Office of Scholarly and Literary Publications at Georgetown University

Last post on the old site! Moving to Georgetown proper...

2009-11-23T07:18:00.007-05:00

My signature line still directs here because there is much reading from the first years of this office that may be of interest before you jump to the new site.

It has been a great run on Blogger since 2006, but we have finally moved to a fresh, new blog on the Georgetown University web site. We were always invited to be there, but technical difficulties kept us camped out on Blogger. Please click here to visit the new site. And please update your links if you are graciously sending readers our way. Thank you for three and a half great years!

Robert Boice does it again, this time with hypnosis

2009-11-20T11:37:00.003-05:00

Anyone who works in scholarly publishing with faculty members will sooner or later probably encounter the work of Robert Boice. I've blogged about him before, because his research on how productive scholars publish is the very best in its field. Today I'm re-reading his book Advice For New Faculty Members, which ought to be republished as Thoughts for Anyone on Any Faculty at Any Level, because trust me, there are plenty of associate and full professors who also need to read this stuff.

Boice makes an interesting connection between people who are willing to tolerate ambiguity long enough to get through the prewriting stages, and those who are hypnotizable. Since I'm a huge fan of deep-relaxation hypnosis, I paid attention. Here's what Boice says: "People who display the most resistance to being hypnotized display obvious commonalities; they are most unwilling to go along with suggestions, to suspend suspicion and disbelief, to trust themselves and the hypnotist. These 'low-susceptibles' also struggle the most as writers. Why? They have not learned to trust general images and rough wordings that could be put on paper or screen in advance of formal writing. Instead they work cautiously, looking for perfect sentences to begin with, listening too soon to internal editors (those voices of authority figures who remind us of rigid rules and standards about writing), and doubting too readily" (125).

Duke University Press and Stanley Fish

2009-11-19T16:51:00.001-05:00

A change of emphasis was a revelation

2009-11-19T16:43:00.004-05:00

Today a faculty member shook her head in amazement. Her schedule was completely different and more productive now, thanks to one simple change. Formerly she had spent her in-office time planning classes, as many newer faculty members do before they have taught long enough to be able to rely on tried-and-true syllabuses and lesson plans from previous semesters. Then she would try to fit her scholarly writing in on the weekends, when she was also juggling family time, including helping her kids with their homework.

Another faculty member suggested a simple switch. By writing on the weekends, she may have been subconsciously telling herself that scholarly writing was less important than teaching, whereas we continually emphasize that they are of equal importance, and that it is never acceptable to push writing aside in favor of teaching during the academic semester. So the faculty member suggested that she begin working on her writing during the week, and move the class planning to the weekends, thereby making writing the senior partner in the relationship.

The change was miraculous. She kept exclaiming in the meeting today how remarkable it was to get more writing done during the week, and then think about her lesson plans on Sunday afternoons (she saves Friday nights, Saturdays, and Sunday mornings for her family). This switch moved her writing into a more prominent role, and because she got more done she wasn't going into the weekend with guilt about her work.

Modeling resilience

2009-11-17T09:47:00.008-05:00

(Part 2 of 2) The 8 a.m. Tuesday faculty book group discussed modeling the perfect response to hearing "no" from an editor. After much back-and-forth, here is the final list that we agreed was probably best:

1. Accept the reader's report with a combination of gratitude and confidence -- gratitude that a fellow scholar took the time to respond to your work, even negatively, and confidence that your work is strong and that this is about words on a page, not your worth as a scholar or a human being.

2. Read the report carefully and think about what is on-point and what isn't. Be honest here, and be willing to hear the comments for what they are... learned opinions, and neither garbage nor gospel. This is a kind of careful, balanced listening that goes beyond a knee-jerk "Yeah, okay, I get it" and ventures into the realm of the deeply collegial.

3. Be sure to respond to the editor with consistent professionalism. Save any grumbling for your best friends over a glass of wine later. Thank your editor for soliciting the comments, and assure her or him that you are going to ponder them carefully. If the door is closed at the press to that particular work, leave with warmth and good wishes -- you may be back someday! If the door is still open to revise and resubmit, promise to do that promptly, and set a schedule that will work for both of you.

4. Immediately make a written plan for revising the work if necessary and going to another university press. Come see me for examples of written plans -- we have everything from formal, Franklin/Covey style, to models that work with Google calendar. Whatever you use, make sure it is a proven tool and get your plan down on paper with due dates and a deadline.

5. Be of good cheer. It is honorable to have tried ambitiously, whether or not you immediately succeed, and it is even more honorable to try again. People admire colleagues who fight the good fight, and who remain upbeat and academically productive no matter what. You will find yourself with unexpected friends, sometimes among the powerful who got where they are with a combination of perseverence and resilience. Join their number, and congratulate yourself that you did not emulate the herd by running, but you stood with the leaders.

Ouch, but in a good way

2009-11-16T15:27:00.009-05:00

(Part 1 of 2) I just received some tough feedback on a book. So herewith a response: criticism is a gift, and hard criticism is one of the greatest things any fellow scholar can do for you. A true professional's one and only response to negative feedback on work should be "Thank you," followed by a serious and thoughtful consideration of each of the critic's points. Sometimes critics are wrong (and we've seen that from time to time in Booklab from peer reviews), but sometimes they are absolutely on-point correct, and other times the truth is in the middle. It is imperative, however, for any serious scholar to get and read the criticism, and to recognize it for the blessing that it is.

Wendy Belcher tells an interesting story about a scholar whose article was ripped at a top journal. The scholar revised based on the valid points, and submitted to a second journal, where it was ripped again, albeit more gently. After that revision, the scholar went to a third journal of equally superb quality, where it was accepted, along with editorial comments that they rarely see a piece so strong on the first bounce.

Amen. Therefore I nod to all critics in gratitude, and I will revise immediately (no waiting) for the good of the book, for the benefit of my colleagues, and for my own personal sense of professionalism and academic integrity.

Wendy Belcher Knows Who We Are

2009-11-16T06:13:00.008-05:00

Wow, this is great. JW from the Articles-Only group subscribed to Wendy Belcher's monthly e-mail newsletter (one that I somehow managed to miss even though I visited her website), and today she forwarded it to me. This blog is in there! Belcher found the 60 Days of Scholarly Journal Article Writing, and she wrote about it.

Soon we will migrate to the Georgetown University servers, and to celebrate I will offer up some prime real estate and make Belcher's website a permanent feature of the new links list, along with information. If you want to sign up for "Flourish," her free electronic newsletter for scholarly writers, go to www.wendybelcher.com and click on "newsletters" at the left. I'm going to do that now!

A list of back issues is here.

The Treadmill Desk is Here!

2009-11-12T19:28:00.006-05:00

A while ago I blogged about "The Booklab Workout," and jokingly noted that treadmill desks are becoming popular among writers. Well, I'm laughing no more. The idea stuck with me and I've finally built a treadmill desk. Pre-made ones retail for $2,400 online, but that seemed silly, so I bought a good model used treadmill on Craigslist for $380, and propped up my wooden desk over it. I'm standing, walking slowly, and typing this now. It's easy and fun, and in the past hour I've walked 7/10 of a mile (about the right pace if you don't want to be distracted while you work).

What ever happened to the 60 journal days?

2009-11-10T06:21:00.003-05:00

For background on the 60 Days of Journal Article Writing, please click here.

If you're wondering if I gave up on the 60 Days project, I most certainly did not. It's time to start over again with the book Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks, after what I considered a necessary breather. Yes, the project resulted in an article in six weeks rather than twelve, but the pace left me tired, and other things got pushed aside to finish and submit that article. I'm proud of it and happy with the result (nay, thrilled), but the last couple of weeks have been spent regrouping. Now I'm ready to start over again. Instead of blogging daily, however, I'll change the structure to a weekly blog for twelve weeks to see how long it takes to produce a second article.

One of the most interesting things about the exercise was how easily the scary prospect of article writing was vanquished with the help of a good book. I had trembled at it for years, and dodged it by focusing on books. Whether or not that article is accepted is almost irrelevant (although it would be nice to hear something positive). What matters more is that I enjoyed the scholarship for its own sake and it resulted in a well-researched, personally satisfying piece. Some well-published authors admit that they only do it for the money, or the recognition, but I trust that writing for the satisfaction is also deeply important. That article made me happy, and such joy is now something that I hope to share with even more Booklab authors.

How authors write

2009-11-10T06:18:00.002-05:00

I'm enthralled about how authors write. Also fun is going to readings, where they discuss their process. Some crabby writers claim they hate this question, asking what difference it makes if they use lined yellow legal pads, voice dictation, or a Ouija board. But in the aggregate it does matter because there are so many interesting ways to do a job. One of Booklab's faculty authors sent along this article from The Wall Street Journal about how writers write. It's terrific.

Zotero? Oh, Oh, Oh!

2009-11-05T08:45:00.003-05:00

I am so pumped about Zotero. it is a FREE scholarly citation and information-gathering program that works in Mozilla Firefox. One of the faculty members from Government/SFS recommended it, and it blows EndNote or RefWorks away. Fantastic. I will still use RefWorks for scholarly citations when I'm in Georgetown's own online catalogue, because it is integrated with Georgetown's system. But then I'll export the data to Zotero. In fact, Zotero is so great that I made a donation online to the foundation.

What to Read When Stuck in Traffic

2009-11-05T07:14:00.004-05:00

The Washington, DC area is notorious for its traffic. According to The Christian Science Monitor, we have the second-worst commute times in the nation, right after New York. I was born in DC and grew up in its suburbs, so I know that firsthand from years of my own commutes while working in the city and putting myself through college.

So what do Booklab authors who live outside the city do? Many listen to audiobooks -- that's not new in and of itself. But one of them discovered something that got me thinking excitedly about its implications for scholarly publishing. He listened to David Hackett Fischer's well-reviewed Washington's Crossing, and found himself making surprise connections between themes in that book and his own work writing about more recent societal issues. He developed a whole argument that grew out of something he heard in Fischer, and it now appears in his manuscript with credit to Fisher's book.

A long discussion ensued about reading more generally in the history of a nation or region one writes about. We are rarely as broadly educated as we should be, especially people with doctorates whose reading tends to the narrow and targeted. This author's experience inspired me to think about a better grounding in the history of any culture, even while writing about aspects of it that may be many generations later, and about the value of audiobooks in the drive-time commute to get there.

Signing up for Table of Contents Delivery

2009-10-30T07:58:00.003-05:00

A member of the Articles-Only group alerted me to the value of receiving Table of Contents e-mails from relevant journals. I tested this by visiting Oxford Journals online, and lo and behold it's an easy signup process. I will do this for all the relevant journal publishers in my field (Oxford, Johns Hopkins, Wiley-Blackwell, and more). The advantage of being able to glance over a regularly sent TOC and keep up with scholarly readings sounds wonderful.

Oxford Journals eTOC Page

Johns Hopkins University Press, Project Muse

Duke Journals Online

60 Days of Scholarly Journal Article Writing -- Days 29-30

2009-10-29T20:49:00.003-05:00

For background on the 60 Days of Journal Article Writing, please click here.

Okay, it was not supposed to happen this way. The plan was to write and submit a scholarly article to a journal in 60 days (72 calendar days, but only counting weekdays), but thanks to Wendy Belcher's wonderful book Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks, I did it in exactly half that. Wow. Weird. Of course, it was already something I had research on (we all have files of research, yes?), and I knew quite a bit about about the topic generally, but still. Six weeks?

I don't recommend that pace. The only reason it went so fast is because the querying process in Week Four and the journal research preceding it yielded an unexpected treasure -- an on-target call for papers at a superb journal. The material was due almost immediately, but it was so appropriate for what I was writing that I could not resist. Future projects will go at a better pace.

Thanks also to the Articles-Only faculty writing and publishing group, without whom I would not and could not have done it. You all taught me how to write and submit a paper, along with Belcher's brilliant text.

And who knows? Submission is only the start. There's still peer review...

Time to write another article!

NaNoWriMo Loves You

2009-10-29T20:44:00.004-05:00

Picture sez it all. November!

(Jennifer, this is all your fault.)

60 Days of Scholarly Journal Article Writing -- Days 23-28

2009-10-27T04:59:00.005-05:00

For background on the 60 Days of Journal Article Writing, please click here.

You may wonder what happened to the 60 Days of Journal Article Writing. Well, there's good news and bad news. The good news is great. Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks really works, and I'm finishing up my article. The bad news was that the week Belcher had us querying journals I got a live one on the hook that was eager to see my article within two weeks, so I've spent the past couple of weeks in a frenzy trying to finish it. This isn't binge writing the way Silvia and Boice discuss it. We consider a binge to be a writing marathon brought on by a combination of procrastination, guilt and a looming deadline. No, this is just a surprise deadline -- if I hurry I can submit a piece that is on-target for a terrific journal, but they need it soon because the submission date for a special issue had just passed when I found them.

For the rest of the 60 days I'll go back to daily blogging. That was fun, and since I've been writing every day there is a lot to say. And since this article is just about done in six weeks versus twelve, I'll start a new one and blog about that. It would be weird to write two journal articles in 60 days, but miraculous things happen at Booklab.

Finding versus making time

2009-10-27T04:46:00.006-05:00

One of our faculty authors sighed and started to tell us all this week about how she "just wasn't able to find the time" to work on her overdue book, because her daughter has swine flu, her department hosted a conference, and her husband had to go out of town to meet with caregivers about his mom.

She was just launching into the final busy anecdote when she realized how much she sounded like the people in the Paul Silvia book (How to Write a Lot) where he laughs at the notion that one "finds" time for writing. You make time. After all -- she said after she caught herself saying this stuff -- she had "found" time to watch the news on TV, and shop for and bake something for a school sale. When it occurred to her that she could have recorded the TV show, bought some cupcakes at her favorite neighborhood shop for the sale and gotten some of her writing done, she smiled. I never preach here (I'd have to preach holding up a mirror, because I do this stuff, too, although at the moment I'm deeply into that article).

Writing doesn't have to take long. We only ask for an hour a day, although you can give it more if you're so inclined (a typical Booklab faculty member with a family does between 1.5 and 2 hours a day five days a week if a project is underway, and adds weekends only if it is due). Just that small commitment can yield more than most professors ever produce, and it can easily result in two articles per year and a book every two-three years.

Meet Alfred "The Bulldog" Peterson, Cousin of Georgetown's Jack

2009-10-21T19:07:00.001-05:00

National Equality March - Bulldogs for Equality! from John Polly on Vimeo.

60 Days of Scholarly Journal Article Writing -- Days 21-23

2009-10-19T15:33:00.003-05:00

For background on the 60 Days of Journal Article Writing, please click here.

This is an update with three days' worth of posts rolled into one. Why? Because the query process that Belcher recommended during Week 4 in Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks yielded a great result and also a nightmare -- a journal wants to see my paper in the next couple of weeks! That's not an acceptance, it is only an invitation to submit, but after I sent the abstract and an inquiry, the managing editor wrote back with encouragement.

The purpose of the inquiry, per Belcher's recommendations, was to make certain that the journal would accept a submission for a special topic issue (the deadline had just passed when I learned of it); that it didn't have a multi-year backlog (some journals do); and that they didn't already have plans to publish something else too similar to mine.

This kind of process can save you months, perhaps even years. Now I'm deeply into Week 5 and doing major restructuring based on it. Whew!

Update on last week's William Morris Endeavor Agency event

2009-10-19T15:13:00.003-05:00

I've been running around all week with no time to blog (mostly working on the article, and blog posts will come soon), but I had to stop and say what an amazing time we had on Thursday with Eric Lupfer as our guest. The praise has continued to pour in for his candid talk and his accessibility afterward, waiting patiently to speak with a line of faculty and guests. Thank you to everyone who came and made it such a full house, and thank you to Eric who was such a great sport.

60 Days of Scholarly Journal Article Writing -- Day 20

2009-10-15T05:53:00.002-05:00

For background on the 60 Days of Journal Article Writing, please click here.

Writing a query letter to editors is one of the most contentious issues on campus when it comes to scholarly publishing. Faculty are massively confused about inquiry versus submission, and there is a hoary old "rule" floating around that says you can only contact one publishing outlet at a time, and only with a full submission. I think I've used the word before, but I'll say it again, "Balderdash." That may have once upon a time been the story in academia, but real editors at real publishing outlets (great ones, the best, and an amazingly wide array) say differently.

Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks agrees, much to my relief, and all of Week 4 was devoted to choosing a journal. It ends by having the article author (you, me) write an inquiry to editors. She provides a model, and a long rationale about why this makes sense, not only to get a sense of whether you should even submit your article to that journal, but whether it is functional, whether it has a backlog of several years (some do), and whether a forthcoming article is too similar to yours for a journal to even consider one of your type. So today I'm writing my query letter. After ranking the journals from my earlier post on who they are and what they publish, I will send it to five of the 21 journals I have identified as potentially right for work like mine.

60 Days of Scholarly Journal Article Writing -- Day 19

2009-10-15T05:36:00.004-05:00

For background on the 60 Days of Journal Article Writing, please click here.

Revising my abstract again? Yes again -- one interesting feature of Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks is how often Belcher has you re-think your abstract and argument. She feels that most articles, especially in the humanities, are insufficiently argued, and she brings you back to those important places again and again. This is not the assignment for today, but she has taught me the habit. This week is about seeking the right journal, and I'll do a blog post on query letters in the next entry.

For the record, it is only four weeks into a 12-week program, and I already have a 33-page draft. That doesn't mean terribly much, since if length were any indication of quality then all knowledge would have been gathered by now (I'm astonished at the sheer number of books and journals published every year -- so much stuff!). But it feels great to have words on paper, and to know what my job is every day. This has been a remarkable experiment, and I hope to repeat it Spring semester with a new article (probably with one blog post on the book every week).

Portrait of the Prodigal as a Profiteer

2009-10-12T18:26:00.003-05:00

You can win free books and a t-shirt by visiting England Rents, Rants and Raves and entering the fierce competition celebrating Denis Lipman's new book A Yank Back to England: The Prodigal Tourist Returns. Michael Dirda of The Washington Post loved it, and Michael York, who has had a long and varied career, but whom I best remember in 1973's Lost Horizon (a film that perhaps wasn't terribly well reviewed but that I enjoyed at a young age) says, "A perceptive, engaging and informative take on contemporary England as seen through the eyes of a fellow expatriate who writes with humor and affection. The cast of characters has an almost Dickensian vivacity." I've managed to dig up two England photos from 1986 (it's all part of the rules)... hurry to send in your own. The one above is from a bus as I first entered London on the ride from Gatwick Airport. I've been back several times now, but that was my first time abroad as well as my first time in England, so it was eerie and special.

60 Days of Scholarly Journal Article Writing -- Day 18

2009-10-12T14:15:00.002-05:00

For background on the 60 Days of Journal Article Writing, please click here.

In two more posts I'll be 1/3 of the way through this project. So far I have a 25-page manuscript that reads fairly well although it has quite a few holes in it that must be patched by visiting the library and consulting physical sources (i.e. I've done what I can from my office and online). More and more research can be done electronically these days, but there is still plenty that sits on library shelves. Hmmm, how long will that be the case?

Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks spends this entire Week 4 focusing on selecting a journal, and I feel as though I did that in one fell swoop on Saturday, two posts ago. So I may wrap up days 19 and 20 in the next post, and then move on to Week 5.

60 Days of Scholarly Journal Article Writing -- Day 17

2009-10-11T06:25:00.006-05:00

For background on the 60 Days of Journal Article Writing, please click here.

What do you do when good journals publish bad articles? One consequence of studying journal articles this semester (in addition to my usual focus on scholarly books) is reading more key journals, where most of the articles are quite good and sometimes excellent. But once in a while a clunker gets through. I'm still fuming at one I encountered on a woman writer whom I have studied for some years. The article was published rather recently, yet seemed ignorant of the previous decade's scholarship on that particular woman, attributing an anonymous broadsheet newspaper to her that previous scholars demonstrated she probably did not write, mis-stating the circumstances surrounding her arrest, mis-identifying with whom she was arrested, and (to add insult to injury), citing Foucault and Habermas as somehow having commented on the result. The Foucault quote was particularly tacked-on and clumsy -- it wasn't quite "'Books are good, notes Foucault," but it was close.

So how did this mess sneak past the censors in a journal that I won't name because it should have known better? Sometimes it boils down to a common problem that most editors acknowledge but none know how to remedy: the vulnerabilities and perils of peer review. When peer review works it is a rigorous way to subject new work to scholarly scrutiny. When it fails (and it sometimes does), several possible things can happen:

1. Sometimes peers don't review. If a scholar is very late reviewing a promised article, a desperate editor can end up enlisting an alternate, perhaps at the last minute;

2. Sometimes peers do review, but incompletely. Skimming an article and approving it even when it has unfamiliar content (such as, in this case, references to an author who is obscure even for area specialists) is fraught with peril. Just because the article's author gets Samuel Johnson right, for example, doesn't mean s/he has done a good job with Frances Burney, and it behooves the peer to spot-check some of those lesser-known facts. Many don't;

3. Sometimes biased peers do the review. In Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks, Belcher cites incidents (although she doesn't name names) when an article went to a peer reviewer who recognized it as the work of a particular author and approved it because of a sense of collegiality. This conflict of interest isn't supposed to happen, but it does. It is particularly a problem when an author is the student of a board member at the journal, yet does not disclose that to the editor, and the board member does not recuse him or herself.

I love editors, and I can't think of a reason why one of them would knowingly pass a substandard paper through their system. They have too much to lose, and most of the ones I've met are ethical simply because the unethical ones all went into other fields where the rewards for malfeasance are richer. But peer reviewers are another matter altogether, because they comprise such a wide range of individuals with varying degrees of interest in the outcome.

What's the moral of the story? For one thing, those of us who value good scholarship can offer to participate in peer review. The more we agree to review and do so in a thorough yet timely fashion, the better for our professions overall. Editors need this support, and those of us who want to publish in the best journals owe it to our colleagues. One of the first things you can do after publishing some key articles and (if your profession demands it) your first major book is to turn around and give back to the system that benefited you by becoming a scrupulous peer reviewer. You don't have to do it very often, and if you're busy you can't, but even one article per year will help the system. If we widen the pool of potential peer reviewers, and if every good scholar begins to consider this service part of her or his professional mission, better articles will result, and fewer clunkers will sneak through.

60 Days of Scholarly Journal Article Writing -- Day 16

2009-10-09T16:44:00.057-05:00

For background on the 60 Days of Journal Article Writing, please click here.

Do you want to get blown away? I mean seriously impressed? Then have a look at this amazing list, which is only for one literary field! There are 26 journals on the main list, and 15 on the "of interest" list, for a stunning total of 41. Please tell me if I missed anything.

This will be a long post, because I have been researching possible journals to which I will submit my public guinea pig, an article-in-progress in Restoration and early eighteenth-century studies. Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks suggests a detailed search process at the beginning of Week 4. There are a lot of great journals out there.

This is not the place to debate impact factor and other key issues (I've discussed it a number of times with editors at the annual Blackwell conference in DC, and in other contexts), but it is reasonably straightforward to work with a good reference librarian and construct a solid list of journals to consider for your various projects. If you live in a town that lacks this splendid resource, the internet yields much on a search of journal rankings.

Following is a list I find quite staggering. I consider myself in a "narrow" field, but oh heavens the choices for potential publication depending upon the project, its scope and parameters. One of them is my first choice for the article I'm blogging about, but creating this list really flapped my brain about the possibilities, and how straightforward it would be to re-think a piece that was rejected at one place, elevate it to better scholarship, and submit it somewhere else.

I personally consider all of these to be first-tier journals, and I welcome input from others on that assessment. They are in alphabetical order, along with one paragraph from the journal's own copy.

Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation (University of Illinois). Welcomes essays concerned with the application of contemporary theory and methodology to all aspects of culture 1660-1800, including literature, history, fine arts, science, history of ideas, and popular culture.

Eighteenth-Century Fiction (McMaster University). An international quarterly, published in French and English, devoted to the critical and historical investigation of literature and culture of the period 1660-1832.

Eighteenth-Century Life (Duke University Press). Committed to interdisciplinary exchange, Eighteenth-Century Life addresses all aspects of European and world culture during the long eighteenth century, 1660–1815.

Eighteenth-Century Studies (Johns Hopkins University). Publishes different modes of analysis and disciplinary discourses that explore how recent historiographical, critical, and theoretical ideas have engaged scholars concerned with the eighteenth century. The official publication of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS).

ELH: English Literary History (Johns Hopkins University). Since 1934, ELH has published studies that interpret the conditions affecting major works in English and American literature. The importance of historical continuity in the discipline of letters remains a central concern for ELH but the journal does not seek to sponsor particular methods or aims.

English Manuscript Studies: 1100-1700 (The British Library and the University of Chicago).

Forum for Modern Language Studies (Oxford University Press). Publishes articles on all aspects of literary and linguistic studies, from the Middle Ages to the present day. The journal sets out to reflect the essential pluralism of modern language and literature studies and to provide a forum for worldwide scholarly discussion.

Huntington Library Quarterly (University of California Press). Publishes articles on the literature, history, and art of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries in Britain and America, with special emphasis on: the interactions of literature, politics, and religion; the social and political contexts of literary and art history; textual and bibliographical studies, including the history of printing and publishing; American studies, through the early nineteenth century; and the performance history of drama and music.

Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies (Wiley-Blackwell). Formerly British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Publishes articles relating to the eighteenth century, on specific questions of interest to eighteenth-century scholars, as well as on interdisciplinary questions.

The Library: The Transactions of the Bibliographical Society (Oxford, for the Bibliographical Society). UK scholarly journal for the study of bibliography and of the role of the book in history.

Literature and History (Manchester University Press). Unique in its plural identity, it is a biannual international refereed journal concerned to investigate the relations between writing, history and ideology. It provides an open forum for practitioners coming from the distinctive vantage points of either discipline (or from other adjacent subject areas) to explore issues of common concern: period, content, gender, class, nationality, changing sensibilities, discourse and language.

MLQ: Modern Language Quarterly (Duke University Press). Open to essays on literary change from the Middle Ages to the present, and welcomes theoretical reflections on the relationship of literary change or historicism to feminism, ethnic studies, cultural materialism, discourse analysis, and all other forms of representation and cultural critique.

Modern Language Review (Modern Humanities Research Association, UK). Sibling publication to Yearbook of English Studies, published by the same Association. Papers submitted to one will be considered for the other.

Modern Philology (University of Chicago). Concerned with literary works, literary traditions, and literary criticism-we do not intend to compete with our cousin journal, Critical Inquiry, in range of material treated-and we are not concerned with Western classical literature-here we do not intend to compete with our sister journal, Classical Philology. But we are not, except in these ways, a specialized journal. We will publish work on literature from the (date of) the medieval period in the West forward, and not only in the Western tradition.

New Literary History (Johns Hopkins University Press). Focuses on questions of theory, method, interpretation, and literary history. Rather than espousing a single ideology or intellectual framework, it canvasses a wide range of scholarly concerns. By examining the bases of criticism, the journal provokes debate on the relations between literary and cultural texts and present needs.

Novel: A Forum on Fiction (Brown University). Dedicated to promoting critical discourse on the novel and publishing new and significant work on fiction and related areas of research and theory.

Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America (Bibliographical Society of America). Contributions to the Papers may deal with books and manuscripts in any field, but should involve consideration of the book or manuscript (the physical object) as historical evidence, whether for establishing a text or illuminating the history of book production, publication, distribution, or collecting, or for other purposes. Studies of the printing, publishing, and allied trades are also welcome.

PMLA: Papers of the Modern Language Association (MLA). Welcomes essays from its members of interest to those concerned with the study of language and literature. As the publication of a large and heterogeneous association, the journal is receptive to a variety of topics, whether general or specific, and to all scholarly methods and theoretical perspectives.

Philological Quarterly (University of Iowa). Welcomes submissions on any aspect of medieval European and modern literature and culture. Special issues on particular themes, under guest editorship, also appear regularly in our pages, as do solicited book reviews. Some of the articles we publish pay close attention to textual detail, while others take textuality itself as a central analytical category, a realm that includes physical bibliography, the sociology of knowledge, the history of reading, reception studies, and other fields of inquiry.

Prose Studies (Routledge). Forum for discussion of the history, theory and criticism of non-fictional prose of all periods. While the journal publishes studies of such recognized genres of non-fiction as autobiography, biography, the sermon, the essay, the letter, the journal etc., it also aims to promote the study of non-fictional prose as an important component in the profession's ongoing re-configuration of the categories and canons of literature. Interdisciplinary studies, articles on non-canonical texts and essays on the theory and practice of discourse are also included.

SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 (Johns Hopkins University). SEL focuses on four fields of British literature in rotating, quarterly issues: English Renaissance, Tudor and Stuart Drama, Restoration and Eighteenth Century, and Nineteenth Century. The editors select learned, readable papers that contribute significantly to the understanding of British literature from 1500 to 1900.

Signs (University of Chicago Press). Publishes pathbreaking articles of interdisciplinary interest addressing gender, race, culture, class, nation, and/or sexuality either as central focuses or as constitutive analytics; symposia engaging comparative, interdisciplinary perspectives from around the globe to analyze concepts and topics of import to feminist scholarship; retrospectives that track the growth and development of feminist scholarship, note transformations in key concepts and methodologies, and construct genealogies of feminist inquiry; and new directions essays, which provide an overview of the main themes, controversies, and approaches in recent scholarship in particular fields and introduce this work and its theoretical and conceptual innovations to an interdisciplinary audience.

Studies in Bibliography (University of Virginia). Presents a wide range of scholarly articles on bibliography and textual criticism. A forum for the best textual and bibliographical work being done anywhere in the world, a role it seeks to maintain under the editorship of [Fredson] Bowers's successor, David L. Vander Meulen.

Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture (Johns Hopkins). Annual volume that features significantly revised versions of outstanding papers read at national and regional conferences of ASECS and its affiliates.

Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature (University of Tulsa). Devoted to the study of both literary and nonliterary texts--any and all works in every language and every historical period produced by women's pens.

Yearbook of English Studies (Modern Humanities Research Association, UK). Sibling publication to Modern Language Review, published by the same Association. Papers submitted to one will be considered for the other.

LIST TWO: Journals of great interest, but not quite in my discipline or methods:

The Age of Johnson (AMS).

British Journal of Aesthetics (Oxford University Press). An international forum for debate in philosophical aesthetics and the philosophy of art. The Journal is published to promote the study and discussion of philosophical questions about aesthetic experience and the arts.

The Cambridge Quarterly (Cambridge University Press). A journal of literary criticism which also publishes articles on cinema, the visual arts, and music. It aims, without sacrifice of scholarly standards, to engage readers outside as well as inside the academic profession.

Comparative Critical Studies, formerly New Comparison and Comparative Criticism, now merged (Edinburgh University Press for the British Comparative Literature Association). Concerned with with comparative literary and critical studies internationally and in the U.K., from whatever standpoint.

Eighteenth-Century Ireland (Mary Immaculate College, Limerick). The refereed Journal of the Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society / Cumann Éire san Ochtú Céad Déag.

Journal of the History of Ideas (University of Pennsylvania Press). A medium for the publication of research in intellectual history that is of common interest to scholars and students in a wide range of fields. It is committed to encouraging diversity in regional coverage, chronological range, and methodological approaches. JHI defines intellectual history expansively and ecumenically, including the histories of philosophy, of literature and the arts, of the natural and social sciences, of religion, and of political thought. It also encourages scholarship at the intersections of cultural and intellectual history — for example, the history of the book and of visual culture.

MLN: Modern Language Notes (Johns Hopkins University Press): Critical studies in the modern languages (Italian, Hispanic, German, French) and recent work in comparative literature provide the foundation for the articles and notes in MLN. Every volume contains four single-language issues and one comparative literature issue.

Oxford Literary Review (Edinburgh University Press). Britain's oldest journal of literary theory. It is concerned especially with the history and development of deconstructive thinking in all areas of intellectual, cultural and political life.

Paragraph: A Journal of Modern Critical Theory (Edinburgh University Press). Publishes essays and review articles in English which explore critical theory in general and its application to literature, other arts and society. Regular special issues by guest editors highlight important themes and figures in modern critical theory.

Parallax: A Journal of Metadiscursive Theory and Cultural Practices (Leeds, UK). I don't have a link or more information for this journal.

Philosophy and Literature (Johns Hopkins University Press). Explores the dialogue between literary and philosophical studies . . . aesthetics of literature, theory of criticism, philosophical interpretation of literature, and literary treatment of philosophy. ... challenges the cant and pretensions of academic priesthoods through its assortment of lively, wide-ranging essays, notes, and reviews that are written in clear, jargon-free prose. (Love that last bit.)

Poetics (Elsevier). Interdisciplinary journal of theoretical and empirical research on culture, the media and the arts. Particularly welcome are papers that make an original contribution to the major disciplines - psychology, sociology, and economics - within which promising lines of research on art and culture have been developed including economic sociology and the sociology of culture.

Poetics Today (Duke University Press). Brings together scholars from throughout the world who are concerned with developing systematic approaches to the study of literature (e.g., semiotics and narratology) and with applying such approaches to the interpretation of literary works.

Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century (Oxford University for the Voltaire Foundation). We welcome work across a broad range of disciplines and critical methodologies, reflecting the diversity and global network of exchange that characterises the Enlightenment.

Textual Practice (Routledge). Works at the turning points of theory with politics, history and texts. It is intrigued by the processes through which hitherto marginal cultures of ethnicity and sexuality are becoming conceptually central, and by the consequences of these diverse disturbances for educational and cultural institutions.

60 Days of Scholarly Journal Article Writing -- Days 14 and 15

2009-10-09T07:51:00.004-05:00

For background on the 60 Days of Journal Article Writing, please click here.

After a several-day hiatus while I prepared for the publishing roundtable at the Holocaust Museum and while dealing with faculty book emergencies. It has been a great week, but my journal article suffered, so now I'm back on track and ready to start Week 4.

I'm closing Week 3 with an acknowledgment, however -- to really understand the book Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks, it's going to take more than 12 weeks. Yes, it's a straightforward guide that holds your hand, but it is also packed with information about how journal editors think and what journals need today. It will be our text for next semester as well, and I envision using it in the foreseeable future and working through it again and again, learning more each time. Every time I start at the beginning, it will be with the hope of learning anew.

Thanks to this book I have now moved journal publishing to the core of my theory about writing scholarly books. Journals are key, and they are superb places to share data, expand and explore ideas, and to focus minutely on issues that may grow into book chapters and topics. I don't think of journals as scratch pads -- they are much more elegant than that and the work in them should be polished and excellent. Instead, I think of them as places where ideas can flourish in a shorter form, and where scholars can gather in conversations that don't happen in quite the same way in books. I look forward to a long and rich career writing journal articles from now on.

Dr. Ariel Glucklich, "Dying For Heaven"

2009-10-08T11:34:00.001-05:00

Available November 3, 2009, from HarperOne:

E-Books in the Classroom--Scholarly Communications Symposium

2009-10-08T11:32:00.000-05:00

To Booklab faculty authors:

The Georgetown University Libraries present the Ninth Scholarly Communication Symposium, 'E-Books in the Classroom: Implications for Teaching, Learning, and Research.' Electronic textbooks are finally becoming a viable option in higher education. E-book readers such as Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s E-book Reader are more affordable and more adept; meanwhile, Kindle can now read formats such as Adobe PDF natively, making it possible for students to load personal documents and combine electronic sources from a variety of platforms. Many academic disciplines are also adopting online teaching tools that embrace collaboration and interactivity, allowing far greater flexibility than traditional print options. The implications of these developments are profound, not only for scholars and students but also for librarians, administrators and publishers. Speakers will include:

Ted Striphas, Assistant Professor of Media & Cultural Studies, Director of Film & Media, Indiana University, Dept. of Comm & Culture. Professor Striphas argues that, although the production and propagation of books have undoubtedly entered a new phase, printed works are still very much a part of our everyday lives.

Robin Schulze, Professor of English, Penn State University. Professor Schulze is leading a pilot program within Penn State’s English Department to see how the Sony E-Book Reader can be better integrated into the curriculum. She will discuss her experience with this program at Penn State, while sharing her views on the viability of electronic texts in specific disciplines.

Diana Donahoe, Professor of Legal Research and Writing, Georgetown University Law Center. Professor Donahoe is the author and creator of TeachingLaw.com, an interactive, online case book published by Aspen Publishers. The e-book is used across the country in legal research and writing courses to more actively engage students in the classroom and to provide innovative teachers with a platform for teaching digital-age students.

Friday, October 30, 2009 from 10:00am to 11:30am
McCarthy Hall, McShain Lounge

Booklab at the Holocaust Museum

2009-10-07T07:25:00.002-05:00

My friend Steven Feldman is the Book Publications Officer at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, part of the U.S. Holocaust Museum. This morning I'm part of a panel he organized on book publishing. More about it in a later blog post, but that's why the blog has been quieter. I'll have updates on the 60 Days of Journal Article Publishing soon as well.

If you tell the world you want to publish in a certain journal, does that jinx it?

2009-10-05T07:43:00.007-05:00

For background on the 60 Days of Journal Article Writing, please click here.

After writing the most recent post about selecting a distinguished journal as my first choice once I determined that two others were not right for my article, I had a chilling thought. Blogs are public. What if the editors of the third journal (one I rank at the very highest level) somehow hear about my tiny blog, and do not take kindly to being considered after the other two? Or what if the hubris of even suggesting that I could simply write and submit scholarly work to such a lofty journal with a successful outcome would damn it from the start? Am I risking being cut down by lightning? Is this just goofy?

Out of concern for all of these things, I have gone back and excised the title of the new journal. Anyone who wishes to may ask me for its identity, and I will happily share.

60 Days of Scholarly Journal Article Writing -- Day 13

2009-10-05T06:56:00.004-05:00

For background on the 60 Days of Journal Article Writing, please click here.

After an insecure weekend, things are back on track with the article I'm writing essentially in public. This is all happening in order to test the usefulness of Wendy Belcher's Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks, and also to make myself write and publish more by setting up public accountability. But a bout of insecurity hit when I realized that this piece doesn't feel right for 18th-Century Studies -- an interdisciplinary journal that does not focus exclusively on literature -- nor does it have a PMLA feel to it. Then I remembered a superb journal I've read since grad school and so long admired. It focuses on some of the minuter issues of English literature that my paper addresses, and it is all-literature all the time. Perfect. I have now made it my first-choice journal.

Deep breath. Easier said than done. Courage, etc.

When I looked up its submission guidelines, I found a lovely treasure: it offers suggested articles at its website that can be used as models. How fortuitous this is. Since Wendy Belcher recommends using models as a way to understand what a journal selects and why, this page will be an ideal resource for the study I'm crafting.

More listening, less speaking

2009-10-04T17:15:00.003-05:00

Does anyone have any recommendations for wonderful books on listening? As much fun as it is working with faculty authors, I can sometimes hear myself speaking a bit too much. Advice, advice, advice. Sometimes authors just need an ear, yes? And although I always endeavor to provide that ear, I want to listen even more, while speaking even less.

Words are helpful when asked for. But as the sages say, God gave us two ears and one mouth for a reason

38 University Presses at MLA 2009

2009-10-04T07:22:00.009-05:00

Wow. I've been to great university press events before, such as the Association of American University Presses convention in Philadelphia last June, but it is still so exciting to count 38 university presses that will be represented at MLA in December. Some of my four readers will yawn and say it's not such a big deal, university presses are always there, but this is the first time I've approached MLA with quite this focus.

When you go to a university press booth, whom do you meet? As nice as it would be to fantasize that the editors are sitting there all day every day waiting to talk about books with whomever strolls up, that isn't the case. Editors will be in and out depending on the value of the conference to their publishing area, and whether or not they have pre-arranged business with booth visitors.

I will contact all 38 university presses during the month of October (2 per day for 19 days) and ask the following key questions: who will be at your booth in December; how do you prefer to interact with potential faculty authors; what do you want us to understand about your booth ahead of time (i.e. what materials/people do you send to a conference and why); and (big picture question) what is the meaning of conference representation for your press? How do conferences help the press?

Getting ready for MLA in Philadelphia

2009-10-04T06:33:00.005-05:00

Booklab now offers pre-conference planning, and we're in the early stages of figuring out exactly what that means. The short answer is that many faculty make book deals at conferences, so they become high-value activities in publishing. We're putting together a strategy to start thinking about conferences a year or even two years ahead of time in order to have a wonderful experience there that includes establishing key publishing contacts.

But beyond book publishing, a flourishing scholarly career includes membership and participation in the appropriate professional organizations. Although I'm a life member of the American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies, I've only gone to some of the conferences, and I'm guilty of having reduced the annual Modern Language Association conference to an afterthought (or worse, a job-hunting event). Now it all moves front and center as I resolve to (a) become an active, contributing annual participant in these two professional organizations; and (b) encourage and guide the authors who work with Booklab to do the same for their respective groups.

This means Philadelphia for the MLA in December, and I will also blog about it. Advance duties include learning what publishers will be represented there; guiding my authors to think ahead about prospectuses, sample chapters, and appointments with editors; making my own appointments at the event in order to meet even more university press people; and finally, grasping conference culture as its own professional milieu and discovering new and exciting ways to participate in conferences actively, rather than in my old guise of the slightly edgy lurker.

Name the source of that quote

2009-10-04T05:26:00.005-05:00

One of our authors read in a book that you should "touch your work every day," meaning that you should keep the project you're writing in a place where you can find it, and you should sit down to visit the work each day even if only briefly, in order to move things along. I completely agree with this. Some days it feels as though all I can commit to is opening the computer file, but once I begin then the body in motion does truly tend to stay in motion, and often I keep writing. Science is cool that way.

But what is the source of the quote? In an online book search (including Amazon's nifty advanced feature) I got nothing when I hunted for it. In a regular search (Yahoo and Google) I came up with two websites that mention it, and a commenter attributes it to a magazine editor and author named Kurt Rheinheimer. Any other suggestions?

60 Days of Scholarly Journal Article Writing -- Day 12

2009-10-03T21:34:00.005-05:00

For background on the 60 Days of Journal Article Writing, please click here.

Okay, for every triumph there must be a corresponding writing crisis, or at least that seems to be the pattern of my life. Remember the article that was "writing itself"? Hah! Famous last words. I'm suddenly a bundle of insecurities about it, and starting to question everything (the decision to change from the interdisciplinary project, the suitability of this one to the journals I love, my worthiness to breathe the same air as the scholars I admire).

The only comfort I take is that struggling is more appealing than smug, so running into problems now could potentially be endearing. If writing this paper was simply a matter of "typing it up" (to quote author David Gewanter from a really funny anecdote I may later relate), then what would be the point of having Booklab or thinking together or uniting faculty in the shared cause of Writing (and Publishing) A Lot?

Wendy Belcher's book Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks is still brilliant, and I trust it. This struggle is normal. Besides, it's only the start of Week 3. There's time! There's time! I'll sleep on it and write more about the sorta-crisis tomorrow.

Thank goodness for the structure of the book.

60 Days of Scholarly Journal Article Writing -- Day 11

2009-10-02T09:13:00.003-05:00

For background on the 60 Days of Journal Article Writing, please click here.

This is the start of Week 3 in the workbook Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks . Week 3 contains a great deal of detail in the teaching section, so much so that I'm going to spread it out over a week instead of trying to read it all at once. Author Wendy Belcher analyzes the main reasons why journal articles are rejected -- she should know, since she edited a journal for 11 years. She then discusses how to make arguments substantive enough to warrant inclusion in a journal, and also where/how to place arguments within both the paper and the abstract.

I'm still ecstatic about this book.

30 Days of Return to the Journal Experiments

2009-10-01T07:53:00.006-05:00

The literary journal experiments went on hiatus while I dealt with the influx of new faculty scholarly authors to Georgetown's Office of Scholarly and Literary Publications. But we have one fiction group, and I promised to write with the group for all of October -- 30 glorious days -- even though I'm also working on a scholarly article with the Articles-Only group. Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks is going so wonderfully that it makes sense to take on a new thing now that the old thing is well on its way.

This means structure, dates, deadlines, goals. For October 'tis thus: produce a piece for The Georgia Review to submit by October 23. Why that date? Because October 31 is the deadline for a call for submissions, and I want to send it one week early. That will mean devoting a special hour each day for 23 days to this one creative writing task.

RESOLVED

1. Although I'm typically more of a morning scholarly writer, I choose evenings for this writing, from 8-9 p.m. If that time is filled because of an evening event, I will spend a quiet hour before leaving for said event, or a quiet later-night hour after coming home.

2. Even though I don't know what to write, I will trust that coming to the page will yield something. Much of this theory comes from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way that several of the fiction group are reading and working through together.

3. No matter what happens, I will keep this commitment every day, and I will submit something, however poor and miserable, on the 23rd. This is writing as bricklaying, writing as plumbing, writing as a regular-person job. Artists take commissions all the time, and this is my commission.

4. To prepare myself for this I will read back issues of The Georgia Review and blog about them. This office is also a subscriber, but knowing a literary magazine well is a good way to submit to it successfully.

5. We're all in this together. I'm writing with them and they're writing with me. Teamwork.

The image above, of an albino peacock, is a hint of what the call for submissions is about.

Leech lover

2009-09-30T20:39:00.008-05:00

I have an internet problem, I admit it. But I don't have to accept it, and this week thanks to a suggestion from a faculty author I looked into software to tame the web. The author suggested Freedom, but it is only for Macs. Then I read about Leechblock, downloaded it for Firefox, and got busy setting it up to block certain sites after certain lengths of time.

This article by Farhad Manjoo of the The New York Times is illuminating and also a little nauseating -- he's right when he says of RescueTime, "[it] keeps track of everything that happens on your computer, and then reports your habits in a series of charts and graphs. I found the software’s analysis tremendously illuminating. I learned, for instance, that during a typical month I spend more than 70 hours surfing the Web, much of it on news and social-networking sites. By comparison, I spend only about half as much time in Microsoft Word, which, as a writer, is where I do my work. Seeing these stats knocked me over; clearly, I wasn’t using my time very wisely."

Me either.

And so far so good with Leechblock, but I'll post an update later.

William Morris literary agent Eric Lupfer at Booklab

2009-09-30T18:54:00.005-05:00

Eric Lupfer of the William Morris Agency will be my guest for a Georgetown University faculty book talk at noon on October 15. If you are a Georgetown faculty member and would like to attend for lunch, chat and a Q&A, by all means let us know by sending e-mail at the right or contacting me in person.

If you are not a faculty member but would still like to attend, non-faculty can participate in all Booklab offerings on an academic/course fee basis. Please contact us for more details!

Want to know what an editor thinks? Ask an editor.

2009-09-30T15:09:00.006-05:00

Some authors spend a lot of energy trying to guess what editors want. They think about it, read books about it, ask their mentors, and ask one another. The people they tend not to ask, however, are the editors themselves, often out of a misplaced sense of propriety.

Here are some typical misconceptions:

* That you only get one chance to query an editor about your book. Not true! You asked a simple question, you didn't key someone's car or threaten their families. You can certainly ask again in the future, especially if you have significantly re-thought your project.

* That you are "out" at a press for future books if they turn down one of your pitches now. Again, nonsense! Most editors won't even remember who you are if it never got past the inquiry stage.

* That it is easier to publish at a lower-tier house than at a higher one. Actually, the opposite is sometimes true. There are exceptions, and prestige is a relative thing depending on your field and the standards for promotion at your institution, but many editors at higher-tier houses report frustration that they sometimes never even see certain projects because of erroneous author assumptions about how unapproachable those editors must be.

* That you have to hold your mouth exactly just so and submit one particular way versus another or they'll never look at it. In reality, any good editor is happy to consider a good pitch, however it arrives. Some of them don't even know what's on the publishing house website about the "rules" of submission. Most are fine with an e-mailed inquiry, and 85% of the editors I speak to want to use e-mail for everything... most don't want paper at all, although a minority still do. The ones who do will tell you after you inquire.

The bottom line is to let editors decide what editors want, and the only way to do that is to ask them. Learn to write amazingly effective, to-the-point inquiry letters that say succinctly what you're working on, how you think it fits with their stated list/press/vision, and why you're the perfect person to write this now. Then get those letters out there, to editors you admire and would like to work with. The less you second-guess editors and the more you give them the opportunity to think for themselves about your research and whether it will work for them, the better.

Oh-so-true illustration from that old internet classic, i can has cheezburger.

60 Days of Scholarly Journal Article Writing -- Day 10

2009-09-29T07:56:00.008-05:00

For background on the 60 Days of Journal Article Writing, please click here.

It's the end of Week 2, and I'm so happy that I'm probably boring all of the faculty book writing groups with joy. Working with the book Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks has yielded a miracle: The Article That Writes Itself.

As background, I began this semester planning to write a different article, but the workbook and feedback from the articles group convinced me not to do it, at least not yet. The article was based on a conference paper I gave at Notre Dame some years ago, and although it succeeded as a paper on a panel, the project was deeply interdisciplinary. Author Wendy Belcher's brilliant workbook helped me figure this out before I invested weeks in research and writing, however. Instead, I was able to see that now is not the time; after I've published a few articles I can re-consider it, from a stronger basis of having established myself as a scholar in that field.

Instead, I turned to an old cliché from the business world by going for "low-hanging fruit" -- reaching for a topic I understand well (it comes from the book I'm writing), and exploring it in more detail in a journal article. This is a perfect balance, because the level of detail required for the article would be ridiculous in a book -- it wouldn't even make sense in a long footnote -- but it is perfect for scholarly consideration in a self-contained published piece. I have the joy of running down these long, twisty alleyways of scholarly research, but without being pulled off of the main task of writing the book. The two projects nurture one another, yet they are not the same, i.e. the article does not incorporate much content from the book and anyone would consider them substantively different.

There is also a negative meaning to low-hanging fruit... the sense that such projects can be easy, obvious, and in many cases somewhat overripe and past their prime. Tenure committees are good at seeing through these sorts of c.v.-padding ploys. This is a potential problem, but also one that Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks addresses with its exhaustive list of projects in which one out not to get bogged down, or that may be considered too low-value for tenure and promotion. I've made certain that my article is potentially of high academic value.

Therefore I'm thinking of low-hanging fruit in the positive sense: this project is a natural outgrowth of my research, and it will help other scholars. It is interesting, it's arguably important, and because I know the subject so well it does feel as though it is writing itself. I'm working hard at it, but the labor is such a pleasure because thanks to author Wendy Belcher, I know and understand my daily writing tasks. The Articles-Only Group meets on Thursday, and I'm ready to greet it with the kind of scholarly excitement I haven't felt in many years.

I'm a little ahead on the blogging front with this book, so I'll post again after the Articles-Only group meets on Thursday.

Such compelling excuses

2009-09-29T06:36:00.007-05:00

Some members of the scholarly book groups and the article group are starting to e-mail in with excuses (I have trained them please not to phone). From scheduling to grading to general mayhem, a small percentage of Booklab authors are letting life sweep writing out of the way. We've had engaging discussions about how scholarly writing and publishing is as important as teaching (not more important, not less). It's different, though, because teaching always happens. No excuses. Faculty show up for every class period unless something has been prearranged with ample advance notice.

So question: if you don't show up for your book group, what will happen? Answer: nothing. The group will sail on. Its members will publish (we are publishing -- it's a miracle to observe!). Only you will know what's happening in your own world, on your own c.v. But if you are always there for your students, year in, year out, then it is also possible to make certain that you are always there for your scholarly writing. We've already proven your time at the page need not be long or burdensome. Curious about this? Then send e-mail for more information.

(The above photo depicts teaching in Healy Hall, one of my favorite venues. I have taught many a class there.)

60 Days of Scholarly Journal Article Writing -- Day 9

2009-09-27T19:10:00.003-05:00

For background on the 60 Days of Journal Article Writing, please click here.

After working through the exercises in Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks and getting up to this point, I realized that I needed to change projects. The beauty of this book, however, is that it brings this sort of crisis point at the beginning of the writing process, not at the end after you've already done so much work. The key problem with my original article idea -- based on that old conference paper -- was its interdisciplinarity. That's fine at a conference where work is as much entertaining as it is informative, and you can cross boundaries without fear of being called out for not being an expert in the second field. But journals demand more, and for a 12-week project I just didn't have the serious scholarly background in either music or medicine necessary to publish the article I originally planned.

Instead, I broke the "rules" slightly by launching a new piece, albeit one based on a section of my book that is also underway. This is going much better, partly because I'm already immersed in the necessary literature because of the work for the book, and also because it is 100% on my home turf academically. I don't have to stretch into a new field or two. This feels entirely natural, and the research has been such a joy that I don't mind writing something fresh for the 12-week project. As I continue to blog this book there may be snags, but right now I can see my way through the next ten weeks, and it feels great.

The picture above offers a large hint as to what I'm writing about.

60 Days of Scholarly Journal Article Writing -- Day 8

2009-09-25T10:34:00.005-05:00

It is just so much easier living through other people vicariously. Now that I'm working on publishable pieces alongside the members of the articles-only group, it's obvious that my "Go get 'em" style needs work. Specifically, perspective. It feels weird to corral scholarly research for potential submission. Today as I ponder the next step in Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks I feel interestingly vulnerable.

Besides the first article that I vetted with the group yesterday, I'm going to begin researching a second article to write along with the Spring articles group. That should create a nice balance -- research one while writing another, and then moving them through the pipeline. The goal? Two or three per year. Seriously. Watch this space for details.

For background on the 60 Days of Journal Article Writing, please click here.

Change your pattern, change your output

2009-09-24T18:42:00.004-05:00

One of our faculty authors ran into the classic problem of getting sucked into department busywork/life if she tried to write in her office. From colleagues, to students sitting in the hall waiting for her even if it wasn't her office hour, to mail in the cubbyhole, the office was turning into the last place she could work productively. So she signed up for a carrel in the library, and she began going there when she arrived on campus instead of directly to the department. It's working. She gets a couple of hours of writing done before she ever sets foot in that beehive known as the typical academic department. Then no matter what happens the rest of the day, she has done her writing.

Quote from one of the groups

2009-09-24T18:39:00.003-05:00

Today Michael told one of our groups something he learned in a theology class: "Discipline takes desires and turns them into destiny."

I found a couple of other versions online:

Discipline, not desire, equals destiny
Discipline + desire = destiny

I like them all. Know any others?

60 Days of Scholarly Journal Article Writing -- Day 7, Part II

2009-09-24T15:34:00.008-05:00

For background on the 60 Days of Journal Article Writing, please click here.

You knew I was going to say this, but it wasn't that bad. I read my assignment from Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks to my articles group this morning, and they liked it. Okay, they had to sort of say that because I'm leading the group and there's a kiss-kiss factor, but it felt like more than that. One of the group members actually had a piece of music by my composer on her iPod! He's sufficiently obscure that it truly pointed to a connection that went beyond just "getting it."

They brought up the same issue that I worried about -- that it might be overly interdisciplinary, but one of the group members suggested that I consider a different journal as well -- one more targeted to the aspect of my paper that focuses on medical history. That's a great idea, and it will make a great fallback strategy if my first-choice journal doesn't bite.

But the relief was that it went over very well... and that I'm still working on it, but now with feedback from two writing partners. Whew. Onward.

60 Days of Scholarly Journal Article Writing -- Day 7, Part I

2009-09-24T07:32:00.009-05:00

ANXIETY. There, I said it. The idea of speaking to a scholarly writing partner now about the article I'm going to produce in the next 53 days is making me squirm. I don' wanna do it! As my brother -- who sent me the above -- quoted from one of our favorite comic strips, Pearls Before Swine, "Stay home. Play Wii." And of course that's all I want to do, but instead at 10 a.m. I will face the articles group with (gulp) my assignment from Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks .

For background on the 60 Days of Journal Article Writing, please click here.

60 Days of Scholarly Journal Article Writing -- Day 6

2009-09-23T12:51:00.007-05:00

For background on the 60 Days of Journal Article Writing, please click here.

DAY SIX

Although I don't want to give away too much of the book Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks on this blog, I will say that by the beginning of the second "week" (really a five-day period that you can schedule during the work week or run consecutively, as you wish) I'm starting to get a bigger-picture sense of her logic, and this book really does work. It will clear out the cobwebs whether you are on your first article, or your fifth. I love this book and I can envision publishing many articles with its sensible help as a guide.

Today's exercise requires a partner, so I'm going to wait until the articles group meets tomorrow morning and then ask them all for input. It's great that Belcher includes partner exercises, because it forces you (against all instincts, sometimes) to socialize your work before writing too much of it. By getting authors to achieve certain points of clarity early, Belcher gets to the heart of various complaints that journal editors have about articles that are fuzzy or of uncertain value.

One note about discussing work with an academic partner. I feel shy about it! Even though I run groups at Booklab, for some reason I really want to hide my work right now, but Belcher advises the opposite. This feels scary, vulnerable, weird, you name it.

(The image above is from a book I'm reading on writer's groups. I'll report on it later, but it seemed appropriate for this partner-writing exercise.)

More on pre-conference planning

2009-09-23T12:31:00.004-05:00

One of Booklab's faculty authors returned from a recent conference with feedback on how his pre-conference preparation went. He viewed the university press booths completely differently based on discussions we had about publisher lists. One of the presses had been courting him, and he was able to see what else they published in his field, look at the actual books, and speak to an editor.

One of the advantages to going to the booth at your professional association's big annual meeting rather than just looking at catalogues is specialization. The press will go out of its way to identify itself to you and your colleagues in terms of your specialty. Also, book are expensive and time-consuming to gather (most libraries won't have all of them), so you'll be able to go through many of them all at once and make more informed decisions about the suitability of a particular publisher for your work. Imagine how much easier it will be to create a targeted prospectus with this kind of understanding.

Lindsay Waters of Harvard University Press

2009-09-22T11:00:00.007-05:00

This is so useful for academic authors, and I hope to find more of these soon. Don't forget to check out Ken Wissoker of Duke University Press in an earlier post here. Booklab believes (okay, I believe, but I like speaking as Booklab -- so authoritative) that there is no substitute for knowing actual editors at actual presses. More about Lindsay Waters here.

60 Days of Scholarly Journal Article Writing -- Day 5

2009-09-22T10:28:00.018-05:00

For background on the 60 Days of Scholarly Journal Article Writing, please click here.

DAY FIVE

Remember December 3! More about why in a moment.

Today ends the first week of blogging Write Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks. Week 1 ends with a focus on your calendar and on potential challenges to writing. It reminds me how odd/amusing/frustrating it is to speak to some faculty about their writing and hear their arguments for their old methods that aren't working. Not all faculty do this -- most are eager to try new things. But occasionally you get someone who fights for what's familiar. As long as that person publishes, then great. But if the books and articles aren't coming, then it's time to explore some new tricks.

One example from the Belcher book is the author who insists s/he needs large blocks of time to write, even though research shows time and again that smaller blocks on a steady schedule are more effective. Belcher tells us, "The first thing I like to ask people who make such claims is: Have you ever tried it any other way? ... It is unscientific to have such firm beliefs without having tested them. According to actual writing tests, there are two problems with this big block of time theory. One, such stretches are elusive, and virtually nonexistent once you become a professor. Two, people who use only big blocks of time to write are less productive and more unhappy than those who write daily" (38). She then goes on to back it up with studies from Boice and others.

So at the end of Week 1, the first five days, thanks to Belcher, I have (1) identified a conference paper that can be turned into a journal article; (2) dug it out of the archives and shaken the dust off of it; (3) retyped it; and (4) set a research and writing schedule for the coming semester with a goal of submitting the completed article 11 weeks from last Thursday, or December 3.

Booklab Loves Sage Publishing Ltd.

2009-09-22T09:29:00.005-05:00

Two titles that faculty have found useful in Booklab come from Sage Publishing, Ltd. Both Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks and Designing Research for Publication have been of enormous benefit to authors. Have a look at some of these exciting titles (exciting if you love research, writing and publishing, that is).

Just one note to the publisher if they happen to read this. Spend some moola to sexy up the book covers a bit! For example, we had no idea until we got deeply into Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks that Wendy Belcher is a faculty member at Princeton, or that she was a journal editor for eleven years. This important information should be on the book cover, along with blurbs from opinion makers among faculty, and more specific cover art. This is no slam to your artists (designing books is challenging, and I applaud the professionals who do it well, especially given time constraints and tight budgets), but such strong information can really sell a book title. Credentials count in this business, so let us see them!

Pre-Conference Planning

2009-09-22T08:39:00.009-05:00

Why is Booklab getting involved in pre-conference planning? Simple -- our authors make deals there. University presses are well-represented at most major academic conferences, and it can be a great place to make contact with an editor at a top-tier press who might be interested in publishing your field-specific book.

But don't just show up at the conference and expect to get a meeting. Although that can happen, the odds are against you given how busy most publishers are at their booths, how challenging it can be for you to present your concept quickly and effectively, and also what a brief time many university press editors actually spend at the conference; some just fly in and out -- you'll often find other staff actually working the booths for the full days, depending on the press and the importance of the conference.

The best way to approach a conference with a book is to come to one of Booklab's faculty author groups and ask about pre-conference planning. This is always done in a group setting rather than one-on-one, so that your colleagues can benefit from the discussion. You'll learn how to think about university press editors and their lists, how to craft a conference package that will get an editor's attention, and what to say to the editor long before the conference (as much as several months ahead) that will get you the meeting you want.

The image above comes from Yale University Press's web site, and it shows some of the staff at the Ecological Society of America meeting in San Jose, 2007.

The Chicago Manual of Style Does Q&A

2009-09-22T08:35:00.005-05:00

I saw this ad in mediabistro.com's Daily Media News Feed today. Clever!

Book titles

2009-09-21T15:29:00.004-05:00

One of Booklab's authors, Andy, found this on Crooked Timber, and it linked back to Your Monkey Called. I googled it, and it's running around the web a bit. So funny.

60 Days of Journal Article Writing -- Day 4

2009-09-21T11:15:00.011-05:00

For background on the 60 Days of Journal Article Writing, please click here.

DAY FOUR

I chose to re-type that conference paper from 11 years ago instead of trying to retrieve the file from an outdated floppy disk. The retyping process is so useful, both for helping me remember the paper's details, and for reminding me of its inherent inter-disciplinarity. The conference panel had been organized by Fr. Alvaro Ribeiro, and it was titled "Words and Music," reflecting his long, expert interest in the English musicologist and music historian Charles Burney (1726-1814).

Wendy Belcher rightly cautions against using interdisciplinary papers for this particular exercise because one risks attempting to publish in a field in which one is not credentialed. She writes, "It is harder than most... think to write for another discipline. Just because you took one film class and wrote a paper for it, despite being in the political science department, does not mean that you know how to write for film scholars." Hmmmm, I'm feeling that. Sure, I was a classical radio host, but that doesn't mean I'm a musical scholar. It means I know how to play CDs and read liner notes. So should I attempt to publish this scholarly paper at all?

In the interest of the blog and the group I will, and here's why: the research isn't pure musicology. I'm focusing on words, and music is just part of it. The piece is also literary history, and medical history. Although I risk being judged by standards outside of my field, I will assume that risk with the understanding that the readers for 18th-Century Studies may take me to task for aesthetics I'm too naieve to incorporate. I can live with that... I really want this paper to see the light of day. So onward.

Day 4 of Week 1 has many notes about obstacles and writing tasks that I won't detail here because you should buy the book! It is just so valuable for writers. I'll keep blogging it, but with the understanding that there's nothing like the real thing (a mere $35 investment in your publishing future).

Image above taken from the website of The Early Music Man.

Dr. Fathali Moghaddam on the Georgetown University Forum

2009-09-21T07:32:00.003-05:00

I interview many Georgetown authors for the radio program "Georgetown University Forum," a half-hour talk show that has existed in one form or another since the 1940s (it was even on television for a while). On Friday I spoke to Dr. Fathali Moghaddam who is a fascinating author of books about how and why terrorists think, what is happening to the cultures in which they live, and how globalization actually leads to terrorism. The interview will be available this week and I'll link to it, but meantime check out these books.

One of his most interesting points: he sees women and their changing the role and status globally, particularly in the Islamic world, as key to cultural shifts toward peace.

Coffee shop politics

2009-09-20T07:57:00.007-05:00

Have you ever been a coffee-shop author? I certainly have, but I've also experienced a phenomenon that Belcher mentions in Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks: "Some [authors] tell me that they are itinerant writers. Fixing on one writing spot doesn't work because, after working in a space for a week or two, the place becomes tainted for them.... notice when a place is no longer working for you, and move on to the next. May you live in a town with many coffee shops!" (18)

This odd burnout certainly happened to me. When I lived in Beverly Hills, a tree-lined neighborhood of Alexandria, Virginia, I used to go to nearby Del Ray and sit at St. Elmo's Coffee Pub to write. But eventually denizens of the pub would plop down at my table for a chat. Authors-to-be figured out that I liked it there, and some showed up unannounced. It was usually flattering, but I became quite nervous when one espionage author used his CIA connections to track me down even when I hadn't told him where I lived, and I used a PO box specifically to elude writer/stalkers! When the morning barista began asking me to do chores like I was staff, I realized the honeymoon was over. After two happy years at St. Elmo's I moved on.

Once in DC in my comfy Georgetown neighborhood, I was thrilled when Saxby's coffee opened just one block away a month after my arrival. For the better part of two years I was there almost daily, sitting in a corner with my latte and trying to be careful about how much time I spent (purchasing a drink or food every hour is a reasonable suggestion). I love the owners of Saxby's, but eventually I got less and less work done as my faculty authors learned where to find me. I love my authors, but writing time gots to be sacred.

A year after Saxby's opened, a nifty, brand-new little Starbucks arrived just down the hill at the corner of 34th and M Street, and I enjoyed it for its corporate anonymity. It was busy enough to feel friendly, but quiet enough (i.e. no faculty authors, no friends, no distractions) to work as a writing space. So imagine my distress when a disaster involving a car and a fire hydrant resulted in a severe water-main break that even made the evening news. The destroyed shop did not re-open, and the space is still empty.

Now I write at home, at the same groovy wooden desk that I bought in grad school from an antiques shop in the Charlottesville hills. I wrote many papers and a fun dissertation at this desk, and now it is my writing space. Other times if I need a distraction I go to Lauinger Library two blocks away. I still love Saxby's and its free wireless, and I sneak in there sometimes if I think the table visitors won't find me! :-)

60 Days of Journal Article Writing -- Day 3

2009-09-20T07:46:00.005-05:00

For background on the 60 Days of Journal Article Writing, please click here.

DAY THREE

This one's easy. Belcher has a long discussion about where to write, and I already have a good place to write. But if you don't, I recommend strongly that you spend some time with this section, and that you also read Paul Silvia's section in How to Write a Lot where he discusses writing space. Some of the Booklab authors have almost wept with relief when they negotiated a private space in their homes just for their writing (the tiniest thing can do, it doesn't have to be an elaborate library), and also time to write. Partners were generally cooperative if the author in question would also commit a certain amount of non-writing family time as well. Fair to everyone. We'll discuss work/life balance in another post, but one of the happy outcomes of the faculty book groups has been saner writing schedules and more time for family, friends, and life outside of work.

Image of the writing space above from a Poets and Writers feature on writing spaces. It is the space of fiction writer and essayist Debbie Zeitman.

60 Days of Journal Article Writing -- Day 2

2009-09-20T07:09:00.008-05:00

For background on the 60 Days of Journal Article Writing, please click here.

DAY TWO

One of the challenges of writing a journal article in twelve weeks is choosing something to write about. Belcher recommends revising existing research -- something you've already written for a class or given as a talk that was considered publishable by other scholars. I can understand why, for although it is perfectly reasonable to think that one could take the steps toward publication in twelve measurable weeks, finding and researching a topic can sometimes take longer.

For me the choice was straightforward. Although I considered going back to the dissertation or even rooting around in some interesting graduate school research, I instead remembered a conference paper from eleven years ago (deep breath) at the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies conference at Notre Dame. I lived that paper for several weeks, gleefully digging (ah, research!) in the special collections division of the National Institutes of Health. It combined three strong interests: music (I have worked as a classical radio announcer), late-17th- and early-18th-century studies, and the history of medicine. Researching and giving this paper was a baroque, multi-sensory experience, and I was so grateful for the enthusiastic reaction of scholars in the audience.

Then it went into a folder, it trundled from one house to the next, and it wound up dust-covered and so far under the bed in an archival box that at first I feared I had thrown it out. But no, it was there, the original printed pages with handwritten notes on them, and even a tucked-away and now-obsolete computer disk with the original document on it.

Do you have any older work gathering dust that might be revised for publication? Has it ever occurred to you that it might be perfectly usable now? I'm thrilled at the prospect. How lovely to think that something providing so much interest and pleasure eleven years ago in such an elegant place can live again, and perhaps even find its way into a journal so that other scholars can use it.

I won't yet give away what it is about, but the image on this post provides a hint.

Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks

60 Days of Journal Article Writing -- Day 1

2009-09-19T07:01:00.012-05:00

For more information on the 60 Days of Journal Article Writing, please click here.

Day 1's assignment is so easy -- all I have to do is read pages 1-10 that precede it. I'll go read now (some of this is re-reading for me, but that never hurts when one is a Bear of Very Little Brain), and then report back.

[Later]

Wow. No wonder Wendy Belcher made reading pages 1-10 the only assignment for day one. They're great pages! I learned so much about scholarly writing, and I do this for a living (note to self: never stop learning). She asks readers to do all of the written exercises, including signing a contract to commit to the work for 12 weeks (corny but effective -- I've used these before), listing common elements in my negative feelings about writing, and also listing common elements of the positive.

Negative elements for me included thinking about my dissertation committee who had expected me to publish this particular book a while ago (these memories are surprisingly visual/auditory); worries that anything I'm writing has all been done better by others; and regret for not having done more faster . . . a variation on the old refrain "What's the use? This should have been done years ago."

Positive elements included the euphoria I feel whenever I bring a chapter in for a landing; the pleasure I take in final revisions (polishing is fun!); the sheer joy of library research; and the fact that I like this job, my life, and my chosen area of research, and that when I'm writing and publishing I experience a general sense of well-being.

I also asterisked sections that will form the basis of future posts. Some are original to Belcher and I will credit her at those times, others come from Boice (about whom I've blogged before). So far my three favorite authors about academic writing are Boice, Silvia, and Belcher, although I'm sure there will continue to be more. If you don't know who I mean by these authors, please click the book list at the upper right of this blog page for details.

Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks

60 days of journal article writing

2009-09-19T06:32:00.014-05:00

One of the characteristics of Booklab faculty author writing groups is that I'm writing along with the team. After all, what good is a publishing guidance office unless the Director publishes too? And although I have published in the past, once this job got underway in 2006 my output went from "okay but probably not enough" to "hmmm, needs more." Meh. Time to get back to it. In other posts I've blogged about the book I'm writing on an 18th-century woman author, but now I'm ready to stare down the Scariest Thing Since Grad School: the scholarly article.

The role of articles in academic life varies depending on the department and the field. I can't speak for the world, but based on faculty anecdotes I have learned quite a bit about some campuses similar to Georgetown. Fields like psychology, philosophy and business are articles-only disciplines. You can publish a book if you want to, but articles are the lingua franca, and for tenure or promotion they have to be in certain scholarly journals. Who ranks what journal how high is a fraught process that I won't detail here (I actually can't -- it's subjective), but each department comes up with its own way of communicating what it values for tenure, various pay grades, and promotion to full professor. Other departments such as Spanish & Portuguese, English, and History, consider books more of the cornerstone, with articles like satellites circling the planets -- important and necessary, but not the key documents in promotion decisions. Scholars should still have articles, and some departments communicate a sense of how many and where they should appear, but books must happen as well, and the emphasis remains there.

Since I came from the English Department and that was my core background training (although truth be told, if I had my education to do over again I would have figured out a way to be a psychologist as well as a literary historian, and that day may yet come), I will focus my publishing efforts on the field that I studied and still love: the English Stuart era from 1660 until about 1714. My dissertation was broader, but the early part is most interesting. In the future after this next book I will begin learning more about early American/colonial literature as well.

So here we go. 12 five-day weeks of working through the book Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks , and working on a scholarly article for submission to the journal Eighteenth-Century Studies. I will blog about the daily exercises in the book, and how it feels to work with my authors on a project that feels, well, unfamiliar and scary. I'm excited about doing it, but also filled with the good kind of trepidation (humbled by my predecessors, cognizant of my strengths and weaknesses, hoping I can measure up).

Do you know the publishing prizes in your field?

2009-09-18T16:24:00.004-05:00

Although I am currently writing on an 18th-century subject, and although I'm a life member of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (when my new copy of the journal Eighteenth-Century Studies arrives, I usually jump around the house with glee), I didn't know so much about possible publishing prizes in my field. This week when I asked scholars from anthropology, history, English, Spanish & Portuguese, and more if they knew about prizes in their fields, most said no. But guess what? Knowing about prizes is crucial. Often you can even self-nominate.

Here is just one of the prizes listed on the website for ASECS. I became so interested in James L. Clifford (a scholar whose name I recognized from Johnson studies) that I looked up his New York Times obituary. He died at age 77 in 1978 after a remarkable career. He had an engineering degree from MIT, and he might have stayed in that field had he not read Boswell's Life of Johnson in 1929 during a course at Columbia. He joined Columbia's faculty in 1946 after the second World War, and he stayed there until his retirement. What a guy. And what an honor it would be to win the prize named for him.

Clifford Prize
The James L. Clifford Prize goes to the author of an article on an outstanding study of some aspect of eighteenth-century culture, interesting to any eighteenth-century specialist, regardless of discipline. It carries an award of $500.
Rules:
· The article should be no longer than 15,000 words.
· The article must have appeared in print in a journal, festschrift, or other serial publication between July 2008 and June 2009.
· The article may be nominated by a member of the society, by its author, or by an editor of the publishing journal. Self-nominations are limited to one article per year.
· Nominations must be accompanied by nine (9) copies of the article and must be received in the ASECS office no later than 1 January 2010.
· The author must be a member of the ASECS at the time of submission.

On-target observations about grad school

2009-09-18T15:46:00.004-05:00

Anne Sigismund Huff is the author of an interesting book, Designing Research for Publication, that was recommended through another title we use in Booklab, Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks by Wendy Laura Belcher. Check out this paragraph on page four of Chapter 1, "Finding the Right Conversation," and see if it doesn't remind you of grad school:

The powerful idea that scholarship is an interactive and collective activity was not salient in my doctoral education. I was certainly trying to make sense of my new profession as I listened to lectures, read, and interacted with others. The expectation of giving something back might have (or should have) influenced designing and writing my dissertation, but instead I began and ended with an individual agenda. In frustration, I thought that more successful people were part of a conversation that excluded me.

Reading this paragraph makes me ask why the roles for which we were preparing were not clearer in grad school. I was fortunate to have a wonderful director and dissertation committee all of whom aided in my professional development, but there was no institutional discussion of what the profession is and how we learn to contribute to it as scholars. At that level it was catch-as-catch-can. If you are a faculty member who wonders how everyone else got the clues and you missed out, books like this can be such a sane relief.

Khayaal: The South Asia Book Club

2009-09-18T13:29:00.002-05:00

This notice comes from Dr. Aparna Vaidik, who is the faculty mentor for this group:

Georgetown University’s Mortara Center for International Studies
in association with the South Asia Forum, International Certificate for Development,
Asian Studies Certificate Program, and South Asian Society
invite you to a book discussion organized by

Khayaal
An informal book club for Georgetown book lovers with a focus on
South Asian writers and literature on

Khaled Hosseini
A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS

Wednesday, September 23, 2009
6:00 pm
Mortara Center
(corner of 36th and N Streets)
*Refreshments will be served

The discussion will be led by Aparna Ramesh, (SFS ’11)

Devonthink vs. Evernote vs. ??

2009-09-18T07:30:00.002-05:00

Some of our scholars use data management software. I've never tried one of these programs, but yesterday as an author waxed romantical about her committed relationship to Devonthink, I got to thinking about whether this would help with The Morgue of Scraps and other data problems such as so much on the hard drive that you forget what you have. The classic is going to a lot of time and trouble to find an article, only to realize while reading it that you read it two years ago, took notes on it, and saved it on your hard drive where it is now a needle in an overstuffed haystack.

Here's a link to a website that compares Devonthink to Evernote. Any thoughts on all of this?

The morgue of scraps

2009-09-18T07:02:00.004-05:00

One frustrated scholarly author detailed how she edits and excises material. She doesn't want to discard it entirely, but she also doesn't want to use it in the present work, so she saves it in what she drily referred to as "the morgue of scraps." We all laughed. I have one of those -- bits of articles, stories, and ideas from heaven-knows-where, collected over the years on computer files and too good to toss. When computers changed from floppy discs to CD-rom to flash drives, over time some of these scraps became inaccessible (or not easily retrieved), so I resolved to let them go, like throwing out memories from a bygone relationship.

Do you have a morgue of scraps? Or is there a gentler name for it? Are all writers like packrats with yarn and fabric stuffed away in closets, attics and drawers, ready to be used "someday?"

Image from Little White Paw.

Our 12-week adventure into scholarly articles

2009-09-17T07:50:00.002-05:00

The articles-only group has taken the plunge, working together on the introduction and Chapter 1 of Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks. Interestingly, though, authors in the book groups are considering it, too, as a way to think about book chapters. 12 weeks seems a bit long to work on just one chapter (that's almost a whole semester!), so some of the book people are experimenting with doing two units a day from the articles book. Two chapters a semester sounds great for someone who is really focused and writing daily. That would provide the December break for revisions, and the following summer to go over all four chapters and complete the prospectus. Some books are longer than others, but this schedule would produce a well-considered eight-chapter scholarly book in two years.

Petrified Squid at Booklab

2009-09-16T18:18:00.005-05:00

One of my favorite blogs is The Daily Coyote, where photographer Shreve Stockton documents her life in Wyoming raising a coyote her friend rescued and gave to her when it was a puppy. My preferred way to read The Daily Coyote was from the beginning, clicking back to the early days and working my way forward a few pages at a time. Gradually what began as a photographic journal became a story, and sure enough, Ms. Stockton got a great book deal.

What I love about this is a validation of the process of blogging as a way to work through ideas with an audience, and of letting them take natural shape. Your blog need not have millions of readers. My Booklab blog has only seven, but they are all dedicated. Instead, the blog is a way to socialize ideas (thanks to Gary in one of my scholarly groups for that term), and to get comfortable with them in an environment that's a near-perfect combination of scratch pad and microphone on stage. I believe that she did end up with zillions of readers, but her audience grew naturally as the blog matured.

Shreve Stockton sells petrified squid that she finds on her property in Wyoming (she says this is legal). I bought some and it will sit in a bowl on the mantel above the fireplace at Booklab as a reminder to anyone who asks that blogging is actually real writing, and it can lead to very real books.

The so-called tyranny of the blank page

2009-09-16T17:52:00.006-05:00

The faculty fiction writers' group just left, and one of the last things some stragglers and I discussed was the ridiculous notion that writers are supposed to sit in front of blank pages or blinking computer cursors and suffer. What kind of self-flagellator does that? We're big fans of getting out into life, notebook in hand, and doing or discovering something worth writing about. Stumped for something to write? Then grab a notebook or a digital audio recorder and go to the farmer's market, the waiting room at the county jail, a rodeo, or the local rowers' boathouse.

It baffles us that how-to-write books often discuss the writer's office as a necessary dungeon, and the ritual before blank paper with attendant suffering as some inherent part of the creative process. As if! All of those horrid lines about gluing oneself to the chair or chaining oneself to the desk. Twaddle! Guilt-producing gahr-bage.

This fiction group is amazing and I love it. Booklab has ten groups for scholarly writers, and one for fiction as a fun middle-of-the-week respite. Everyone is focusing on different kinds of things. We dove into literary magazines today, with actual copies on hand. I did a short presentation on The Missouri Review, to set up a model, and then Chris took a copy of Ploughshares to discuss next week. Matt walked out with a copy of VQR, which he'll study and dissect for us two weeks from now.

We do not believe in butts in chairs until we know why we're there and what we have to say. We believe in butts out in nature, in the big, bad city, or on the ranch, cowboy. We believe in writers as actors, participants, observers, creators, anything but inmates in office-prisons.

Weird chairs above from coolbuzz.org.

Another question from the web page -- proposals!

2009-09-14T15:14:00.007-05:00

A blog reader writes in with this timely question: "I've just written a nonfiction book. What do I do next?"

First order of business is congratulating yourself on having completed something so challenging. Second is stepping back from your masterpiece and thinking about a professional nonfiction book proposal. Usually I recommend these before you write your book, since most nonfiction trade books are sold on the basis of a proposal and a couple of sample chapters rather than a whole manuscript. Why? Because nonfiction editors often like to think with the author on the crafting of the book -- it has to work on their particular list. But there is certainly no rule one way or the other. You can create a proposal now based on the book you have already written.

Think of a proposal as a business plan for your book. It demonstrates to a publisher who you are, how your qualifications make you the perfect author for this book, who will read it and why, and how you plan to promote your work. There are other aspects as well. Your future editor will likely take copies of your proposal to an acquisitions meeting where it will be discussed in business terms. Different houses have different ways of deciding what books to acquire, but a great proposal is the basis of just about everyone's system. If you click the link at the upper right of this page you'll see a list of books I recommend, and there are two proposal titles.

If you're a tenure-line faculty member at Georgetown this is free. If you are not on Georgetown's faculty, you can hire Booklab to work with you on a professional nonfiction book proposal. Please send e-mail for a sheet that details just some of the ways we work with authors on this all-important aspect of nonfiction book publishing.

The image above shows a different kind of proposal.

The Booklab Workout

2009-09-14T09:41:00.008-05:00

Authors sit a lot, and therefore need to think a bit more about fitness than perhaps people who have on-your-feet kinds of jobs. So voila the Booklab Workout. All that butt-in-the-seat is especially destructive when it comes to muscle tone in the lower abs!

We're thinking of installing treadmills at workstations (ones that move v-e-r-y slowly, apparently all the rage among lawyers). Oh, and I'm wondering if it makes sense to buy a Pilates machine. Ideas? Anyone?

Image from engadget.

Speaking of feeling a little crazy somtimes

2009-09-14T08:26:00.008-05:00

I rarely comment on pop culture, because I don't really get it. That's not a snob attitude, it's a clueless one... and I've been that way since childhood. But the video that's all over the news about the Kanye West/Taylor Swift moment at the VMA awards last night brought up something different for me... the sense that they enacted right there on the stage most authors' secret fears -- that someone will come rushing up and shout "Imposter!" right when you're ready to celebrate an achievement.

One of my friends is a judge, and even after almost two decades on the bench, he said he still sometimes thinks someone will burst into the courtroom and shout "You're not a judge, take off that robe and leave the bench this minute." Another friend reported that the night she received a major international book award, she wasn't happy, she was terrified and a bit blue for all those who hadn't won (she told me she wanted to be first runner-up). When she did get to the stage, she kept waiting for someone to say "We're sorry, there has been some mistake, that's supposed to go to a real writer."

I've felt like a fraud in public many times. Others with far more achievements than mine say the same thing. Without judging the parties involved (it doesn't feel appropriate given that I can't name a song by either artist), I will say this much: wow... watching that video was like living out my worst nightmare.

Now on to another day at Booklab where we all reassure each other that we're whatever it is we need to be (not perfect, not the living end, but good enough on most days and committed to professionalism and perspective).

Illustration by Sir John Tenniel for Alice in Wonderland.

Is your book making you crazy?

2009-09-13T15:30:00.005-05:00

Quick question -- has anyone ever thought you were going crazy because of a book that wasn't going well? An author this week told me that he felt that way, and it reminded me of my own state of mind in 1999. Nuts! (Things are much better now, thank you -- Booklab= happiness.)

Any and all "crazy author" stories are welcome.

Are Writers Conferences Helpful or Necessary?

2009-09-13T13:38:00.004-05:00

I'm going to admit -- publicly! -- that I am somewhat edgy about the subject of writer's conferences. Even though every year that they'll have me I'm a fiction judge for the Maryland Writers Association (love them), and even though I've spoken at three writers' conferences, I still have nagging concerns about the format, based on admittedly small-sample experiences. They just felt all kinds of awkward, and I was unconvinced that writers got what they hungered for at most of them.

Instead of opining, however, I'll open the question up to all five of my readers, some of whom send me personal mail even when they don't comment here. What's your opinion of writer's conferences? Have you been to, say, Bread Loaf? Was it a good experience? You may be (as always) anonymous, or else first-name only.

The hilarious illustration is from palblog, the blog of comics artist Peter Laird.

Authors and editors sometimes want different things

2009-09-13T13:08:00.004-05:00

Sometimes there is an inherent conflict between a typical author's goals (publish me, publish me, publish ME!), and an editor's goals (I want to enhance my list... when you see my list you see what I value and why... to get published, fit on my list). Average authors are all about individual recognition, whereas typical editors focus on the content and message of their lists as intellectual and artistic collections.

Authors frequently ask "Why didn't the publisher advertise ME more," whereas editors more typically ask "What's the best use of promotional resources for the group, for the imprint, for the house?" It's not that authors are all ego-maniacal while editors are altruistic. That simple split can't work, since so many editors are also authors. But their goals are sometimes at variance when they inhabit their respective roles. It's also no wonder that some editors become successful authors, because they learn to think like editors and so they often make more successful publishing bids. The more that authors focus on editors' complete lists, the more likely the two camps are to gradually share goals, or at least come at divergent goals from more harmonious bases.

How do you find editors? Follow the trail of books you admire. Sites like Amazon have advanced search features that let you see all the offerings from a particular publishing house. Choose an appropriate house, select a range of books in your field, and find out who edited them. This can be more accurate than simply looking on the website and finding the editor who handles "all" of a particular type of book, since there is often a bit of overlap, and editors can wander onto one another's turf.

By the way, getting to know editors and their lists is not the only way to go about getting published. I know some authors who don't give a hoot and who are extraordinarily well- published. The only rule is that there are no rules, but knowing editors and their works is one of my personal preferences.

Journal Experiments: Starting Again, and Again

2009-09-13T12:20:00.006-05:00

I'm still energized by the Journal Experiments, and every time I return it is with wonder and amazement at just how useful/fruitful they are. For those of you unfamiliar with them, the original post is here, from a year ago. We examined some cool journals between then and now, but with the new faculty fiction-writing group starting last week, it's time to get into them again even more seriously.

This week's journal is The Missouri Review, a 30-year-old literary magazine based at the University of Missouri. It is extremely high on my list of must-subscribes, and I encourage anyone who is thinking about submitting to it to read back issues from the library to get a feel for it, and then subscribe as a way of supporting this amazing world.

The editor, Speer Morgan, is also a literary practitioner, with several novels, plus award-winning fiction in The Atlantic Monthly. I was struck by the fact that although -- as is customary -- his essay about this edition precedes the entries, he chose to list that essay at the end of the Contents. Hard to say if that was a deliberate nod to his authors to put them first, but it sure seemed that way and I liked it. Poetry editor for the summer '09 issue Katy Didden has a number of publication credits as well, and she is a doctoral student. The poetry editor listed on the website, Marc McKee, has a similar background.

Why do I pay attention to editors? Because I have a personal bias toward knowing who editors are and thinking about them as people with tastes and preferences before submitting to a journal. Usually the individual editors do not make all decisions (it tends to be more collaborative), but they are often the first readers of submissions. I admire editors, and I consider myself as an author an applicant for a position on their lists, not just someone saying "Hey you! Publish me!"

Journals are such little worlds. The Missouri Review is a spectacular one. I will soon add it and other much-loved literary magazines to the recommended list at the upper right of this blog. As I read this issue, I'll post more about contents.

Marketing James Patterson

2009-09-11T08:11:00.004-05:00

The next time I hear an author whine that the publisher didn't do enough to promote his or her book, I'll send them to this Harvard Business School study of author James Patterson. Authors are usually shocked, shocked to learn that their platform is their responsibility, but the example of Patterson can offer a bit of consolation. Even rich writers sometimes put their own money in the game (Grisham did it, Patterson did it, there is nothing wrong with it), and the bestsellers get there for a reason.

Related article from Forbes.com, "Why James Patterson is Worth $150 Million."

If you wonder what this has to do with scholarly book and article publishing at Georgetown, the answer is "everything." We learn from the playbook of the great trade success stories in order to adapt some of their real-world savvy to our own boutique titles. And why not? A smart idea is a smart idea, whether it's for a beach read or for a book about history, biology, psychology, and more.

Handwriting at Booklab?

2009-09-11T06:14:00.004-05:00

There's a handwriting craze going on, and I'm tapping in (accidental pun!). My own handwriting used to be pretty, but has degenerated to a scrawl over time. Apparently that's normal, and fixable. Emily Yoffe (an interesting Slate writer who may wish to explore more serious books -- she'd be great) embarked on a handwriting experiment with her eighth-grade daughter, and they both came out with a happy result. Now I want to seek out the same Maryland-based guru, Nan Jay Barchowsky, and learn more about how to have elegant, readable, italic (not the droopy Palmer loops you probably learned if you're over 40) handwriting.

Hmmm, I wonder if those skills will help me read old wills and other original documents I encounter from the 1680s through the 1710s?

If you're interested in studying handwriting at Booklab, let me know and I'll think about setting up a weekly class.

Finally an audiobook my aunt might use

2009-09-10T06:24:00.006-05:00

I love audiobooks and I listen to them all the time on my field digital audio recorder, downloaded from audible.com. However, because of the tech hurdle, they tend to miss one of their most important audiences: older people who use computers rarely or not at all, but who would welcome the audible version of a story.

My aunt is a case in point. She does not read anymore because of her eyesight, but that exempts her from a computer as well. She isn't just unlikely to download something -- the act is impossible for her. So audible.com and its ilk are out, even though she has the potential to be a good user. Her grandsons might be able to load audiobooks onto an iPod for her, but she won't work the little buttons and she'll get confused about where she is in a book... she needs a large, easy interface.

A company called Playaway has a solution she might actually use. It's a device somewhat shaped like a book and marked like one, with large buttons and a headphone. You put on the headphones and press play. Instead of touting how many of the little suckers you can stuff onto one memory device, this is the opposite: one book per. It is admittedly expensive at about $40 per title, but on the other hand, it's the only way she's going to use audio, so it might make sense for her public library that serves many seniors.

Now the big question for me -- is there a way to adapt scholarly books to this? Seabiscuit and its ilk will always find their way to various formats, and that's fine. I love Seabiscuit. But what about books that aren't front-and-center in the big bookstores? Thinking... thinking...

David Gewanter and Deborah Tannen in Fall for the Book

2009-09-09T19:28:00.008-05:00

I just received the new list and noticed that Georgetown University poet David Gewanter and nonfiction author Deborah Tannen will be part of 2009 Fall for the Book. Also, one of my former students in a Gothic fiction class at Georgetown, the incredibly talented Jayanti Tamm, will feature Cartwheels in a Sari: A Memoir of Growing Up Cult.

Wow, now I'm combing through the lists to see if there's anyone else I know.

Two meanings of "book plus"

2009-09-09T17:27:00.015-05:00

For very good political reasons, Booklab does not dispense tenure advice. The first of these is a practical one -- there are too many different departments with varying standards for any individual outside of those departments to be able to guess what constellation of publications will work for a tenure or promotion bid. The second is more subjective: tenure advice is really too much pressure to put on an individual or an office. After all, what if a professor were to ask for tenure advice, and then I gave it and was wrong? Does that mean the botched tenure bid is (gulp) my responsibility? Those are just two of probably many good reasons for Booklab staying out of the tenure advising business.

Therefore what follows is NOT tenure advice, but rather a definition of how some people have interpreted the variable statement "book plus." It often means a pattern of publishing over time where books -- if they are desired in the discipline -- are accompanied by a penumbra of articles both before and after the appearance of the book. Ideally these articles will be artfully spaced over time, but the author does not always have control over this because different journals have different incubation periods (anything from 6-8 months to as much as a year and a half, and very occasionally even more).

Then there is another competing meaning of "book plus" that involves one published book and significant progress toward a second one. I have heard faculty assert vociferously that the only correct meaning of "book plus" is one or another of these. Whichever one is used, however, it is generally done so in the context of distinguishing the university or department in question from what is known as a "one book" institution, meaning a place where you can get tenure for a book on its own, without accompanying articles or progress on a second book.

So what does your university mean when it uses the term? Have you heard another interpretation of the term "book plus"?

Testing the waters

2009-09-09T08:24:00.005-05:00

Booklab receives many inquiries from authors who would like to write thrillers, and I welcome them. Washington, DC has always had more than its share of insiders who actually know first-hand how things work at the Pentagon, the White House, the FBI, and the CIA. I have seen many realistic, this-could-have-happened thrillers from first-time authors in DC. Now and then Georgetown University makes an appearance as part of the plot (apparently a lot of high-level operatives are running around campus).

But often the aspiring author pours everything into one book, and then announces that she or he is "testing the waters" with it. If the book sells, then that's a green light from the industry that this is a viable avocation. If it fails to sell, well, there's always the day job. This attitude isn't reserved for thriller fans by any means. Numerous authors give me a version of the the story that they have everything riding on one manuscript, and often a beginner one at that.

This is stinkin' thinkin' (to quote Zig Ziglar) on several levels. First, it puts way too much pressure on a novice effort. Second, it assumes that acceptance or rejection by agents and editors reflects reality (if that were the case, then the oft-rejected A Confederacy of Dunces would never have seen daylight, let alone won a Pulitzer). Third, it assumes that this plot and these exact characters are the ones readers will connect to, when many veteran thriller writers, for example John D. MacDonald, had whole series of published stories with prototype characters that morphed over time into memorables such as Travis McGee. Finally, it exempts the potential thriller author from one of the most important things any newcomer to category fiction can possibly do -- plan an encore, and another, and another. By the time a manuscript is making its rounds, the author should have two or three more in the pipeline, with at least one ready to go within a few months.

For a sense of how to do this and succeed at it, you might want to consider Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell, one of the recommended books in the link at the right. He discusses thriller writing as a career. Another book I love is by Donald Maass, and Writing the Breakout Novel. Yes, they both address mechanics, but they also discuss big-picture what the life of a series fiction writer is like, and they will back up what I'm saying here. One test-market book is not an indicator of anything. Master the profession by reading everything you can, attending classes (mediabistro.com has some good ones) and writing many books. One of them just might be the one that breaks through.

Question from the mailbag

2009-09-08T11:34:00.008-05:00

Anyone is welcome to ask questions and have them answered on the blog. You can be identified by first name, or kept anonymous. Today's question:

Q: Is there a rule of thumb within the political science field regarding the simultaneous submission of a book manuscript to university presses? Is it common practice, or is it frowned upon?

A: This is a particularly timely question now, because many university presses are in transition, moving from more traditional scholarly practices to ones that resemble practices at trade houses. My answer to you is based on what UP editors have told me (I've personally visited Chicago, Northwestern, Arizona, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, Oxford, and NYU, plus the academic division of trade houses Alfred A. Knopf and W. W. Norton; my publisher was Farrar, Straus & Giroux). I also ran this answer by a roomful of university press staff, including editors at places like Yale and MIT, at the Association of American University Presses conference last spring, and it received a 100% positive response.

You may send a prospectus and sample chapter anywhere. To a university press, a submission is an entire manuscript sent to an editor in the hope of triggering the peer review process, so a prospectus and a sample chapter alone do not a full submission make. Just to be sure that the editor understands this, however, I also include a very brief cover note with this package that says clearly "This is an inquiry only, not a full submission." In other words, you're just trying to gauge interest, and that's perfectly fair. You may send as many of these as you wish, as long as that "inquiry only" language is up front.

My recommendation is that you research presses respected in your field (especially important if you are up for tenure or full professor), study their catalogues, and identify books in your field you admire. From this industry-based research, make a list of 3-4 editors who might be appropriate for your work, and send this inquiry package to all of them. Once the yeses and nos come back, rank the yes responses and then submit your full manuscript to them one at a time as per the traditional approach. Everyone will feel that you played fair with them. Two good rules to follow are to only inquire at a press where you would actually want to be published, and to be transparent whenever possible so that an editor does not mistakenly think she or he has a lock on your book.

This process is a huge blessing for academic authors who want to be able to weed out the no responses early, and get on to the potential yeses. This can save months if not years of time.

The William Morris Agency at Booklab

2009-09-08T11:25:00.005-05:00

Eric Lupfer of the William Morris Agency will be my guest for a Georgetown University faculty book talk at noon on October 15. I'll have more details on the blog closer to the date, but if you are a Georgetown faculty member and would like to attend for lunch, chat and a Q&A, by all means let us know by sending e-mail at the right or contacting me in person.

If you are not a faculty member but would still like to attend, non-faculty can participate in all Booklab offerings on an academic/course fee basis. Please contact us for more details!

The book above is one of Eric's most recent titles.

The joy of the 8 o'clock hour

2009-09-08T10:26:00.006-05:00

The first faculty writing group of the new season met this morning at 8 a.m. Although I'm traditionally a morning person, 8 a.m. for the first meeting of the day still seemed daunting. It's one thing to be at the office at 8, but quite another to be sharp and ready to roll.

It turned out to be one of the best groups. Fortified with hot coffee (I hope I made it strong enough), we updated one another on what we did since the summer groups ended, and what we want for (1) this entire semester; and (2) just the coming week. We assessed the past, looked to the future, and set specific goals that included writing time per day and thoughts about how to balance writing and teaching. This group was a technologically focused bunch, with the majority from the School of Foreign Service conducting research with an international aspect (Iraq, Afghanistan, China, and India).

Two more groups meet today: 1 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. There are still limited spaces available, so please notify Carole if you would like to reserve a place.

Tasty coffee image from The Coffee Company in Australia.

Wisdom from Robert Boice

2009-09-08T09:44:00.004-05:00

I love the research of Robert Boice, author of the 1990 book Professors as Writers. Although his research has been incorporated and stated somewhat more accessibly by Paul Silvia in How to Write a Lot, which I also love, Boice is The Man when it comes to research, data, hard numbers, or whatever else you want to call it. They make a great pair. Booklab doesn't focus as much on how we feel about writing, and neither does Boice. Instead, we care what works, and that makes Boice our go-to guru.

Today's tidbit is from Boice Chapter Five, Generative Writing, and his fondness for what he calls the "results-first approach." Boice thinks you have to write something before you can edit or perfect it, but he notices that most academic authors do the opposite, trying to be perfect on the first bounce. He isn't recommending spontaneous writing (he thinks that's a big Fail for different reasons), nor is he suggesting binge writing. Generative writing is more substantive, but it is still produced without judgment. It creates the stuff that can then be edited by a completely different part of the brain.

Over the course of the semester I'll post tidbits from Boice. A great way to read him is to buy both books, read Silvia first, and then read Boice second for backup material.

And speaking of Peeps...

2009-09-07T07:35:00.004-05:00

Speaking of Peeps, I'm also obsessed with the diary of Samuel Pepys (yes, his last name is pronounced just like the marshmallow confection). Pepys was one of the great diarists in English history, and his diary -- written in a shorthand code as many men did in his day, both for privacy and for expediency -- forms one of the best firsthand accounts of 17th-century England. Pepys lived through both the Great Fire of London and the Plague. He was a fellow of the Royal Society and he knew Isaac Newton. His remarkable library is one of the jewels of Magdalen College, Cambridge (as a classical radio announcer I learned to pronounce that "Maudlin." It's a sideways pronunciation, kinda like Peeps.).

An English web designer and actor named Phil Gyford runs the Best Site Ever if you're a 17th-century history geek like me -- The Diary of Samuel Pepys. This is Gyford's decade-long effort to put the entire magnum opus on the internet, day by day with links. Wowie. I like it so much that I read it every day and I also sent a monetary contribution to Project Gutenberg as he requested (he also has an Amazon wish list, so I sent him Season One of "Arrested Development" at his request -- he doesn't accept money, but he'll allow the occasional DVD of Gratitude).

Above is Pepys's signature from England's National Archives.

A new take on rejection

2009-09-07T07:14:00.004-05:00

Publishing necessarily entails the "ask," the moment where an author offers work to an editor or agent (EoA) in the hope of having it accepted for publication, or representation. One might think of this as a yes/no moment, and sometimes it is, but the closer you get to "yes," the more complicated the transaction becomes. EoAs faced with the prospect of actually accepting something go through a complex internal process of gauging what this will cost them in time, effort, and actual dollars.

Yes, publishing your work costs them money. Surprised? Don't be. Most authors think about the $ coming in, without consider what those brave souls known as publishers have to pay to produce a work, and I'll consider this in detail in a future post. Beyond the warbucks, the act of publishing you or me will require an investment of their time, and also an emotional commitment. They're not just clerks processing Halloween peeps mindlessly in a marshmallow factory. Your work becomes part of their careers, too.

Interestingly, authors tend to hear "no" when an EoA actually said "maybe." For example, sometimes an EoA will say "This would be interesting if x happened" (e.g. if if were more narrative, if it was told from an eyewitness perspective, if it was more scholarly, less scholarly, etc.), and most of the time authors will return to me with "They rejected it." Another typical EoA answer is "The author has a great background, and it would be wonderful to see a book pitch that works off of that base." Again, the author usually hears this as "No," when in fact the EoA was making a bid for a potential future relationship. "Try me again" usually means just that as well -- the EoA sees potential and wants to hear more. But the typical author simply tucks tail and skedaddles.

The next time you think you're hearing no, stop and wait through it. Instead of responding, just be quiet with it for a while, maybe even a day or two. Is it really a rejection? Did the person actually say no? Or is that the pre-recording in your head left over from the fifth grade, and was the answer actually more ambiguous, and potentially much more interesting?

Image from Sugar Shop.

Fiction and the academic author

2009-09-06T15:53:00.007-05:00

Most of us who work in the publishing-focused realms of academia are here because we love research and scholarship. We like archives, libraries dusty books, and obscure stuff. We don't think it's dry at all, we think it's tasty! However, once the academic publishing is well underway or comfortably accepted at a great university press or a journal, many academic authors confess to me that something else lurks in their computer files or desk drawers: Novels, poetry, essays, plays and more. Fiction! Yes! I said it!

The new fiction group starts this week at Booklab, and another will begin in January. Just like the scholarly book groups, this one will run for twelve weeks, meeting once a week. Some of the fiction group members will work through the book The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. Since 2002 I have facilitated five groups based on The Artist's Way, and they're wonderful. Other group members who choose to work on their own (either because they've done AW or because it isn't quite their cup o' tea), will simply check in and let us know how their fiction progresses.

Each week we will also focus on a different literary journal, viewing examples and discussing how to learn more about a journal, and how to submit work to it. For week one beginning Wednesday, September 9, we will focus on Ploughshares, published by Emerson College.

This new season of book groups comes with a pledge to you, my readers. I commit to publishing at least one post per day for this entire book group season, beginning today and ending December 11. This means several things:

**	A revival of The Journal Experiments (whoo-hoo!);
**	Exploration of how each of the ten book groups is going. Participants will be anonymous, but the blog will feature real-life book publishing trials, tribulations and joys;
**	More about my own day-to-day publishing process. Much has happened since I began a scholarly book last year based on research and writing from the past 15 years, and I'll include it in the third person under the name Fortuna.

The new Folger poetry schedule is available

2009-08-28T06:31:00.006-05:00

Sometimes poets come to Booklab, asking me about the market for their poetry. Believe it or not there is one, although I don't call it a market per se.

Naysayers who insist poets "can't earn a living" are -- to put it gently -- wildly mistaken, and just a few evenings with some of the world's successful poets will lay that misconception to rest. There are a number of distinguished literary worlds wherein poetry is read, published, and valued, and (yes) where poets are paid.

One of these worlds is exemplified by the reading series available at the Library of Congress, and another one across the street at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Hmmm... I've often wondered if they compete. Whatever the case, each of these institutions works hard to bring in prominent poets for events that are usually low cost or free and just terrific. If you live in Georgetown, there is even a direct bus from Wisconsin Avenue to the Hill! Here is the reading list for the Folger. If you want to sign up to attend, the link is here.

10/9	O.B. Hardison, Jr. Poetry Prize Reading: Juliana Spahr
11/3	Arthur Sze and Afaa Michael Weaver
12/14	Emily Dickinson Birthday Tribute: Lucie Brock-Broido
1/11	Kim Addonizio & Kyle Dargan
2/8	Charles Wright
3/1	Patricia Smith & John Burnside
5/3	W.S. Merwin
5/18	Folger Poetry Board Reading: Richard Wilbur

The above image is from the Folger's own archives.

Tracy Kidder's writing life

2009-08-28T06:22:00.004-05:00

One of the most helpful things in my world as a writer has been going to readings or other live events and hearing how famous authors discuss their process. Some of them complain about being asked what they perceive as a silly question ("How do you write each day"), but the answers are more illuminating than most of them realize. For example, I learned from a reading with Jane Smiley that she only writes about a page a day. She is slow, but methodical, because she writes every day and over a year it adds up. Most of the authors I've seen live (John Irving, Sebastian Junger, Michael Crichton, Anne Perry, Harry Shearer, Anthony Bourdain -- there have been many of them) do report one consistent thing -- they tend to write on a predictable schedule rather than catch-as-catch-can. Writing becomes part of the fabric of their lives, rather than some sort of marathon they run once in a while.

Here's a bit from today's New York Times about Tracy Kidder's work schedule. You can read the entire piece here. He's known for many books, but the one above -- for which he won the Pulitzer Prize -- is also the one I liked the best.

What is a typical day in your writing life?

I tend to start early in the morning, the time of day when l feel most nearly capable of thought. When I’m writing a rough draft, I have a hard time staying with it for more than a few hours. I used to be able to spend 12 hours or more a day when rewriting, but I can’t do that for many days in a row anymore. In the summertime, I go fishing after writing, for me a lovely antidote to frustration.

The Google Books Finger

2009-08-27T19:15:00.002-05:00

I admit to being a bit of a Google books junkie when it comes to 19th-century stuff. This old, hard-to-find, well-out-of-print material was often the thankless task of the literary sleuth who just wanted to find (for example) as many 19th-century references as possible to one obscure 18th-century author. If the name is unique enough, Google books can bring up a lot of references.

It can also bring up a lot of fingers. Turns out that people scanning Google books have also reasonably often inadvertently scanned their fingers or whole hands, sometimes in color. I wish I was the first to notice this, but as soon as it occurred to me to blog about it I checked for "google books finger" and came up with plenty of hits. Others have noticed. Others have laughed.

Feeling embarrassed over a draft

2009-08-22T05:26:00.004-05:00

I've isolated a particular moment in the writing process that can lock up scholars -- finding an error in a draft, and feeling embarrassed about it! Now, one would think that the draft stage would be the appropriate place to identify errors, but for some reason I felt an enormous sense of not only shame, but potential public humiliation, when I saw a mistake in the title of a draft of one of my book chapters this morning. Immediately thoughts popped to mind: "What if it had gone out that way?" "What if the editor saw it and thought how stupid I am?" "How could I have missed that after looking at it so many times?" None of these recriminating questions was particularly helpful, but they made up for that by being loud and persistent (or as a version of the old saying goes, he was slovenly, but he made up for it by being rude).

The frog above agrees that shame is the only appropriate response to any mistake. Visit him and other disapproving critters at one of my favorite websites, Cuteoverload.com.

Booklab takes your questions

2009-08-18T13:46:00.008-05:00

Are you an author or author-to-be? Do you have a pressing question about book publishing? Write to Booklab, and I'll answer for free if your question is selected, and if you agree to have it posted on the blog. It's all anonymous unless you wish to be identified. Booklab does charge for classes and professional literary advising, so this is a great way to communicate gratis. Maybe it will turn into a column!

HINT: To really keep it anonymous, post your question as an unsigned reply to any blog entry.

The never-ending quest to spout the best book advice, ever

2009-08-12T07:45:00.006-05:00

After a bit of a hiatus from NPC events and festivities, your book blogger will be back at the National Press Club tonight for a panel event, "Make Your Book a Reality," sponsored by the Club's Professional Development Committee. My copanelists will be Paul Dickson, an accomplished author and fellow club member, Howard Yoon, an agent with the DC's venerable Gail Ross Agency, and editorial expert Barbara Hart.

We will each speak for about 10 minutes on what we think makes a book successful, and I'm on the fence. Part of me wants to say "Model greatness" by looking at what has succeeded before, and another part of me wants to say "Forget all that" since so many wonderful books have arisen out of their authors' own quirky vision of the world. Part of me wants to say "Write about something you love and care about," when my more pragmatic side whispers that many excellent books have been written because someone commissioned the book, or because the author did it for the money. There is nothing wrong with doing something for profit, and sometimes fine work is the result. I think the bottom line is to build your workbox of professional tools by writing a lot and publishing everywhere you can, so that you're really good at what you do when you sit down to write the book. But then again, I know first-timers who wrote terrific books, so maybe that's wrong, too.

Write or wrong (pun!), I'll be there tonight with fellow book lovers. If you want to come, the sign-up information is at the link above. And the photo is of your book blogger looking as geeky and happy as possible standing next to Anne Perry. The National Press Club is a great place to meet famous authors and pretend you know them. :-)

Save August!

2009-08-04T16:06:00.004-05:00

Summer book group participants are starting to flag. The excuses are pouring in (we're leaving for vacation on Thursday and I have to get the car inspected; my husband had the kids for all of June and July after day camp, and now it's my turn; I'm already anticipating September and all the work that will hit me when the students return; blah, blah, blah), and groups are smaller.

But ladies and gentlemen of the summer book groups, I am here to remind you of one profound, inarguable fact: August is 1/3 of summer! It's still a big chunk! Giving up on August would be as silly as giving up on July. August is a spectacular writing month, and unless you are going on vacation (I believe in true vacation), if you're in town then you can and should be cranking on that manuscript.

Here are some tips from this week's groups for making August work for you:

1. If looming work in September is starting to freak you out, write your woes down on a sheet of paper. Put the sheet of paper in a mason jar, and tighten the lid. Set it aside during your writing time, with a promise that you'll take it out of the jar and worry when you're finished writing. This trick has been known to appease the scientifically identified Worry Center of the brain.

2. If your days are feeling even blobbier than usual, make a schedule, share it with a friend, and check in with each other every morning to commit to it. This can be a nice excuse to meet someone for coffee. Yes -- check in every morning. August requires desperate measures.

3. Try to define a chunk of writing that -- when completed -- will represent a successful August. Then break that chunk down into smaller pieces that will become your weekly and daily tasks. It is only August 4 today, so imagine what can and should be true 27 days from now.

4. If you've tried and you're still flagging, make an appointment to write at Booklab every day if you have to.

Image from August: Osage County, a play I saw in NYC in June.