Paper-writing thoughts.

~Knowing that a paper is bad does not help me to make it better. In fact, it tends to distract me with its badness.

~I dislike looking at a bad paper and wondering if I could turn it in anyway, just to be done with it. I really, really dislike that.

~I'm not much better at the big picture than I was in elementary school. I've always been much better at "what's this paragraph about" than "what's this paper about." Somehow, everything is always about everything to me. This makes for bad writing.

~When one editor says "this part is right on" and another says "this part is way off" about the same part, it's hard to know who's right.

~I will not declare the experts' claims to be "patent nonsense." (I will, however, find another way to say "patent nonsense," or die trying.)