genuine question: how do people even go about writing something without putting the citations in as you go? like what is the strategy there, how does it work? for me it’s practically muscle memory to cite as i write

like even if i SOMEHOW end up with a direct citation that i don’t have the reference for (unlikely), or—more likely—i leave myself a note to go back and add a citation i don’t have on hand, then i add the in text or footnote citation, in all caps & highlighted so i can’t miss it

like i’m not meaning to sound judgemental but i just genuinely can’t conceptualize how this writing process works. do people write straight from their reference books instead of taking notes and/or outlining? is that how it happens? sounds extremely stressful to me tbh

idk i’m learning as i meet more & more grad students etc from elsewhere that not everyone had the frankly HUGE privilege of having someone spend an entire undergrad class just absolutely drilling proper citation into their head but :( track your citations :( it stresses me out :(

(this thread brought to you by a student forgetting to fix their “[CITE]”s in a paper i’m marking and like i’m not gonna come down super hard on them for it don’t worry, but it just seems to me that there’s a very easy way to avoid this)