My way of writing papers is not in the least worth boasting about, and even less suitable for promotion as a model. Everyone who writes with their own blood must have a unique style and method of writing; others cannot imitate it, nor is there any need to imitate it.
Of course, my own way of writing is still in the process of being explored, especially since I still have not been able to begin making use of the vast ocean of foreign-language materials; moreover, the purpose for which I write papers is bound to change. So far, the papers I have written have basically all been course assignments, while why I will write papers in the future is hard to say; at present, that remains unknown. If possible, I will do my best not to write proper papers meant for publication. Either they will be essays, or they will be monographs. Writing papers merely to have them published is utterly uninteresting—there is neither any sense of accomplishment, nor any pleasure, nor can it make one feel at ease. As for the paper I wrote for that principal’s fund project back then, it really had no interest at all, and in the future I will never lightly take on work of my own accord again.
But papers written as course assignments are still quite interesting to write—why? One major reason is that a course paper is something some teacher has forcibly assigned, and I am compelled against my will to write it; only then can it become an exciting thing.
That sounds a bit contradictory—how can something forced upon you be interesting? In fact, as long as you are writing a paper, you are always being forced, because if it were my own inner desire pouring out into an article, it would absolutely be impossible for it to pour out into such a proper, serious paper! So whenever one writes a paper, it must carry some kind of unwilling feeling; the only difference is who is forcing me. Therefore, if it is not the teacher forcing me, but instead I have to force myself, then why should I put myself through that? Why would I go out of my way to make life hard for myself? So when no one is forcing me, but I myself carelessly take on a task, then I end up in a dilemma—if I strike, after all, it is a topic I myself promised to do; if I grit my teeth and write it, then I am once again making things difficult for myself, and it is truly painful. That was exactly how I felt when writing the principal’s fund project back then.
Being forced in the same way, if it is the teacher doing the forcing, then the mind feels much better off—I can choose to strike, because I never made any real commitment in the first place, at most I would just give up a few credits. I can also grit my teeth and write, because at that point I can simply direct my “resentment” toward the teacher, and no longer be making life hard for myself; naturally, the mood becomes much more comfortable.
Thus, the paper is the teacher forcing me, hmph, and I must give a little color back! Of course, this “resentment” is not genuine hatred, but rather a playful attitude—“Come on then, who’s afraid of whom!”
So every course paper is the product of some kind of contest of strength with the teacher.
How do I contend? I always try to write something that that teacher did not mention in class or did not take seriously; absolutely, absolutely never does the whole paper merely follow the teacher’s train of thought. Rather, while following the teacher’s train of thought, I also show things that may lie outside that train of thought.
I notice that many classmates, when writing course papers, do not seek to contend with the teacher in every possible way; instead, they seek to follow the teacher’s wishes in every possible way. I want to ask them: is writing assignments like this exciting? Is it fun? Does it give you any sense of accomplishment? Someone has forced you to write something, and you still meekly follow his line of thought—how dull that is! Not only is it dull for you to write it this way, but I’m afraid it is dull for the teacher to read such assignments as well. People have to prepare a lecture script before class, and the things they themselves have said may have to be repeated year after year; then, when grading assignments, they see countless repetitions of their own words again and again—how annoying that must be. Take, for instance, a reading report: the books you read have already been read by the teacher many times, and his ways of reading have been taught over and over for many years. If you all still write according to the teacher’s preferences, then even if what you write is perfectly accurate, how tedious would it be for the teacher to read it over and over? Of course, I have never graded assignments myself, so I do not know for sure; this is only a guess.
If one does not care too much about the safety margin of one’s grade, then why not make a boring task more thrilling? How about treating an assignment as an opportunity to strike back at the teacher once?
Many classmates often say: I don’t really have any opinions of my own, and I can’t think of any original ideas. In my view, this is not a matter of intelligence or accumulation, but of attitude and courage. Finding a line of thought that belongs to you is not hard at all; all you need is the courage to challenge the teacher. When you see some question and feel that maybe the teacher has not noticed it, or has said something wrong about it, then seize it immediately, pursue it seriously, and then write out your own perspective—that becomes your own line of thought. Scholarly foundations are not the issue. If one’s foundations are a little weak, the perspective one discovers may simply be too ordinary and therefore unnoticed by the teacher, or else not withstand deeper scrutiny. But that does not matter. Whether something can withstand how much scrutiny is one thing; whether one has one’s own line of thought is another. Only when you present a line of thought that belongs to yourself can you speak of defending yourself and others scrutinizing you. The worst kind of paper is nothing more than a patchwork that has no line of thought of its own, so that others cannot even criticize it—of course, this is not the same as taking the teacher’s or some book’s line of thought and reworking it according to one’s own logic. Such interpretive writing likewise requires an extremely original line of thought. What I call a patchwork paper means this: when choosing texts and topics, the decision is not based on one’s own logic or one’s own understanding, but mainly on how to piece together a complete, comprehensive, or accurate paper. These requirements are certainly important, but they should not be the primary consideration in interpretive writing; the most fundamental concern in interpretation should be “understanding.”
Looking back from my first paper in freshman year to now, almost every one of my papers has been a matter of “contending.” In the first semester, there was no need to mention that I first challenged Ye Xiushan in the philosophy introduction course. The general education paper for Yan Buke’s course also had an element of contention: he talked about the bureaucratic system of ancient China but did not say much about the Yuan dynasty, whereas I thought it was very important, so I wrote about the Yuan dynasty. In the second semester, I was taking environmental ethics with three teachers at once, but I felt their introductions omitted far too much, so I forcefully wrote an 80,000-character “ecological philosophy,” reorganizing the entire topic according to my own logic, while also being able to show it off to the teachers and give them a jolt… The early papers now seem very immature from both an academic and intellectual standpoint, but in any case I can always say with confidence: these papers were all written according to my own train of thought.
Among all my teachers, I was most influenced by Professor Wu, and his ideas and line of thought are also, relatively speaking, the ones closest to me. But every one of his course papers was also the product of “contending”: the first paper was on ancient Greek natural philosophy in the introduction to natural philosophy course. I noticed that an important feature of the ancient Greek view of nature lies in its belief in the knowability of the world, something Professor Wu had not emphasized in the earlier course, so I emphasized that instead—though just in time, in the class when the assignment was due, Professor Wu added a remark about this very issue. I remember it very clearly, because at that moment my feelings were truly mixed, and I thought that if this issue had been raised in the previous class, my paper would not have been written this way… The second paper was still for natural philosophy; I wrote about “the expansion of matter,” because Professor Wu had been talking about space-time, and although matter as a concept may not be as important as space-time, it is still quite important, isn’t it? If you don’t talk about it, then I’ll write about it! The third paper was a set-topic essay for the history of science: from Ptolemaic astronomy to the characteristics of Hellenistic science. What to write? I found that Professor Wu, when teaching the history of science, hardly talked about the history of mathematics, so I specially found materials on the history of mathematics to discuss it. But that paper made one mistake: I omitted some key points that I clearly knew I should have written about, which led to it being less satisfactory than it should have been (see the comments on that blog post). Fortunately, that assignment happened not to be graded by Professor Wu himself. The fourth paper was the second set-topic essay for the history of science, comparing the similarities and differences between modern science and classical Greek science. Because the previous assignment, due to omitted key points, only received 88 points, and because this assignment unexpectedly limited the length to only one page, an extra layer of resentment was added—so then, since last time I had missed key points, this time I wrote down every single point, making sure not a single one was left out! The fifth paper seemed to be for an introduction to philosophy of technology course; at first I wanted to choose Heidegger and go head-on against Professor Wu, but unfortunately I still had more will than strength, and in the end I wrote about Feenberg, with the emphasis likewise on points that Professor Wu had never highlighted. As for the most recent paper, of course it was still the same.
There are two ways to “contend” with a teacher through a paper. One is to directly and openly criticize the teacher’s views (of course, it is not necessary to name names; it is enough to begin by saying something like “someone might say this”), but this method is, first, not very easy, and second, considering my pluralism, I usually do not actively attack others, so I generally use it less often, except once with Teacher Ye, and once later in a metaphysics course. Most of the time I use the second strategy: that is, I write out perspectives that the teacher did not take seriously.
Thus, when writing papers, topic selection becomes the most, most important part. Of course, this is consistent with my longstanding understanding of texts—I believe that the most important value of an academic paper lies in its perspective and its question; second comes its line of reasoning and method; third, the paths it provides for further thought or searching; and the final conclusion is utterly unimportant. If the first few points are done brilliantly and precisely, then drawing one’s own conclusion should be the reader’s task. For the sake of making it easier for others to cite it (and thus easier for others to criticize it), the author may as well state the conclusion in concise language (so that the target stands out a little more clearly), but beyond that, a concise conclusion has little significance for an article. Of course, this is nothing more than my own taste.
And topic selection is also the one part of the whole process of writing a paper in which it is the hardest to find a “method.” At least to this day I still have not worked out an effective method, which is to say that I have never been able to guarantee that I can determine a satisfactory topic within a certain period of time. So every time I write a paper, I am extremely nervous, fearing that by the last moment I still will not have found a suitable topic. Yet from my experience thus far, every time I have still managed to settle on a topic right before the eyebrows are scorched by the fire—whether the deadline for that paper is one week, one month, or half a year, I always have to wait until only about one-fifth of the time remains before I can roughly settle on the topic.
Many people think I write papers very quickly, and that is indeed true—I do write quite quickly. But squeezing out a paper is extremely painful; before I formally put pen to paper, that struggle is truly a struggle, and not easy at all…
How should one understand my behavior? Please forgive me, but I still have to use that vulgar metaphor, because it is truly both vivid and fitting—please do not read the following before or after a meal, or you bear the consequences yourself~
I compare squeezing out a paper to “resolving a big problem”—not in the sense of some big philosophical problem, but rather the “resolution” of a “big” problem, hmm.
I have said before that writing an article is a kind of “excretion” (see “A writer is one who excretes”), but “excretion” must be divided into different situations. Some excretions can be described as gushing out, pouring forth in torrents, endlessly and gurglingly; when I write essays in everyday life, it is often like that. But the characteristic of an essay is that it is loose, shapeless, watery, and not condensed. If, however, the required result has to be more formed, more solid, more compact, more complete, more resonant… then it cannot be obtained by “gushing out”; it must rely on “holding it in.”
When a person wants to hold in and squeeze out that thing, how does he act? First of all, what often takes up the most time is: “finding the feeling.” If the feeling is wrong, then even if one is squatting there and straining with all one’s might, there will be no progress at all; sometimes one may even make matters worse by trying too hard. At such times one must not tense oneself too much, but rather alternate between loosening and tightening; when it really cannot come out, one may as well stand up and walk around for a few rounds, do something else, and then return to “try hard” once the feeling comes.
Exactly when “trying hard” will begin to work is almost impossible to predict. If it came out on the eighth effort, then what were the previous efforts doing? Were the previous efforts all being accumulated? Or were they all useless? Why is it that sometimes no matter how many times one strains with all one’s strength nothing comes out, yet after standing up and walking around once, it suddenly can? Is there any especially effective trick for this?
Of course, if things really do not work out, then using some external stimulation can also quickly solve the predicament; however, in that case it may again be difficult to complete it in a firm and compact form.
My situation when squeezing out papers is really very similar to the process described above. You will see that when I am conceiving a topic, my state is very strange—overall I seem quite anxious, but in fact I am basically not making any real effort; especially during the first stretch, I may well do nothing at all, and instead be even more relaxed than usual, watching a few more anime series and the like. Then I start browsing books here and there, reading some books assiduously from cover to cover, only for them to prove completely useless in the end, while other books I merely skim a little.
After dragging things on in this stop-and-go way for more than half the allotted time, at some point, even though the topic still has not been squeezed out, and not even the faintest sign of one has appeared, a feeling suddenly comes at that moment, and then I strain with all my might at once, perhaps chewing through several books in one go. In the course of chewing, all of a sudden, the topic emerges!
Once a paper has poked its head out, it is no longer easy to shrink back in; what follows proceeds like a bamboo pole breaking a raft—yah-yah-yah, with fierce effort after fierce effort, and in no time a whole stretch of the paper lands on the ground with a plop!
Well then, whether or not there is any internal connection between these two things, at least in form they are indeed quite similar. This is how I produce papers.
As far as my current method goes, a large amount of Chinese-language holdings is very useful. Whenever I am conceiving a topic, I always browse through various books in great quantity and at great speed, seeking only inspiration in them. Many times, the books that are most crucial in stimulating my feeling may end up being of little use when I actually write; sometimes books I had previously browsed and felt unable to draw inspiration from turn out to be the ones cited most heavily in the final topic; and sometimes a topic suddenly decided upon has nothing to do with any of the books I had previously read, and I have to find other reference books to complete it. All of this seems to follow few discernible rules.
The “theme” found at this stage is still only a rough range, or rather, it is simply the discovery of a “perspective.” This perspective must be somewhat original, which is to say that among the materials I have encountered so far, there must always be certain things—stances, methods, viewpoints, clues, conclusions, and so on—that are fresh, things I have not yet seen. This does not mean that I need to come up with something earth-shaking; so long as there is even a tiny bit of novelty in some very small place (even if, in the areas I have not explored, it may already be perfectly familiar), that is the minimum requirement.
In any case, once the topic is settled, it is time to go all out. I will reread the relevant literature according to the topic at hand—partly what I have read before, and partly books I locate and read then and there. I have never been slow at reading to begin with, and reading with a question in mind is even faster still (for example, back then, with a preestablished line of thought, I finished Kant’s five books in two and a half days). Therefore, once I enter this stage, the completion of the paper is just around the corner, even though as far as actual results are concerned, not a single character has yet been written.
After reading several relevant books, I type into the computer all at once the quotations I marked with a highlighter while reading—more than half of them will be useless, and the rest will become quotations in the paper. If there are nearly ten thousand characters of notes, the final paper will end up between ten and fifteen thousand characters long—this seems to be the most natural scale for my papers, because a larger scale would be difficult to complete in one go, while a smaller scale would require restraint and compression in the process of writing.
After typing in all the excerpts, I will roughly lay out the outline of the article according to my line of thought, usually divided into several chapters—at this point the division into chapters is not yet the final form, but is mainly based on my initial logic. Then I first prepare footnotes for each excerpt, and then rearrange the order of the excerpts according to the clues in the outline—this passage may be used in that section, so I move it to that place. I will also make slight adjustments to the sequence of the excerpts within the same chapter according to my own line of thought.
After doing all this, I take a short break, and then it is time to begin writing the paper in earnest. My earlier practice at school was to go out in the evening to A Zhu Dan or Bi Feng Tang, and then stay up all night until the next morning, by which time it was more or less finished; the most recent few papers seem to have been a little better, with more of them beginning at noon or in the afternoon and being finished by midnight or the hours after midnight.
When writing a paper, it is as if one is “weaving,” using my own threads to string together passage after passage of quotations. As I write, I am still constantly arranging the order of the quotations; quotations that are not needed are thrown to the end, and in this way the writing becomes smoother and smoother. Generally speaking, aside from eating a meal or having a snack in the middle, and taking a brief moment to daze off after finishing each chapter, the weaving from beginning to end is completed in one continuous flow.
Take my most recent paper as an example: squeezing out the topic took more than ten days; after the topic was determined, targeted reading took more than a day; organizing the notes took more than half a day; and the final writing took twelve hours (including meals), producing more than eleven thousand characters. The grade is unknown, but this is still my typical way of writing papers so far. Perhaps the next one will change somewhat? In any case, I record my current way of writing papers here as a keepsake.
December 16, 2008
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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