Wednesday, May 23, 2018

Let's Write a Paper!

I've chosen my first topic for unfreezing my writer's block.  Originally, I thought about writing something on the Old West but the topic seems a little expansive and Wyoming isn't my favorite state (just kidding, Wyoming - Stay Boring and Hyper-conservative), so I decided to table that for now.  I do wanna work the history angle for now, as it doesn't require much in the way of emotional stakes.

Instead, I've decided to write about my neighborhood, Rogers Park.  I'm aware of some of the history, but I can probably dig further and find some useful nuggets.  Rogers Park is certainly an eccentric place.  It fights fiercely for its culture of tolerance and diversity, even in situations where it doesn't necessarily meet those standards.  It's a got strong aversion to gentrification, even in cases where a reasonable compromise may benefit all parties involved.  Despite its flaws and its location in Chicago's far north orbit - residents of Naperville taking an express train can actually get downtown faster than I can when taking an 'L' (though there are many qualifications on both sides of that), I've called it home for 13 years.  So, I'm not being too frivolous in deciding to select it for a topic.

I'll do this "high school paper" style and with that in mind, here are a few guidelines:

  • I'm shooting for a post (or series of posts) between 3000 and 5000 words.  At an average reading speed of 250 wpm that will take you, dear reader, somewhere between 12 and 20 minutes to read it.
  • Because it's a high school type paper, I'm not expecting to uncover original material.
  • I'm going to inject my own writing style and asides into the paper, which was always discouraged in high school.  But I'm not actually in high school anymore and am not receiving a grade for this, so I have some latitude.
  • I'll source my material from at least three sources.
  • I'm probably not going to annotate references to my sources throughout the post(s), but I will provide a bibliography.
  • I'll give myself a due date of June 30th for the post(s), so I'm working toward an actual goal.
  • I'll post my working notes in blog posts in the interim, so I'm not just going to go dark.

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