I’ve been focusing more on working lately than on writing here, and it’s been productive.  I have about 4000 words (half in the introduction and the other half in the lit review which is still obviously too short) and have read and organized quite a lot more.

However when I sat down this morning I realized I have a problem.  On each side of my keyboard, with little room for anything else, are piles of journal articles.

One of my tactics thus far is that when I am reading an article and find a reference to something I believe will need to be included, I find that article, add the bibliographic data to zotero, send the article to my printer and then go back to the one I was reading.  This is a great way to ensure that I never run out of things to read, or forget to go back and look an article up.  However it has resulted in piles of papers that I haven’t gotten two yet.

I had originally thought I needed to read all this stuff first, THEN start writing.  However I am finding that writing is helping me focus my thoughts, so I don’t want to stop.  But I also need to organize all this paper, and quite obviously two piles (read and unread) isn’t doing the trick. (Of course, had I read this series on a paperless dissertation BEFORE I started, I might not have this problem….the article REALLY make me want a mac though.)  (UPDATE: A bit of digging (yay procrastination) turned up Mendeley, a piece of software for windows similar to Papers for mac that the author of the paperless dissertation references.)

Usually when I post I try to have a solution ready to go.  Today I don’t have one.  I’ll let you know when I come up with something, but if you have an idea definitely drop it in comments….