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How to know if you have read enough or one more source to cite?

In my academic writing journey this year, an issue that has been plaguing me is whether I’m suffering from the “one more source to cite” myth and procrastinating on starting writing or whether I just haven’t read enough. How can you tell?

I’m critical of this issue because, on the one hand, I like how Joli Jensen spells out the different writing myths and issues, so you can name them and think more clearly about whether they’re a problem you’re dealing with. On the other hand, as Cathy Mazak’s Making Time to Write points out, many of the narratives we’re fed about (academic) writing are derived from hustle culture, which says you need to be disciplined and force yourself to write no matter what. Mazak points out that to have a good writing practice, you need to associate it with positive feelings and trust yourself. These two perspectives seem opposed to one another.

So, am I procrastinating or did I just not read enough and thus feel not ready to start?

Initially, I thought I was procrastinating, but now that I’ve read yet another book, I’m starting to feel like this isn’t adding much new information. I feel like I’m finally arriving at the point where I’ve read enough to make a good historical argument. When I read a new article, I can point out, “Hey, I don’t think this is the way you’re saying it; I think you’re missing something,” because I know the literature well enough to add new, interesting claims. When I feel not ready, I feel like I could write something, but it’s not fully formed. I feel like I’m missing information or need to read another source.

So, am I suffering from the “one more source to cite” myth, or is that myth also derived from this view of writing as part of hustle culture that derives from this deeply masculinized, patriarchal view, where we have to force ourselves to write every day? That depicts writing as a matter of willpower, which of course is easier for privileged white men without care or household responsibilities.

Or is it something where you need to cultivate self-trust? I’m still struggling with this issue.

I understand the three phases of writing but when to start with the first draft?

I now understand that there are three stages to writing: the pre-draft stage with the excerpting and outlining, then the first draft and then editing. But I’m struggling with knowing when is the right time to write that first draft and how to get from excerpt material and outline to that first version of the final text.

Overall, my idea was that I would write better articles that are faster to edit if I take longer to come up with a good outline and narrative before I start writing, so I don’t need to do most of the thinking as I’m writing. If I start writing too early without knowing where I’m going, I’ll need to do a lot of work fixing the article, making sure it makes sense. It’s much harder to fix something that isn’t working to begin with rather than starting with something that fundamentally works.

Of course, writing is also something that can help you think, but I think this helping you think should happen in the pre-draft and the excerpting phase. I think for the most part you should not be getting too many new ideas as you’re writing them down because, as Joshua Schimel says in Writing Science, you should build your argument from the bottom up, so from the data and let the data speak and listen to your characters basically, but you have to write the story from the top down if you want the result to be good.

So, I’m not sure yet whether all of this is a learning process or just an elaborate procrastination tactic.

How to tell if you have read enough

However, in two of the articles I’m currently working on, if I read something else, it feels like “I already know all this”—it’s just another piece of the puzzle I already know. I can observe it critically and not just take it in as new information.

That’s something Joshua Schimel says grad students often do: their writing sounds like they’re explaining it to themselves, which is fine but belongs in the pre-draft stage, maybe a little in the draft stage, but all that definitely needs to be cut out in the final submission.

Ergo, a good indicator for when it’s time to move on to the next stage might be when I feel like I’m not gaining much new information from reading something else. Cal Newport points out that you need to know when you’ve read enough and shouldn’t overdo it, but how do you know?

I think you can tell you’ve read enough when new leads aren’t that exciting or aren’t really new to you. This is a matter of self-trust. It could also be an elaborate procrastination tactic, but sometimes you know in your gut that you haven’t truly mastered the topic. This is also a feminist issue because men often tend to feel like they have something important to say and master the topic earlier than women or trust themselves more, which is often recounted as a deficit narrative for women. But maybe women sometimes have a more realistic outlook on their actual skill level.

Conclusions for now

I think you should do research until you feel like you’re done, then you outline, and only in exceptional cases find that you might have to go back to the literature. I would suggest doing a good part of the reading first, then start outlining because you need to begin building some ideas. You can do that partly while creating excerpt, pre-draft text material. Once you’ve outlined, you may need to go back into the literature, as the direction you’re heading might require additional theory or perspectives you hadn’t anticipated. As Newport has notes about college essays in How to be a Straight A Student, these are smaller research works, but for a PhD thesis or academic article, you often need to return to the literature. Outlining and then going back to the literature to refine your ideas is a part of the process. Once I’ve developed a good process, I think the eight-step process proposed by Cal Newport isn’t a bad starting point.

I’m still figuring this out, but I’ll take you along on the ride.

That’s it for now,

best,

S


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Sarah Lang (July 22, 2024). How to know if you have read enough or one more source to cite? Epigrammetry. Retrieved April 24, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/122nb


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