ABSTRACT
This chapter offers four strategies for approaching the uncertainties of literature work and for moving forward: understand what reading means, find new metaphors to guide literature work, create productive routines and workspaces, develop systems for recording one's reading. It introduces people to one of the favourite strategies for taking control of literature work. This is using metaphors to frame and reframe their thinking about particular kinds of textwork/identitywork. It does the metaphor work to add to your thinking resources. Each of the metaphors positions the speaker, and potentially the listener, in particular ways towards a material phenomenon/event/practice. Engaging with the literature can be thought of as developing one's research project family tree. For instance, reading the literatures allows one to trace various key influences on their work - which they can map what they have inherited from their forebears that one might want to look at the ways in which broader social events connect with their individual heritage in shape.
