1/ To write, you have to do research, and I since a certain point I have always been under such pressure to write before doing research. In research you follow up on things, read, and let what you read change your thoughts rather than just eat the pieces you need for your own writing production machine. (Dialectics, you know, and research is a dialogue, we remember.)
After reading you think, and then you write, and of course writing refines your ideas and leads you further but you first did research and you thought. That is to say that you start out with some material, not just with a hypothesis and the air. It all fizzles, or goes in circles if you do not have enough to start with. I have been explaining this to composition students since I was 24 and I do not believe it does not apply to me. I think all the instructions about starting before you are ready and also about how reading is a delaying tactic are misplaced.
2/- We learned to do research long ago but received increasingly hysterical instructions the more advanced we got. Then research was only done as a kind of demonstration, or recreationally, or when something simply had to be found out and reported upon. In field, we were to just write. However, I still find it impossible to finish writing projects without doing research. I can start based on something cursory, but not finish, and no, this is not about perfectionism but about being sufficiently informed, and yes, I know the difference.
To restate, I always thought writing was supposed to be about research. All the sudden instructions about “just writing” that we got later on, once we had all kinds of degrees and a page of articles or more in our vitas, never made sense to me. Despite having my most brilliant ideas come to me in conversation or when I am already trying to put ideas into words, I like to investigate and think before writing, even if it is only a blog post.
3-/ I realize this is written in a naive tone. I realize that at one point I was so terrorized by the plethora of instructions that had suddenly arrived that I shut down, and that this response was personal. Still I suspect this post has to do with more general issues including excessive emphasis on the product-ness of the product, and not its content.
I told the students tonight that I wanted 12-15 pages, not 20-30, and this surprised them. I told them I wanted no padding, and this shocked them. I told them I wanted key critical works acknowledged, but no specific number of citations. That is, I said having citations just to have them would never do, but ignoring key scholars on an issue would not, either.
They were reaching for life rafts, can I compare this (about which I know nothing) to that (because it bears a superficial similarity or shares an element with this)? What issues are you interested in, I kept countering. They want to create poorly informed, long, and well formatted products. I want them to have informed insights that are tight like springs, and well elaborated.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
As you read, and do research, do you take notes, write down things? Or do you just “write,” formulate ideas in language, in your head? I tend to do the latter more, so that when I do write I have some language to start with. If I were a better researcher I would take more notes on what I read and then use those to write, rather than having to go back to the reading material and try to remember everything.
I take notes while I read and write down ideas. I also formulate language in my head. But when I actually write, I am using those ideas and what I have already written down. Having to go back to the books very much at that point is a real obstacle.
People keep going on about how you should do messy “prewriting” and I never understood this — trying to do it was what made me give up writing for a long time, actually — but maybe they say this because they do not take notes and work out ideas while they read?
People talk about messy pre-writing because they have writing anxieties and need to tiptoe around the anxiety. It sounds as though you do not have this problem. The advice about ‘don’t research, just write’ is also designed to short-circuit anxieties. Naturally a lot of standard advice will make no sense to you, beause you do not have the relevant anxiety complexes.
Please try to understand, though, that many people who pass that advice around are passing it because it is the only thing that lets them approach writing at all.
That is interesting … so it works? I actually find that for people with writing anxieties, “just write” only ups the ante and makes things worse. They do a lot better with specific instructions, very step by step, essentially about how to make notes to write from. What terrifies them in my observation is precisely being expected to “just write.” What I have is a set of steps to get *ready* to write. Skipping these puts me in the same situation as the people with writing anxieties.
So, they have anxiety around the act of writing itself. I don’t relate, it is true, but the reason I harp on this is really something like the dishonesty of professors … the assumption that if one is having any difficulty with a project it must be “time management” or “writing anxiety” and not anything serious like project design (or anything else that can’t be brushed off with a self help DVD or something like that).
I think organized research notes are far better than disorganized free writing.
So do I. I also dislike “brainstorming.” That and disorganized free writing, especially when you do it to the tune of an alarm clock the way people do nowadays, are incredibly draining, exhausting, anxiety producing, confusing, and generally counterproductive. After trying these things it takes me time to rest up and more time to gather my thoughts, clear my mind, and come back to the nice research notes and idea cards I could have worked from in the first place.
Another excellent post about writing and thinking. I’ve had a long journey through different approaches to writing. I think a detour through freewriting ultimately made me a better note-taker and organizer, but we might actually all be in agreement, because I think my free-writing is organized in that I give myself a topic to write on, rather than doing a core dump. But again, there’s a big difference (I think—maybe not?) between someone who gathers lots of information and has thought about it sitting down to “free-write” about a specific topic and someone who has not done much research or thinking in advance likewise sitting down to free-write about an idea.
If I “write in my head” I just forget everything except that I had a good idea. I have to write things down. Always have. I have never understood people who have insights while going for walks or doing the dishes. I think that happened to me exactly once.
I do have those insights while walking or doing dishes, but only if I am also writing.
I think what you call free writing, I would call writing for proposals and abstracts, or for exams. I love that kind of writing, it really helps to organize thoughts. But I don’t call it “free” and I don’t push myself to do it at lightning speed, with an alarm clock on and a goad at my back, the way people seem to like to!