Embrace the Wander

Burrowing into the Rabbit Hole

The medical and CME writers I teach often worry about how to rein in this tendency to burrow into the rabbit hole.

Like you, I’m up against the challenge of the rabbit hole too. (Opportunity for a cute bunny pic here...)?

You know how this works.?

Here’s an example.?

I was recently reading the Guardian newspaper in bed on a Saturday morning. Let me tell you, a rare occurrence! I’m an early bird and find it difficult to go back to bed once I’m up.?

I was reading a story about the artist Paul Gauguin written by Devika Ponnambalam whose book I Am Not Your Eve has been longlisted for the Walter Scott prize for historical fiction. It’s a fascinating story about the appropriation of women as muses in colonial art.

Then other articles presented themselves as possibilities, temptations. A piece on the origins of patriarchy, another on the art of expertise—the process of getting really good at something, be it baking or writing—and yet another on the experience of being a noisy introvert.?

Delicious.?

Or here’s another example. You're working on a project about hypertension prevention for an education piece on new anti-hypertension therapies. You start reading about hypertension prevention and notice references to multilevel public and community health interventions that are based in barbershops and hair salons and before you know it you’re reading about pharmacists who check Black men’s blood pressure and provide health information and prescriptions in barber shops to help patients lower their systolic blood pressure. Then you’re reading about the awesome lifestyle and community changes that multilevel education and health promotion interventions can bring and wondering where drugs fit into this picture at all.?

On Being a Collector of Curiosities

This process is not just the inevitability of securing a dopamine hit from endless clicks. Or an undisciplined tactic to avoid the work in front of us.?

This is the modus operandi of the thinker, the synthesizer, the connector, and the collector of curiosities.?

And it’s exactly this mindset and sensibility that we bring to our work as continuing medical education (CME) writers.?It’s what allows us to unearth quotable gems about the lived experience of a rare disease for a needs assessment and to structure interactive patient cases with authentic details, color, and flavor.

But it’s also a challenge.

Rabbit holes run deep. They can pull us further away from the task at hand, then we have to find our way back in the dark with no map. And if we go down the rabbit hole far enough, we lose precious work time and perhaps even forget the intention behind our initial reading.?

Collect and Curate

The process that I’ve developed accommodates both the pleasure of the rabbit hole and supports the time frame you typically have to do your work.?

At the beginning of every project, what I call the collection and curation phase, I create a checklist that typically includes:?

• The scope of work
• Client references and materials?
• Learning objectives
• Outline, if one has already been created
• A reminder to create an outline if that’s an expectation in the scope of work
• Key dates for interim check-ins and deliverables?
• Keywords
• Quotes
• News stories
• Interviews
• Social media notes (eg, some loose sentiment analysis—how are clinicians talking about topic X on Twitter?)

Not all of these tasks are relevant for every project, but I want to make sure I cover the right territory.

Store, Retrieve, Synthesize

1. To make it easy to store, retrieve and synthesize all these materials and the information they’ll generate, I set up a folder in dropbox or Google drive with the client's name.
2. In that folder, I create at least 3 subfolders labeled materials, pdfs, and progression (or drafts).?
3. If the client has prepared or shared an outline, I’ll map readings and keywords to outline sections with in-text comment boxes, color highlights, and in-text citations.
4. If I’m creating an outline as part of the scope of work, I’ll start to build topic headings from my preliminary reading.?

Reading

Once I have my checklist and folder system prepared, and before I start reading preliminary material, I make a separate checklist of reading material and pdfs that the client has provided.

I pull these references into Endnote , the referencing software package I use. I read this preliminary material quickly to get the gist of the topic and create keywords and key phrases to support a wider literature and materials search.??

You’ll know that there are different types of reading. In the early stages of a project, I’m rarely doing deep reading.?

1. First, I’m skimming. Looking for headings and topics. Trying to get the gist of a paper and sorting it into a yes, no, or maybe pile. This feels a bit like cleaning out your closet. What’s essential? What’s interesting/related but not necessarily essential? And what’s on the periphery of the topics??
2. Next, I’m scanning. Taking a deep dive into materials in the essential bucket first, looking for keywords and phrases, perhaps quotes, or other text or numeric nuggets that jump out at me, and orienting ideas—themes and connections with the client brief.?

In this early phase, I would say I read quickly—and?I do read a LOT.?This is the phase when I build in some buffer time to follow interesting paths and diversions, and yes, fall into the rabbit hole. But I’m skimming and scanning, not doing any deep reading.?

This rabbit hole is a necessary part of the work I do as a CME writer and a necessary part of the process of tending to my mind.

I’m cultivating curiosity and wonder, growing my knowledge, making connections across ideas, and stimulating new thoughts.?

Note-taking and writing

A few words on note-taking. When I’m skimming and scanning, I’ll make notes, draft out lines of thinking, and paraphrase content at this stage. I begin to connect topics and ideas in my head and on the page either with colored highlights or tags or some other system of synthesis that helps to connect the dots.

Notes are, as 20th-century German sociologist Niklas Luhmann said, only as valuable as their context—that is, the network of associations, relationships, and connections to other information .

So use a note-taking system that works for you, helps you retain context and connection, and supports your personal note-taking style . Ness Labs has a terrific read about the best apps for taking notes. ??

I don’t generally use an outlining program like Scrivener or Omnioutliner . I’ll build content right into the outline the client has shared or I’ve developed for the client.

If you prefer to use an outlining program, there are several to choose from. See this overview .?

When to stop reading?

But the rabbit hole can’t last forever.

Once I reach a point of relative saturation, in which I keep seeing the same arguments or interpretations in new sources of information, I’ll stop searching for and reading new material.?

My reading slows down when I move into deep or intensive reading.

For me, deep reading requires thinking, comprehension, and integration of ideas and concepts into the client brief and what I already know about the topic at hand.?Then I’m ready to move into drafting.?

I write slowly and I am also very slow to integrate the process of reading and writing. I also need time away from reading and note-taking in order to process and think and integrate. This time away has become even more important since the early days of 2020 when the world shut down.?

In this writing phase, new questions sometimes pop up too and prompt a return to the literature or to existing sources for answers.

This type of search usually takes less time than the initial search and at this point I’m skimming and scanning again versus deep reading.?

Referencing

A few words on referencing.

Writing is not a linear process for me (maybe it isn’t for you either) and I like to move things around as I write. So it’s important to have a reference manager that tracks my sources and moves them too. Otherwise, I’ll spend way too much time at the end of the project checking references and filling in the gaps. In the early days of my writing career I didn’t have robust referencing software support, and it was easy to lose track of citations and source material.

I’ve used Endnote for years now, which helps keep my references and source material intact if I move text around the page and makes it easy to collect, store, and retrieve references. Most referencing software systems let you categorize references by your specialty topics and areas, annotate PDFs, and create searchable notes. Here's a link to a recent round-up of referencing software .?

Wander and Wonder

If you are a thinker, a synthesizer, a connector, and a collector of curiosities then doubtless you love reading and writing.

It’s easy to go down the rabbit hole, yes.

But you can create a system that allows you both the pleasure of this rabbit hole and supports the time frame you have to do your work.?

Many CME projects have tight turnaround times and strict content parameters. We must protect our time, energy, and remuneration, especially when we work as independent or freelance writers.

So it's no surprise that we often worry about how to rein in this tendency to burrow into the rabbit hole.

To this I say, don’t. Don’t rein it in.

Allow yourself time in your scope of work to go down the rabbit and explore. It’s this loose, wandering, following-the-breadcrumbs process that feeds the hunger of the inquiring mind and nourishes curiosity, creativity, and wonder.?

As JRR Tolkien said, not all those who wander are lost.

Embrace the wandering. And in the process, feed your wonder.

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