Term is over and I even wrangled in a vacation. (A week in eastern Ireland: it was lovely!) Now it’s back to work which means writing. I’ve been writing throughout the academic term, but it’s time to get serious and pull together the bits and pieces for an article that I can submit on crime and mothering.
I cleared the decks yesterday by completing a book review due at the end of the month. The eight hundred words is just a tenth of the article total I’ll be pulling together but it helps to both relieve the tension of a looming deadline and remind me of how modest the goal of an 8,000 word article will be to polish off. Then I can move on to the next article that’s been backed up nearly as long as the first.
Today I downloaded the template and author instructions for the first journal I’m targeting. I had been putting off writing the next bit and I realized that part of it was simply not feeling certain about the format. Problem solved and a page added!
Much of this re-energizing was fuelled by my conference paper last fall that led to a forum piece dealing with the transience of impoverished early modern London mothers. The chance to quickly refine and submit the work was exciting, but it also made me realize that I have several stalled projects that I really ought to move along.
This is also why I refrained from proposing a conference paper for the upcoming NECBS meetings in Montreal this October, instead helping to organize three sessions along with volunteering to chair at least one: this is the summer of writing and, more importantly, submitting!
jliedl.ca 