Sunday, July 28, 2013
Monday, November 23, 2009
Last post on the old site! Moving to Georgetown proper...
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!
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!
Friday, November 20, 2009
Robert Boice does it again, this time with hypnosis
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).
Thursday, November 19, 2009
A change of emphasis was a revelation
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.
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.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Modeling resilience
(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.
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.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Ouch, but in a good way
(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 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
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.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
The Treadmill Desk is Here!
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).
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
What ever happened to the 60 journal days?
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.
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
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.
Thursday, November 05, 2009
Zotero? Oh, Oh, Oh!
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
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.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Signing up for Table of Contents Delivery
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
Oxford Journals eTOC Page
Johns Hopkins University Press, Project Muse
Duke Journals Online
Thursday, October 29, 2009
60 Days of Scholarly Journal Article Writing -- Days 29-30
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!
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!
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
60 Days of Scholarly Journal Article Writing -- Days 23-28
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.
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
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.
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.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
60 Days of Scholarly Journal Article Writing -- Days 21-23
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!
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!
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