Planning and Research
Transcript
Claudia Laycock: A great deal of research goes into writing my decisions and rulings. The attorneys submit their motions and their memoranda to go with their motions. My law clerk and I take a look at the research they’ve done, we’ve double checked the cases they cite for accuracy. Sometimes they misquote or they quote out of context to make a point and so we very carefully look at what they’ve told us to make sure we agree. Sometimes they don’t get all the issues, sometimes we see issues that they didn’t see, so we go and do our own independent research. We’ll do our own research to make sure everything that’s there has been considered. The problem is that if we don’t do that when it goes up on appeal and the attorney generals office, for instance, takes the appeal on a criminal case they may go on and find additional cases that the attorneys did not cite. My goal is to look like I covered everything.
Fidel Montero: When I write a document, the process that I go through has several steps. Obviously, first I have a question that I need to address and a lot of times I like to have that question a day or two in advance without putting words on paper. Once I let it stew in my head for sometime, I sit down and I brainstorm, and I brainstorm what ideas I’ve been thinking about, make an outline of course, and start writing, and once I write something I go back and edit and make sure it meets my expectations and again if its an email or something obviously I don’t go through that same process but I do go through the process of just thinking what I want to say in this email and how they’re going to perceive it.
Susan Black: I have had topics assigned to me by the Church, but for the most part I choose my own topics. I’m always thinking, I’m always reading. I read to write, I don’t read recreationally. And so reading to write says—suddenly I begin to wonder about things and then I wonder if anybody else has done this. I hit the library to see if anybody did it, and if not, there is a hole in the publication and so then I decide it’s worth it and address it. I am never working on one project at a time.
I am very committed to truth and that truth needs to edify. Sometimes there are topics out there that I wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole, although I know that there is a scholarly, popular audience that is waiting for it. I need to make sure that my life is right with the Lord and that what I am thinking about doing will actually fly and there will be an audience so that I am not spinning my wheels and suddenly the publication never comes out.
Probably the most dramatic was that as we were preparing for 2005, I thought it would be wonderful to have a DVD/TV broadcast on Joseph Smith. I though about it, contacted my betters, contacted BYU TV and before we knew it, a whole series on Joseph Smith [was in production]: five hours of a selling DVD and accompanying book.
Abe Mills: When I’m going to write a blog or an update on the website, I usually have to write down what it is I am trying to cover—what’s the purpose of the blog, what’s the purpose of updating the website—either an event that happened or an event that’s coming up. And then I write down generally the things that I want to get into that entry.
A little outline or a list, most times it’s a list. Every once in while I’ll do an outline generally if it’s a longer type thing or a talk that I’m going be giving for a devotional or something like that that sometimes will end up being an outline more.
James Christensen: Most of the writing I do begins with an image. It starts with visual ideas and painting. I’m a very visual thinker. I though that’s the way everybody conjured things up until I started working as an illustrator with writers and found that when I’d ask a writer, because I was doing a cover of his book, “What does this character look like? What color hair do they have? What’s their bite like? Do they have a big mouth, a little mouth?” “I don’t know. I think in words. I know the character I have no idea. I don’t care what they look like.” And I say, “Gee that’s all I care about,” you know, getting that visual across. I realized some people think in words and some people think in pictures. I think in pictures. And then it’s a question of describing what I see in my mind in words to try and communicate something with somebody else.
Shanna Butler: When somebody assigns me work it’s not always interesting to me, but if they want that then I go start researching it and I compile all the information. I do my interviews, I take my photographs, and then I piece that together into the document that they want in the length that they want and I send that into them. I start doing everything in my head before I ever get anything onto the screen and tend to be a paperless type of person- so whenever I research, if I do it on the internet. I compile documents on my computer of all the research that I need . . .
Terry Olson: Often I’ve been writing notes to myself about an idea that might occur to me. Often student questions will generate a realization in me “this issue ought to get out into print.” Sometimes in talking to colleagues, I see the things that need to be researched are not necessarily the things we do research on. I often write up notes—I often ask questions to myself that I can get back to later and turn into an article or a chapter, depending. I guess I’m always thinking out loud, and frankly, I’m also always trying to answer the “so what” question. That is, if there is an idea or research results that have implications for everyday life, I’m always asking the question, “How can I show that possibility to folks? How can I write in a way that whether they are professionals or just the educated public [they understand]? How can I write in a way that they see meaningfulness, significance in what I am doing?”
I probably spend this much time planning [hands far apart], and this much time writing [hands close], and it probably ought to be the other way around. The planning ought to be cut short by the fact that you get into it, get into the pool and swim and see where you’re going to go. It’s by writing that I see what else needs to be written. I better be skeletal or at least simple in my planning so that I don’t wander around before I’ve started getting it on paper. I can always revise it if it’s on paper; if I haven’t written anything there’s nothing to redo, there’s no way to improve. Get in there and write and you’ll figure out what you need to write and how you need to revise once you’ve got it down.
Susan Meyer: As a federal lab, we have a mission that we are supposed to fulfill—we are not supposed just do science for our own entertainment, right? We have a broad mission that we work within, but within that we are at liberty to pursue any research that we think is meaningful. I have certain tracks of research that I have carried out for many years so it’s sort of like a path. One idea leads to another—you do a lot of research and it leads to more questions. And so you just keep following along, writing more grants, get another chunk of money and carry out the next phase—that sort of thing.
The planning to write something, in my field, it sort of depends on whether it’s a getting money document or a reporting results document. Reporting results is fairly straight forward. In science there is a fairly formulaic model for how a paper is constructed and you just have to fit your study into the formula. For trying to convince people that they should fund your research, it takes a lot more creativity and sort of salesmanship. It starts with brainstorming with the other scientists that I am going to be submitting the proposal with and just spending a lot of time talking, back and forth, saying what would be a nice package and what would have high saleability. What do we really feel like working on—you don’t want to get money just because you get money, you want to do something that you really want to work on. That’s the main collaborative part, sort of thinking up the cool ideas what are you going try to get money to do.