Self-evaluation and the Postmodern Tendency to Overthink Practically Everything

I keep meaning to post on Thursdays or Fridays, and I always remember those days, but I think to myself, "I'll do it tonight." And then I forget. So here is my second super-late post.

I stalled this week with my work, which is not good, as anyone who has stalled their car in the middle of an intersection or the highway can attest. Things were going pretty well. I was working and reworking my introduction to death, and finally tried to move on to the body of my paper, but I got about a page in before I realized I didn't know what the hell I was talking about. You see, I'm still not super confident about my argument as a whole. I'm not an authority on Emily Dickinson. I've read a number of articles and book chapters. I can't be sure no one has made my argument before. And I'm even more afraid my argument isn't answering the "so what?" the way it should. If you asked me "so what?" I'm not sure I could answer it in less than 5 pages, if at all. What if I write this thing, and then someone asks "why didn't you mention the work of so-and-so, it really would have made things more concrete" or whatever. Stalled.

The more immediate problem I'm having is I'm supposed to have a beta-version of this paper done by next Saturday to present at a conference. The thesis I have a ways left to work on, I'm less worried about that. I can make crap up, I know, and probably I won't have to answer any questions. Maybe one or two obvious ones. I can speak the circuitous scholarly dialect where I fill long sentences with big words, and drop one or two big names, and make some vague references to history. That would probably get me through. But I kind of feel like that's all I've ever done, is make an argument SEEM important. I want to actually have an argument, the importance of which is clear and on the surface. Something everyone, even someone who has never read Dickinson, can grasp. Something my parents can read and say, huh, that kid actually is contributing, go figure. It's the kind of argument I read all the time, the kind of book or article I walk away from and think "My God, that is freaking brilliant..." I think my argument matters, but I'm not confident in my abilities to make it matter to other people. That's really what scares me. Because I can make a pretty strong case, I think. I have my thoughts organized. I can support my claims. But at this point, I expect people would walk away and totally forget about it. "It might be a good argument, but why should I care?"

That's what I keep trying to improve on, rather than writing the damn paper... Am I doing it backwards?