Direction from here?

I have done alot of reading this year. Principally in preparation for my book. I covered a vast amount of material for a few reasons:

1) I wanted to present what I thought and have what my college professor called my "gang" to back up what I said. I say such and such, and so do all these other people. I thought this particularly important as a new author to establish credibility.

2) I wanted to search out what was already written on the subject, and if it had already been written well and correctly, I wouldn't have to!

3) I wanted to prove what I knew by examining the arguments against it and see if I could withstand them.

4) I wanted help clarifying or presenting certain difficult ideas.

P.S. (Also, my brain might be trying to recover from years and years of a fiction-only diet.)

Here's the current works cited list, most of which I have read completely, a few merely browsed for particular items of interest:

Adler, Mortimer J. Six Great Ideas. Collier: New York, 1981.
Allison, A., Maxfield, M., Cook, K., Skousen, W., The Real Thomas Jefferson. Washington, D.C., National Center for Constitutional Studies, 1987.
Beck, Glenn. An Inconvenient Book. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009.
Beiser, Frederick (ed). The Cambridge Companion to Hegel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Bell, H.C.F., Woodrow Wilson and the People. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran, and Company, Inc., 1945.
Bensen, Ezra, Taft. The Constitution: A Heavenly Banner. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2008.Biddle, Craig (ed.). The Objective Standard. periodical.....
Croly, Herbert. The Promise of American Life. LaVergne, Tennessee: Book Jungle, 2010.
Cooper, Jr., John Milton. Woodrow Wilson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.
D'Annunzio, Steve. The Prosperity Paradigm. Hewlitt, NY: White Light Press, 2006.
Ekirch, Jr., Arthur. The Decline of American Liberalism. Oakland: The Independent Institute, 2009.
Ericson, Jon, and James Murphy, with Raymond Bud Zeuschner. The Debater’s Guide. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987.
Friedman, Milton. Capitalism and Freedom. University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 2002.
Greider, William. The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy. Simon & Schuster: New York, 2003.
Gunderson, Garrett, and Stephen Palmer. Killing Sacred Cows. Provo, UT: Decade Media, 2007.
Harriman, David (ed). Journals of Ayn Rand. New York: Penguin, 1999.
Hazlitt, Henry. Economics in One Lesson. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1979.
Hofstadter, Richard (ed). The Progressive Movement. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:Prentice-Hall, 1963.
Hume, David. A Treastise of Human Nature. England: Penguin, 1985.
Kant, Immanuel, and Mary J. Gregor (ed). Practical Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Koerber, Rick. Curtis, Israel (prod). (2008, May 19 - June 26). “Lecture Series on the Principles of Prosperity.” FreeCapitalist Radio. Recorded at American Founders University. Podcast retrieved from iTunes.
Koerber, Rick. "The FreeCapitalist Project." In The FreeCapitalist Project Primer, Provo, UT: FreeCapitalist Project, 2007, pp. 5-16.
Krohn, Jonathan. Defining Conservatism. New York: Vanguard Press, 2010.
McCullough, David. John Adams. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2001.
Menand, Louis (ed), Pragmatism: A Reader. New York: Vintage Books, 1997.
Peikoff, Leonard. Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. New York: Penguin, 1993.
Perkins, John. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. New York: Penguin Group, 2004.
Peterson, Merrill (ed). The Political Writings of Thomas Jefferson. Annapolis Junction, Maryland: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, 1993.
Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged.
Rand, Ayn. Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. New York: Signet, 1967.
Rand, Ayn. For the New Intellectual.
Rand, Ayn, Peter Schwartz, (ed). Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution. Penguin: New York, 1999.
Rand, Ayn. Philosophy:Who Needs It? New York: Signet, 1984.
Rand, Ayn. The Virtue of Selfishness. New York: Signet, 1964.
Rand, Ayn. The Voice of Reason. Penguin: New York, 1990.
Randall, Willard. Jefferson: A Life. New York: HarperPerennial, 1994.
Safire, William (ed). Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1992.
Sather, Trevor (ed). Pros and Cons: A Debater’s Handbook. London: Routledge, 2000.
Schweikart, Larry., Allen, Michael. A Patriot’s History of the United States: From Columbus’s Great Discovery to the War on Terror. New York: Penguin, 2004.
Skousen, W. Cleon. The 5000 Year Leap: A Miracle that Changed the World. Washinton, D.C.: National Center for Constitutional Studies, 2006.
Skousen, W. Cleon. The Making of America: The Substance and Meaning of the Constitution. Washington, D.C.: National Center for Constitutional Studies, 1985.
Skousen, W. Cleon. The Naked Communist. Salt Lake City: Ensign Publishing Company, 1960.
Smith, Adam. The Wealth of Nations. New York: Bantam, 2003.
Westbrook, Robert. John Dewey and American Democracy. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1991.

After the last few books this month, I'm coming to realize something: that with the exception of a recent clarification on the role of individual rights and immigration, I'm not learning any ideas I don't already know. I'm learning facts, both modern and historical, to support them and sometimes an interesting way to present them differently, but overall I'm not finding any more books with ideas I haven't thought of.
This leads me to a decision. Is it time to slow down the research portion and buckle down on writing? Or is it worth it, as a new writer, to seek out an ever larger array of support materials for my work, at the risk they will bog down the narrative? Also at risk is my time, because I find most books priggish, inane, rambling, self-contradictory, vague, and otherwise useless.