You don't know until you are there...

14 October 2025: Spent a lot of today revisiting and chopping down my SSAWW paper. I finished a decent draft over the summer, but then set it aside until today. (I had planned for 20 minutes, but I am on a panel of four, so I needed to chop, chop, chop.)

Last weekend, I sent the session chair the information he requested, including an abstract. 

Reading the paper today, I realized that abstract doesn't really fit the paper. It's too broad, too generic. It doesn't say what the paper is actually about. But of course that's because I wrote it before I wrote the essay. 

So, I just emailed him with a new version.

This is a good lesson for my students: you shouldn't waste too much time on introductions or an exact thesis early on. You don't know what you are going to argue until you make the argument. Then you revise, revise, revise.

Feeling pretty good about it, but it is a weird little essay.