Hmmm, I'm starting to think I need a day with an extra 5 - 6 hours. The end of the semester is nigh and this only means major crunch time. Unfortunately, I'm still grading midterm exams (aaaargh!), I have a job letter due a week from today, and I need to get the article submitted to a journal STAT!
No pressure, no pressure. I'll leave out my son's ballroom dancing, just getting through teaching, and the rest of it, but oh my! I'm not sleeping as much as I should and I'm not eating much (not much time to do that), but I'm eating crap because I'm tired.
I still love working on this article. I'm still completely psyched about it. I am still integrating my colleagues comments, they have given me much to think about and I can tell it's much better. But in the very limited time that I have this week, I have to finish incorporating their edits, rework my abstract, fix citations, check sentence structure . . . oooooh, very tired. Also, this article will be my writing sample for the job I'm applying for. No pressure, no pressure.
The Belcher book is ridiculously helpful. And stressful . . . so much to do, so little time. No pressure, no pressure.
Just sayin'.
Monday, December 8, 2014
Monday, December 1, 2014
Academic Writing Part Who Knows What . . .
I find it ridiculous that I get to incorporate journal writing into my academic writing time. Really! It kind of makes it fun. Besides, check out this article! You heal from trauma faster if your journal about it and download your feelings because you don't dwell on the feelings after you write. Who knew? But then again, I don't consider this traumatic. Finally turning my dissertation into publishable stuff is fun, but it's nice to reflect on what works well and what doesn't about my writing.
So what's gone well over the last couple of weeks? I had a phone conversation with a writing buddy who shed some light on one thing: I have no judgement about what people think about me. What do I mean? I sent inquiry letters to journals to see if they were interested in this article. They all wrote back that they would be interested in publishing it. My response: "That's sweet. They're just blowing sunshine up my ass." My writing buddy's response: "That's awesome! They're really interested! If they weren't, they'd tell you something like they have a serious backlog, or it's not quite appropriate, or they're only having special issues until the end of time. THIS IS GREAT!"
OK, so I think I need to print the emails with responses from the journals. Perhaps I should frame them (no really, I'm trying to remember this is a huge accomplishment!) . . .
I also sent a draft (OK, I'm realizing it's a big deal that I've completed a draft. My initial response was ho hum. Then again, Laura Belcher says that only 25% of academics actually publish. I'm really taking in it's a big deal that there's a draft) to a few people and got responses from two (I suspect the third is forthcoming). Lovely responses.
1. I need to restructure it and make my main subaltern characters the center of the story. I'm doing it (just not this minute - I'm writing this)!
2. I'm making HUGE interventions and I don't make them very clear. I'm doing this as well. This is a huge challenge for female writers (academic and otherwise), so I suspect I have lots of company here. Yes, the things we write make a contribution to some small corner, but often the implications of what we write are much larger and we don't frame it as such. Allow me to place another nail in sexism's coffin and ramp up my discussion of the significance of my article!
There's other stuff as well. But that's what I remember while writing this post!
It feels like the number of changes I need to make are daunting though. However, I've also publicly committed (see my c.v.) to having this under review/submitted shortly. Will do and submit within the next couple of weeks (ideally early next week). That's right (my typo was write, but that's a funny pun . . . ok, I'm suffering from insomnia, anything is funny at this point!), completed academic article ready for submission early next week (oh my . . . I have major citation cleanup to do!)
Cheer me on, wish me luck, however, you think about it, I'll need it. Did I mention that I'm applying for three academic jobs and am still grading midterms?
I have something brewing in my head about Ferguson, but haven't had a moment to write it. Hopefully, I'll get it out soon, but you see I have a lot on my platter that's not getting any larger.
Just saying'.
So what's gone well over the last couple of weeks? I had a phone conversation with a writing buddy who shed some light on one thing: I have no judgement about what people think about me. What do I mean? I sent inquiry letters to journals to see if they were interested in this article. They all wrote back that they would be interested in publishing it. My response: "That's sweet. They're just blowing sunshine up my ass." My writing buddy's response: "That's awesome! They're really interested! If they weren't, they'd tell you something like they have a serious backlog, or it's not quite appropriate, or they're only having special issues until the end of time. THIS IS GREAT!"
OK, so I think I need to print the emails with responses from the journals. Perhaps I should frame them (no really, I'm trying to remember this is a huge accomplishment!) . . .
I also sent a draft (OK, I'm realizing it's a big deal that I've completed a draft. My initial response was ho hum. Then again, Laura Belcher says that only 25% of academics actually publish. I'm really taking in it's a big deal that there's a draft) to a few people and got responses from two (I suspect the third is forthcoming). Lovely responses.
1. I need to restructure it and make my main subaltern characters the center of the story. I'm doing it (just not this minute - I'm writing this)!
2. I'm making HUGE interventions and I don't make them very clear. I'm doing this as well. This is a huge challenge for female writers (academic and otherwise), so I suspect I have lots of company here. Yes, the things we write make a contribution to some small corner, but often the implications of what we write are much larger and we don't frame it as such. Allow me to place another nail in sexism's coffin and ramp up my discussion of the significance of my article!
There's other stuff as well. But that's what I remember while writing this post!
It feels like the number of changes I need to make are daunting though. However, I've also publicly committed (see my c.v.) to having this under review/submitted shortly. Will do and submit within the next couple of weeks (ideally early next week). That's right (my typo was write, but that's a funny pun . . . ok, I'm suffering from insomnia, anything is funny at this point!), completed academic article ready for submission early next week (oh my . . . I have major citation cleanup to do!)
Cheer me on, wish me luck, however, you think about it, I'll need it. Did I mention that I'm applying for three academic jobs and am still grading midterms?
I have something brewing in my head about Ferguson, but haven't had a moment to write it. Hopefully, I'll get it out soon, but you see I have a lot on my platter that's not getting any larger.
Just saying'.
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