I am dissertation writer; hear me roar.

Yesterday I wrote five-and-a-half pages on a manual typewriter. They were useful and there's a good bit of useful stuff in there, but mostly I recast my whole argument for one chapter in those pages. Perhaps "recast" is too strong of a word, since it implies that my previous thinking included an argument that was worthy of being called an argument. Rather, I took my vaguely argument-like idea for one chapter and thought it through over the course of five-and-a-half pages and came out with something that feels good: an argument that's worthy of a chapter. It still needs refinement, but I feel like I can move forward with that chapter now with much, much more facility.