#I'm in between houses at the moment and hauling around twenty books for whatever project I'm currently working on

[the-busy-ghost]

Worst thing about being more of a history person is that when I finally do get the drive to sit down and Write, nine times out of ten I can’t follow up on that drive because you can’t just sit down and write history and I don’t just have a pile of research sitting around waiting to be written up

#And it takes me ages to research stuff #Even when I was at my most productive in early 2020 I still wasn't getting regular writing practise #And I do tend to retain information better by using output methods (writing or explaining to other people etc) #So I'm not even retaining a lot of the information I gained through research until I get to the writing point #Which means that if I don't get the research finished quickly for whatver reason (one source being unavailable for a while for example) #A lot of it just falls out of my brain again #So no benefit either way- no written essay accomplished but also no new info gained for my brain to store #It is also not a very portable form of writing #I'm in between houses at the moment and hauling around twenty books for whatever project I'm currently working on #plus a laptop with access to all my primary sources #Is not really a recipe for regular and effective working #Maybe it would be easier if I was one of those people who read one dubious source then make a tik tok or youtube video about it #But that is not great practise #I did used to write stuff from memory a lot when I was younger but I wouldn't do that now #While working from memory is fine for conversational education (i.e. as a guide at a historic property or being interviewed) #Written media lasts a lot longer so I have a vested interest in fact-checking before I write it down #And then it's like a drug #One source leads to another and you're never entirely satisfied with the end result but you used as much information as you could find #To be fair I still get it wrong a lot of the time even when I DO do lots of research but at least I know I've tried my best #Maybe I should go back to short posts occasionally with basic memorised info #But I'm not sure how helpful that would be to people since they can get that on wikipedia #And it wouldn't be great writing practise either #Plus it doesn't really encourage people to research further on their own if you can't provide a good source they can go to next #If I wrote about the interesting stuff from memory I would want to provide sources to back it up and make sure I described it correctly #And like the only stuff I would be willing to put out there without sources is the boring stuff people already know #Ach well #First world problems #Writing