It turns out that trying to finish your dissertation while a bunch of construction workers pound and drill and saw things mere feet from your desk, for weeks, is not great.

I'm only getting to it today, but I assume most others have already read, "Why Academic Writing Stinks", an article which has clearly gone viral in at least my corner of the academic world.

Any other writing accumulated academic writing advice? Dad, an emeritus professor now, always tells me, "The perfect is the enemy of the good."

I don't know if this is late, but:

Philosophy of history: On a podcast I listened to recently, Dan Carlin talked about the tension of trying to deliver history "objectively". He said that in trying to be as removed from the subject as possible, you can miss out on something crucial to history if you remove yourself from the human element.

I'm of two minds and I'd like to hear professional opinions: is a historian's job to present as close to objective truth as possible, only portraying the facts as we know them? Do we miss out on the truth if we don't try to connect to historical events, or is that someone else's job (ie not a historian's)? Is there a way to find a happy middle ground?