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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/43719
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I'm an undergraduate student of psychology. My teachers assign writing assignments from time to time, and usually require some minimum of cited sources in APA format (as expected).

When I start writing, I often find myself stuck. For many of my past writing assignments for school (including English Composition essays, which did not always require rigorously cited sources), I found that I wrote my best essays after brainstorming an idea, and then basically writing the whole thing in one sitting. (With excellent results, if I may say so myself.)

With these newer assignments, however, I've been having some trouble. I haven't figured out **whether it's better to write everything first, and then go back and insert citations later\*, or if I should "write and cite" at the same time** (slowing down my writing considerably). I often end up doing both and neither at the same time, which makes everything _so_ much harder, consumes _so_ much more time.

- "Write and cite" takes longer to write, but I'll have all or nearly all of my citations in place when I'm done writing. 
- "Write first" is easier to write, but then I'll have to carefully review the paper after it's written to make sure everything I've claimed is supported. 

I figured it'd be a good thing to figure out now, as there will be many such assignments in my future (including, God-willing, a doctoral thesis).

* * *

\* I usually write in Microsoft Word, and make good use of their citation manager. (Which, incidentally, is why I did not use the [apa](/questions/tagged/apa "show questions tagged 'apa'") tag -- this question is not specific to APA citation format. Citation formatting is not something I even think about anymore: I just put the relevant info into Word and let the program sort it out :-)

Original score: 3