I had a breakthrough yesterday. I discovered that I can accomplish a lot of revision, questioning, and editing of a paragraph in 5-10 minutes chunks. This is how it worked with this paper thus far:

1) rough draft
2) 2-3 revisions before paper was deemed a “draft” and ready to share
3) 1 discussion of paper
4) revision of one especially troubling paragraph
5) discussion of paragraph with experienced writing teachers
6) another revision done in maybe 3 – 5-10 minute episodes

I finally feel like things are coming together with this one paragraph that has been troubling me. I expect I’ll have another couple of revisions before I’m completely satisfied with it (well, at least satisfied for a few months).

Being able to see the entire paragraph on one page helped. I do what I need to do to see it all. I single-space it, or double space it, or cut it apart and layout the pieces across the desk. I need to *see* the whole paragraph at once. I don’t know if anyone else suffers from this, but seeing it all helps me put my thoughts together on paper.

Also, I was talking with S. and we realized that we both write backwards. That is, we write sentences at the end of paragraphs that should really go at the beginning and phrases at the beginning or end of sentences that later need to be flipped. It feels good to know that I’m not the only one who does this.