The single most memorable reading assignment of my undergraduate studies was an essay by Samuel Eliot Morison titled “History as a Literary Art.” Dr. Matzko assigned it for Historical Research and Writing. Morison pleads with young historians to learn to write history well and gives them “a few hints as to the craft.” His first hint has had the most effect on me:

First and foremost, get writing! Young scholars generally wish to secure the last fact before writing anything, like General McClellan refusing to advance (as people said) until the last mule was shod. . . . Above all, start writing. Nothing is more pathetic than a “gonna” historian, who from graduate school on is always “gonna” write a magnum opus but never completes his research on the subject, and dies without anything to show for a lifetime’s work.

What Morison says is true—I’d rather spend a week researching than an hour writing. For my paper on Puritans, Indians, and time, I have list of sources pages long that I would like to investigate. That research will wait till summer. Now I must “get writing!”