Critical Mass

So this summer I've been participating in an online writing group at Notorious's place. We're three weeks into a twelve week session here: http://girlscholar.blogspot.com/2011/06/welcome-to-week-three.html

It's been interesting for me, because it makes me think about how my writing processes do and do not work. In some ways the writing group makes me feel inadequate. I'm not (so far at least) racking up large word count gains. Instead, I've written something like 50 pages (about 22,000 words) of notes on my readings of primary and secondary sources. It is only today that I was able to create an outline for the conference paper (to be converted into a book ms chapter later this summer) that is the immediate goal. Suddenly, after about three weeks of work, I was able to write--in about an hour or so--a fairly detailed outline of the paper, one that is adequate for the short conference paper version and that can easily be translated into a chapter-length version of the argument.

This type of progress is not unusual for me--in fact, even though I was not meeting my goals for each week, I was not really worried that I would miss my deadlines. I've done enough writing by now to know that I need to reach a certain critical mass before I will be able to write productively. For me that means reading widely and somewhat indiscriminately: articles on my theme in the centuries before or after my period, obscure sources with little immediate relevance, out-of-date monographs with an old-fashioned critical methodology. When I reach critical mass I can often "see" my argument whole, and it's the most amazing feeling. Earlier today I had it: I wrote for more than an hour, connecting the isolated evidence and observations that, just yesterday, were merely frustrating and elusive shadows of an argument.

What this post is about, though, is whether I am fooling myself about this need for critical mass. The writing group encourages a different kind of discipline: write 500 words a day, or for 60 minutes. I love the idea of this kind of discipline, but what if it is counterproductive? Is my belief in critical mass an example of, as I wrote in response to the first week of the writing group

recognize [ing] one's strengths and weaknesses and, to the extent possible, arrange [ing] one's schedule to maximize the former and minimize the latter

or is it simply magical thinking?