[phsource]

> In particular, it is often difficult to make the (important) decisions about the organisation of the argument, and selection of good notation, until a large part of the paper is already written

This is very true. When writing a blog post in China during the earlier parts of coronavirus [1], I had drafted an initial version where I just went through my experiences in chronological order. Only after writing it all down did themes emerge in how I finally structured the article.

This really speaks to the power of interdisciplinary concepts though. Writing an essay by writing an outline first and then filling in the details probably predates rapid prototyping by eons. It's cool that it all circles back to writing academic papers only through this leap!

[1] https://wanderlog.com/blog/2020/01/29/coronavirus-observatio...