximately two hours ago.

This is rather funny, because my preferred methodology actually came as a direct result of learning, my freshman year, one of the ways Petra chose to organize her essays: by jotting ideas on index cards and then arranging the cards to mirror how she would structure her essay. And even funnier: it was not too long that I mentioned, in chatting with Petra, how I still used that particular methodology when organizing essays.

Due on Monday: a seminar paper about House of Leaves. But for a couple of days, I felt I'd hit a roadblock. Until I remembered this method. I spew out an amalgam of ideas, one per index card. And then I spew out a bunch of quotes from the text itself and a couple of analyses of the text.

Then I start playing feng shui with the index cards. Before I know it . . . there's a paper there! Magically appearing. I just have to fill in the blanks . . .