Writing can be . . . . FUN!!!

I've had a couple of great writing days! As you know, I've been following Wendy Belcher's book, How to Write an Academic Article in Twelve Weeks and I am having more fun with it the second time around. Last week's edit (I'm a week late now!) is to reorganize your article.

I outlined my article according to what actually happened as opposed to what I thought happened and that was eye-opening. I sorted out that the structure of my article did not comport with my argument. Which means that my current draft needs work.

I remembered that I used to storyboard chapters when I was in grad school and decided to do that again. I labeled each paragraph according to what it did and created a matching index card. I then taped the paragraph to the card.

Very revealing! I can then rearrange the order, delete cards, and write my comments about what the structure needs to be on the back of the cards! I'M LOVING THIS!

I love writing. But these past couple of days have been FUN!!

Just sayin'!

The Joys of Academic Writing

It's been a while and I realize that I haven't been accountable about how writing feels, with all of the stumbles and all. So here we go!

I submitted something to a different journal late last year, and a month ago, I received another rejection with a general reason attached that I didn't understand. What was different this time is that I immediately sent it to two colleagues for their feedback. I wanted to understand the way they arrived at that decision. I have their feedback and I need to get working on that article back on my calendar. I am excited about what's possible here. I just could use a few more hours per day!

I am working on another article about sources another journal said they wanted to see. It's been harder to work on it because the draft was not in as good a shape as the first article. Everything I work on though, for academic purposes, is linked, so it's exciting to have what a write reinforced by something else.

Finally, I continue to work on my book. I am working on succinctly describing what it's about. By the end of next week, I'll start reworking chapters.

I write this because no matter the rejections, I figure out how I have to carry on. I schedule time every weekday to write. To quote Chon A. Noriega: "One usually gets better at whatever one does on a regular basis. If one does not write on a regular basis, one will get better at not writing. In fact, one will develop an astonishing array of skills designed to improve and extend one's not writing." So I get better at writing.

So write I do. Just saying'.

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Back to Writing

I was excited to send a reworked article to another journal. I learned this morning it was rejected. I'm bummed out, but not the same way as last time. But I will admit I struggle with sorting out what academic journals want.

I'm not the first person who has done academic articles who has been rejected more than once, I do understand that. But this time, what is different is that I decided to pull in more resource around me while I work on the other article. I sent the article to two historians and someone who works on literature to take a look at it and address the overall critique of it.

I told them not to hold back. With their help, I will figure out how to do this.

It's important for us to be honest about the setbacks to publishing. If you're not careful, you think that no one has these struggles.

I'll just be open about them.

Just sayin'.

Everything is not coming up roses

There's much more work to do on this academic article, but I need to get some things off of my chest before I return to carrying on as if I was a brave warrior.

So I received my first rejection. I am not alone here, yet it feels solitary. Dr. Belcher's book, Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks would be unnecessary if scholars weathered the storms of writing and rejection well. Yes, the book is aimed at submitting an article that does not get rejected the first time out, but she is candid about the process and rejection is part of it. "The only difference between much-published authors and unpublished authors is often persistence and not worthiness." And persistent I am!

Belcher ends her book with a story of a scholar who kept submitting his work to journals and kept getting rejected. Eventually, his work got published and it was the stuff that won a Nobel Prize. There were three morals to the story: "First, just because an article is rejected—one, two, even three times—does not mean that it is a bad article. Second, it may take thirty years for the Nobel Prize committee to recognize your genius . . . so hang in there! Third, you may have to go through hell to get a good article published. Fortunately, you will be in good company."

Let's make something clear . . . I will never win a Nobel. Not my goal. Also, this is not really hell. The process of publishing in academic journals is a fascinating business though, and if your work goes to reviewers, you actually get feedback from your peers. The feedback actually has me optimistic. It will strengthen the argument not only of the article, but the book I am also working on. I will have to remember that this does not necessarily mean that this is a bad article, bad idea, not a real contribution, etc. They said nothing of the sort.

On my website, I say, as a life coach, that I am unwilling to put my clients through anything I would not be willing to do myself. So yes, I will face rejection. I will face renewed critique. It is not the first time, and it won't be the last.

Just sayin'.

The Academic Job Market

Let me reassure you that I am not finished commenting on the political issues of the day. On the other hand, the state of higher education is a political issue!

I love what I study and write academically. I love teaching. I am working on publishing all manner of things at this point and have never had this much work in progress. It is exciting to work on a book. It will be some time before I can announce a publisher or even publication, but that day will come!

It took me two and a half to even look at my dissertation again. LOOK at it. I am glad I took the time off of it. All of a sudden I could see how to breathe new life into it and change it into something else. It is different writing without a dissertation committee (and advisor) sitting on my shoulders as I gaze into the screen of my laptop!

It is upsetting that academia has shifted so much that business principles dictate what we should be doing. Each item that we write becomes product by which to evaluate what we do, and if we are not in a STEM field, the work becomes more devalued except amongst our colleagues. God forbid we provide the literary, historical, political, and linguistic context to the society we live in! For those of us who work in academia on a contingent basis, our writing and teaching is devalued that much more.

I understand that the tenure-track job is unlikely to materialize for me. State and federal governments are putting precious few dollars into humanities research. Both private and public universities refuse to fill full-time positions with new hires, instead, they hire several adjuncts to do that job. More resource is placed into administration. These institutions try to force faculty to find outside funding for their pay (there's only so much of that to go around!) and some have been at the behest of private corporations that have their own research agendas. Yet, I will go on the academic job market this fall with enthusiasm anyway. At the same time, I have to provide for myself and my son, so I will supplement my writing and teaching as a life coach.

I have witnessed the power of living one's life according to their values. I have witnessed the power of having people give you a hand in doing this, helping you to remember what you want, helping you maintain discipline. This is the power of life coaching. I love it for myself, and you would be amazed at what it can do for you.

We live in a time where Black people are targeted by both the state and individuals. We live at a time where we refuse to acknowledge sexism as an oppression that wrecks the lives of women all over the world, including comparatively affluent places such as the United States. We live at a time where the misinformation about the upsetting state of the environment is being silenced for pure economic gain. Academic teaching and publishing is one of many ways to fight these trends. Our ongoing denial about our history and our future is disheartening. I am committed to continuing that work, but I do not want the audience to only be other academics, but also with the public at large.

I write this so that if you are unsure how to proceed, know that not only are there other who are in the same spot, but there is also help for you. I honestly believe that we the people cannot continue on the path we are on. Figure out what you want and how to get there. And if you do not know how, find the resource to get there. I am always happy to help!

Just saying'.

More Writing

I earned my doctorate 3 years ago. I had not taken a single look at anything related to my dissertation until Fall 2014. That's when I started to convert a chapter of it into an academic article. I'm proud to say that the article is under review after a series of corrections. It will, for now, likely come back as a revise and resubmit, but I'm game to revise and resubmit and move it into proper publication.

But those of us who engage in academic writing cannot rely on only one piece of writing at a time (I suspect this is the case with other writers as well). The process of revising writing for an article reminded me of the following:

1. It doesn't matter whether or not I get a tenure track position (I was damned close this spring!). What does matter is that I publish my work. 
2. My work is interesting and although it is about another time and place, it provides much perspective about the U.S. today. What happened in Jamaica happened across the hemisphere!
3. I like writing. This isn't a new conclusion, but I also like academic writing. So write I shall do.

This means that I have all manner of writing projects lined up for this summer. I want to have the outlines of a book proposal based on my dissertation by the time the school year starts again. I am absurdly energized about my project again and am making better sense of what it is all about! This is refreshing. And I don't think this would be possible without taking a two-year break. The journal I submitted my piece to had a suggestion about writing up a couple of other sources, and I shall do that.

I love my dissertation, but editing makes me sleepy. 

So yes, you'll be hearing from me as I seek to keep myself accountable for writing. You all have to do that with me.

And if you need someone to keep you accountable doing your writing, oh yeah, I'm a life coach who can do just that. Or maybe you don't want to write and you want to do something else. I can help with that too!

Just sayin'

Academic Writing Again

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'.

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'.

More Joys of Academic Writing

This week, it's been JOY! At last I've caught up . . . actually, I'm a little bit ahead! Last week, I reoutlined my article based on what I actually did (as opposed to what I thought I did), and I just finished up reworking my evidence to make sure it supported my argument. It turns out that while the evidence was proper, some of it didn't quite say what I purported it said. This step proved to be most helpful and help me cut some pages!

I can heave a big sigh of relief!

Dear unnamed college that requires a writing sample, it's forthcoming! Journals: WATCH OUT!

Just sayin'

The Joys of Academic Writing Part II

There's good news - I'm now only a half week behind and that is refreshing. However, I am concerned because this week involves restructuring the article and it looks like I will only fall behind much more!

I did accomplish adding more of a literature review, but that only made the article longer. I do look forward to the structural recommendations.

Still optimistic.

Hopefully a post about U.S. reaction to Ebola and HIV/AIDS later today!

Just saying'.

The Joys of Academic Writing

Yes, I'm going to try posting regularly again. And you will see my normal snarky commentary about events in the news affecting people of color and women and women and people of color and gay folk, and gay folk. But you will also see me mulling over the joys of academic writing.

After 2 years, I've finally been able to LOOK at my dissertation again. And I can tell I can turn something (fairly quickly) into an article. I've been waking up at 5 a.m. doing my thing. Except for this part: the resource I'm using (Laura Belcher's Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks . . . ") asks that you journal about how the last week felt.

Yes, I have fairly unintelligible mutterings in my handwritten notes (ok, I can read them). But in the spirit of public accountability, I'll post stuff here as well.

I'm a week and a half behind! Not because I've been knitting, eating bonbons and watching CNN/listening to NPR during the days while knitting or crocheting (I would rather do that. I'm not into filing and cleaning to procrastinate . . . GIVE ME YARN and news. Yes. I wrote knitting twice. I love it that much.). Because I actually have two writing projects, am teaching, and I'm trying to write journalism pieces as well (hey, check out http://amsterdamnews.com/news/harlem-focus/, because if you've missed this blog, you can catch some of my fabulousness there!). And it's getting to the point where the tasks take more time. It took me what feels like forever to find appropriate journals.

So as one who does try to meet some deadlines, I find this frustrating.

Now to move on to the business of buttressing my sources. Hopefully I won't be a month behind at the end of this!

Just saying'.