How I write my papers

As I was writing one of the conference papers that I have to finish this week, I realized that I don't talk about my own writing method in class. So I decided I'd share how I'm going about writing my paper on the Thames Embankment. For this paper, I researched three books and about 4 journal articles. I always read the books first and I read selectively, meaning I just read a few chapters. The reason I go for the books is that books usually have a sustained argument and tend to be more thoroughly researched, while arguments in articles tend to be fleeting and the sources are very limited. I haven't read the journal articles yet, because at the moment what I have from the books are alright. Here is a picture of how I'm organizing my thoughts:

What you're looking at is a visual arrangement of how ideas align in the sources I've read so far. If I had to guess, this jumble is not going to make sense to anyone else but me, and that's okay. The pieces of paper have description of passages, page numbers, and the initial of the author. I group them according to topic/subtopic, so that when I'm writing I know which sources to refer to. Essentially, this is my synthesis, except I haven't written it down. My entire paper is going to BE the synthesis. I'm going to upload a copy of my paper so far. Containing Filth and Class I started this morning. As you can see, it takes me a while to write, which means I have to give myself a lot of time for writing. My attempts at cramming have always been disastrous, so I start early when I can (This paper isn't due until the March 15). As I'm writing, I like to read what I said aloud. I like to hear whether what I have makes sense or not. I also tend to find my mistakes that way: I think of what words to add or change and I find passages to move or delete. I guess this is one reason I take so long to finish. What you don't see in the picture or my paper is that in the background I'm blasting music. I have a dance mix (Usually songs with 130+ bpm) that gets my heart rate pumping. It prevents me from falling a sleep and it gives me a nice beat to bop to. So I guess my point here is that as a writer I have my own personality. I do things my way. And as writers you should also do things your way. Do what works.