A Writer's Notebook, Day One-Thousand-Four-Hundred-And-Twenty-Five

There is a strange thing that keeps occurring as I work on my essay: each time I begin to expect that I will start to wind down, I discover whole lot more that I feel is significant and necessary for me to explore, at least a bit.  I know that I will not be able to include all of what I am finding out right now, unless I make the piece a full length manuscript, but I also realize that I won't be able to bring it all together if I don't understand things fully.  I began this piece with a good sense of what I was talking about and a certainty that I would be able to make my case, but as I have read and researched, I've found far more than I expected.  To be honest, I am often quite surprised that some of the things I am noticing have not turned up in other papers I am reading, because it is so obvious.  A friend of mine who has looked at much of what I have written already told me he thinks that I should simultaneously begin cutting to make a shorter article that I can try to get published right now, and also continue to expand it into a book-length piece in a separate document.  It may be that he is right.  I know that I want to have something ready to submit sooner than latter, and I think an article will have a far better chance to start with.

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