Excuses
My essay-writing strategy is simple; but, being me, I shall now complicate it with a convoluted analogy. Armed with a little yellow rubber-ducky of an essay question, I will immerse myself for several days in a hot water bath of seminal, authoritative works on the topic at hand. Scented electronic journals, bath oil periodicals and the light foam of historiographical works are involved. Some works have more soporific scents than others (e.g. Chartier - see previous post), while others are intoxicating (I found Keith Baker delightfully engaging reading).
The premise I operate upon here is that enough elemental arguments from this recipe of multi-scented bath water will seep into me, possibly by some form of intellectual osmosis, to enable me to construct my own arguments in due time.
Continuing this analogy, then, it appears that after four days of abovementioned immersion in historical academia, I have discovered that my little yellow rubber-ducky of an essay question is really not as little as I thought, and in fact is occupying so much of the bathtub that I risk drowning. I am indelibly waterlogged, and my extended academic saturation has turned me into the intellectual equivalent of a large pink raisin (wrinkly-skinned and prune-y). The various scents have burned my sinuses senseless, and if I emerge from the bathtub, I feel certain that I will slosh when I walk.
In particular, this waterlogged torpor is no state in which to attempt a coherent essay. And there you have my reason for sitting here, writing this senselessly convoluted analogy instead.
If I were half as good at cobbling together an essay as I am at stitching together senseless blog articles/excuses...