Research is an art. A soft craft. A quiet ritual. Not the sterile kind you’re taught in school—full of rigid referencing and bibliographies in 11-point font—but the kind where you sit hunched over your desk at dusk, reading something half-relevant, and stumble upon a sentence that makes your stomach drop. That’s the magic part.

To research is to... See more

how I research the things I write about here, and how I chase down ideas that feel just out of reach.

1. Trigger Words

Every good search begins with a glimmer. An image, a sentence, a word. “Every battle is linguistic,” I once read in Girls Against God , and it stopped me mid-page. I didn’t know what I’d do with it yet, but I highlighted it. Saved... See more

literature and philosophy—two disciplines that are, I believe, less about finding answers and more about asking better questions. And the questions I ask often take me down very narrow paths. Less main road, more rabbit hole. The deeper I dig, the stranger (and more interesting) the findings become.

But this kind of research isn’t something I always... See more

How To Research Niche Ideas in Literature and Philosophy

Advice from a Literature and Philosophy Student who loves researching...

gem

Jun 21, 2025

Research is an art. A soft craft. A quiet ritual. Not the sterile kind you’re taught in school—full of rigid referencing and bibliographies in 11-point font—but the kind where you sit hunched over your... See more

5. Handwrite, If You Can

Philosophy and literature are messy. Tangled. You need space to draw arrows, scribble tangents, reframe questions. I still handwrite everything when I’m in the middle of a research spiral. It’s less linear. More like thinking. I know it’s not an option for everyone (I have nerve damage in my hand, so I can only write for... See more

When you find a good article or essay, crawl its bibliography. Bibliographies are treasure maps. Follow the names. Follow the hyperlinks. Find the one-line citation that leads to a whole new rabbit hole. Some of the most insightful articles I’ve read were ones I found three clicks away from where I started.

Every good search begins with a glimmer. An image, a sentence, a word. “Every battle is linguistic,”

To research is to follow a scent. Sometimes you know what you’re looking for. Sometimes you don’t. Sometimes it starts with a single word you can’t shake, a quote you read in passing, or a flicker of an idea that has no shape yet, just feeling.

To research is to follow a scent. Sometimes you know what you’re looking for. Sometimes you don’t. Sometimes it starts with a single word you can’t shake, a quote you read in passing, or a flicker of an idea that has no shape yet, just feeling.