One of the arguments I had with my father when I was in grade-school was over the necessity of outlining when writing. He was for it, I didn’t see the need. By college I had a better understanding of the importance of having a clear organization for essays. However, what I tended to do was sketch out a very short outline, then write a quick rough draft–getting all my ideas down, then I would go back and write a new outline (now that I knew what I really wanted to say), and finally I cut and pasted the material into the right sections of this new outline. By the time I was working on my doctorate, I had become committed to outlining, and my first outlines became more and more detailed. The work I was doing was simply too complicated–particularly Read more…