Monday, January 16, 2012

A quick update to announce that I have nothing to announce. Now with article writing update!

So, how are you doing? I have plenty of things to do and no urge to do them. It's been a slow weekend here in Postdoc City. I did a little bit of teaching prep (but there is more on my list) and some yoga. I spent a lot of time knitting and lazing about (but I messed up the knitting to the point where I think I need to start over yet again so I won't even be able to show progress on that) and did a little cooking. Oh, and Kill Bill vol. 1 and 2 were on the other night.

I really really should be working on my article. It is done, so I should clean it up and send it out. I'm afraid to look up in my planner when I first started working on this ... but it may be near the one-year mark; we might be approaching Floyd's birthday. Yeah, definitely time to kick him out of the nest. Unfortunately (or actually fortunately but I'm a big dork), I asked a friend to look it over and she said yes. In the email returning the marked-up version, she says it has lovely writing and good ideas (my strengths) but that the different topics are so awkwardly put together she _almost_ thinks it should be broken into two articles (my big weakness). But that she thinks if I could have a clear reason for why the different ideas are stuck together, and if I really clearly demonstrate that in my intro, it could be a complex, interesting, good article.

This also sounds likely; I agree with her assessment. And yet, who really wants their fears about their writing to be confirmed? I was kinda hoping she would say it was brilliant and I shouldn't change a thing and just send it off. So now I need to open the file and look at her line-by-line comments, and fix the articulations, and rewrite the intro, and snazz up the big claims of the conclusion. Yeah. I just gotta do that. Just gotta look at it. Just look at it. Just look.

Why can't I move?

1 comment:

Dame Eleanor Hull said...

Sounds familiar. The MMP has dragged on for more than two years, and I'm still struggling to get the ideas integrated, quite apart from the struggles with the handwriting questions.

Tell yourself all you'll do is open up the appropriate documents and that's it. Just leave them sitting open on your computer (possibly the writing elves will stop by, who knows?), and tomorrow you will change one sentence.

This will probably lead to your doing more work than that, but don't tell yourself I said so. One sentence.