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.

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.

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!

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.

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!

60 Days of Scholarly Journal Article Writing -- Day 20

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

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).

60 Days of Scholarly Journal Article Writing -- Day 18

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

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

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

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.

60 Days of Scholarly Journal Article Writing -- Day 13

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.

60 Days of Scholarly Journal Article Writing -- Day 12

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

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.

60 Days of Scholarly Journal Article Writing -- Day 10

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.

60 days of journal article writing

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).

I love this book about academic writing

My "best book lately" award goes to the mercifully short and delightfully witty How to Write a Lot by Dr. Paul J. Silvia. This is not The Artist's Way. It is not therapy. It is not sensitive. It is a smart and usable guide for producing voluminous reams of scholarly writing without resorting to blather and jargon. Dr. Silvia has more sense than a dozen other would-be how-to-write authors, and he's funny, too. Here's a quote:

Always write during your scheduled time, but don't be dogmatic about writing only within this time. It's great if you keep writing after the period is over or if you do some writing on a nonwriting day -- I call this windfall writing. Once you harness the terrible power of habit, it'll be easier for you to sit down and write. Beware, however, of the temptation to usurp your writing schedule with windfall writing. It doesn't matter how much you wrote over spring break -- you committed to your scheduled time, and you're going to stick to it. If you find yourself saying absurdities like "I wrote a lot over the weekend, so I'll skip my scheduled period on Monday," this book can help: Close it, hold it between the thumb and index finger of your nondominant hand, and wave it menacingly in front of your face.

I'm laughing sooo hard at this, but perhaps to wring the true humor from this graf you have to be a veteran of a zillion how-to-write books that advise writing with the nondominant hand, writing with a blindfold, etc. Those things can help (I'm not a complete scoffer), but Dr. Silvia can help more.

NB: He writes for psychologists, with the attendant emphasis on journal publishing. This isn't so much about books, although he has smart things to say about them. You'll need to adapt his advice to suit your own situation unless you're in the sciences, but this is still an amazing book. Buy it, read it, tell your academic friends.

"Shock waves?" No, I wouldn't exactly say that. . .

An item in today's Publisher's Weekly claims that the University of Michigan Press's recent decision to switch to a digital format for scholarly monographs has "sent shock waves through the academic publishing field." Um, I would add "or not."

Who would be shocked by this? Anyone paying attention to discussions of scholarly publishing over the past few years would know that the monograph is a serious point of contention because by definition it has a limited audience. At the same time, almost anyone who does academic research would argue that the monograph needs to exist. It needs care, protection, support.

The University of Michigan has always been a bit digitally precocious, for good or ill, and it likes to involve itself in electronic solutions early. Some fret that tenure committees won't accept books that exist primarily in digital form, and I can't speak for tenure committees to answer that question. But this has been a long time coming in some form or another, and it will be interesting to see how it plays out in tenure bids, and also in scholars' future decisions to publish with Michigan or not. Here's the original piece:

University of Michigan Switching to Digital Format for Scholarly Monographs
-- Publishers Weekly, 3/24/2009 7:17:00 AM

The University of Michigan Press sent shock waves through the academic publishing field Monday when it announced it is switching to a primarily digital format to publish scholarly monographs. The press expects that within two years, most of the 60 monographs it publishes each year out of a total 140 new releases will be published only in digital editions. A POD option, however, will be made available for all digital books, said University of Michigan Press director Phil Pochoda. He said the press’s regional titles and its ESL list will continue to be released primarily in print editions, though select frontlist, as well as backlist, will be made available in digital formats as well as print. Print runs consequently will be more conservative, to cut down on returns. “We’re going to try to keep [initial] print runs close to orders,” Pochoda said, with more of a reliance on offset printing for smaller print runs.

Are you sure "your field" is really your field?

This interesting conversation happened with a pre-tenure faculty member who was having trouble placing her manuscript. "There's just so little understanding," she said, "of what it is that I do." She kept referring to "my field," but when I asked how she defined that field, she launched into a complicated explanation of a how it was a cross between two distinct areas of historical research, with a third cultural component thrown in. The mix made not-so-much sense to me because both of the historical aspects were from the Dutch late-1600s, and her literary/cultural monkey wrench was from France in the 1920s. Both were fascinating eras, but also much-studied yet oddly tacked onto one another in a "see if you can follow my logic here" way that felt both obscure and culturally disjointed. I soon found myself mentally humming "One of these things is not like the others..."

Call me old-fashioned, but I think if you're going to refer to an area of research as a field, it should probably have more than just you in it. Otherwise you risk being just another lonely laborer out standing in his field. Sure, you can define a field, and that's bold and important work, but it's also usually best done post-tenure. In fact, her field wasn't really so much an area of research as the resulting mashup combining what she had studied in graduate school with what she liked to do now.

I asked her whether she had considered writing about something a bit more accessible. Something -- perhaps -- that a university press might actually be able to list in its catalogue and sell. She sighed. "But this is what I'm trained in. It's my expertise." She held on to her topic, and who knows? Maybe she will find a home for it, though I don't see how. But what I do question big-picture is how hard it would be to take some post-doctoral courses at (for example) Johns Hopkins that is just an hour away, and branch into a second area of expertise that more clearly connects her to a recognized field. I'm not saying she needs to give up what she loves, but rather it seems she is defining "her field" so narrowly that she can't quite imagine doing anything else. And is she really an expert? Her qualifications at present are quite slim -- just a few graduate courses, and a dissertation. Why can't this change, expand, grow?

Many scholars choose a number of areas in which to educate themselves as experts. A doctorate is hardly a badge of perfection in any field. As some of my advisors liked to say, it's just a union card.

Photo above of a woman out standing in her field taken from Somebody's blog.

The art of creating a "forcing system"

As all seven of you who read this blog know, I'm a big fan of success literature. It's my mental junk food. Whereas others tell me they like to read cat mysteries, or chick lit, or classic science fiction, when I relax I love to read (or more precisely, listen on audio to) some of the better podium-pounding success writers. Three of my favorites are The Success Principles by Jack Canfield (seven full listens so far), Loving What Is by Byron Katie (two reads, since I don't have it on audio, with more reads to come), and Goals! by Brian Tracy (at least eight listens). Here's a fun clip of Brian Tracy ("Your better life goals coach" -- gotta love it!) talking about thoughts.

The beauty of multiple reads or multiple listens is that you glean fresh kernels of insight each time. For example, I've listened to Goals! about twice a year for the past four years, but only now did I really hear what he has to say about a forcing system. Here's what he says on pages 97 and 100, in the chapter titled "Measure Your Progress."

"Your subconscious mind requires a 'forcing system' composed of deadlines that you have imposed on yourself for task accomplishment and goal attainment. Without a forcing system, it becomes easy for you to procrastinate and delay and to put off important tasks until much later, if you do them at all. . . . One of the most helpful actions you take in your own career is to set benchmarks and create scorecards, measures, and deadlines for every key task that you must complete on the way to one of your goals. In this way , you activate your subconscious forcing system. The forcing system will then motivate you and drive you, at an unconscious level, to start earlier, work harder, stay later, and get the job done."

Tracy doesn't spend a lot of time defining what a forcing system is exactly, but I immediately thought of several in the context of academia. Tenure review is the first and most obvious for book authors. Every faculty member at a university like this one must publish active scholarship in book form with a university press of appropriate stature (the measure of these factors being up to a committee of senior peers) in order to keep their jobs. It is even more desirable to get a second project under contract, although interest in this varies by department and discipline, and it cannot be considered a rule so much as a bit of an insurance policy, and some universities require two books. Tenure review is a classic "forcing system," and for the most part it works -- people publish. The bid for full professor is a milder forcing system, simply because there is no threat of losing one's job, but there is usually the lure of stature, pay, and improved retirement.

"Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully," quoted Boswell from Johnson, and quoth WAY too many people now (I almost apologize for using it because it is so hackneyed, but it fits!). If you have no forcing system in place to concentrate your mind wonderfully, try inventing one. I added book publication to the requirements for my job, so that I would have to publish in order to stay at Georgetown, and so far it seems to be working. My agented book is now at a university press awaiting the opinion of an editor I admire and whom I hand-selected. Would it have been there if I didn't have to publish? I certainly hope so, but I can't know that for certain.

The fantasy says that we should always be self-motivated and not need a cosmic parent to make us clean our rooms or do our homework. The reality is that most of us need accountability, and the stronger the better. A forcing system -- whether inherent in your profession or set up by you as a way of keeping honest -- is a fine way to do this.