End-of-week update

I feel like I have had a good week.  I worked just three hours (one each on Mon., Wed., and today, Fri.), but I have managed to engage in my revision activities.  I have spent a lot of the research time freewriting on various issues that needed greater development and gathering a list of sources to consult.  I also made a plan for next week in order to keep moving forward with this.  Not sure I will be able to finish all of this by the end of February, but I will try.

Quick update

Since classes resumed on Monday, I am back to a MWF 8–9 am research schedule.  The only change since last fall is that I am having my sessions at home rather than at my office since I am teaching in a classroom closer to where I live and farther from my office (gives me an extra 15 minutes).  So far, this has worked out fine.

I am working on my "February goal," which will take me at least through the end of February.  I am doing MAJOR revisions of an essay, which has not been accepted yet for publication anywhere.  I am hopeful that after this next batch of significant revisions, it will be ready for submission somewhere.  I am in the stage of freewriting about certain issues that I need to clarify and make more explicit (to myself and more importantly to the reader) and gathering some new sources to back up a few claims I make without a whole lot of support.

Time to go teach.  

January goals have been met!

Despite a very sluggish week last week, this week has been awesome.  I am feeling better (had a bad chest cold last week), and I have been getting a ton of work done.  (And it is only Wednesday!)

I had a rush of motivation/inspiration/panic/whatever and finished my remaining goal for the month of January--to prepare an essay for submission to a well-regarded journal.  (And it is only January 11, not even the halfway point of the month!) I just sent the required documents, including the revised essay, by email to the Editorial Manager of the journal.  I feel very good about the work I have done on this particular essay.  I have been working on it for years, having started it when I was on sabbatical leave in 2008.  I have presented the research in the essay at two conferences, and I have read, re-read, and revised the essay probably hundreds of times.  I hope this creative academic endeavor is successful! 

Update

I have had a wonderfully productive day today.  Since classes have yet to start, my schedule has been mostly unstructured--meaning more blocks of time to work and get stuff done.  This is good!  The danger is that I have not partitioned off sacred time for my scholarship/research, but at least today, I managed to devote the entire afternoon to achieving two concrete goals: I wrote proposals for two different spring conferences: (1) Music Theory Midwest, which will be in Ann Arbor, Michigan and (2) the 14th Meeting of Dutch-Flemish Society which will be held in Antwerp, Belgium.

I feel really good about the prospects of the second proposal I sent because I think it fits the requirements for a special pedagogy session they are hosting really well, and it is a project I have been working on for years.

The first proposal I wrote is fine, but it may not be wholly appropriate for the nature of the conference.  It is less narrowly analytical/music-theoretical and more interdisciplinary.  At any rate, if it isn't accepted, it won't be the end of the world, and I don't have my hopes set on it.

At any rate, I am very pleased with what I was able to accomplish today, and I hope to finish my final goal for this month--preparing an essay I have already written for possible publication in a peer-reviewed journal--before classes start.

reorganizing, reinvigorating, and reengaging

Well it has been an embarrassingly long time since my last post.  After a busy month of December at work, the holidays, and my latest battle with a nasty chest cold, I am ready to recommit to my creative academic pursuits.

Part of what also set me back--emotionally--was a publication rejection that I really wasn't expecting.  (Usually I set myself up for rejection since publishing in top-tier journals is so highly competitive and difficult, but the particular essay I'd submitted seemed perfect for the journal I submitted it to, so well, when I got the rejection, it hurt.)  At any rate, I am picking up the pieces and finally actually reading the outside reviewers' comments and have made a plan for revising the essay and resubmitting to a different peer-reviewed, however less competitive, journal.  This will be my goal for the month of February.

But I get ahead of myself.  It is yet the beginning of January.  So the goals for this month will be: 

• to take a different essay (the one that the project I presented last month in Ireland was part of) and prepare it for submission to a scholarly journal.  I think I have picked an acceptable top-tier publication.  I have presented on the topic twice at conferences, and I have been working off-and-on on the essay for the past couple years.  I think it is ready to be put "out there."

• to write a proposal for a spring conference on a different project (one that I hope to revisit in the month of March).  I think the due date for this one is my birthday--right in the middle of the month.

Since classes haven't started yet and since I have been sick, my schedule has been erratic.  At some point soon, I hope to establish a new strict schedule for working toward my goals.

Thanks for reading and supporting my endeavors.  I hope 2012 will be a good year for my scholarly life.

Reflections on NaBeCreMo

So, sadly it is December 1st.  This means that our National Be Creative Month is now over.  Here is what I learned through the experience:

1. Even if I don't meet my goals (which I didn't), I still get more done when I set aside time for my academic creative pursuits, rather than letting weeks (or months) go by without engaging in my scholarly work.  I did get a lot closer to my goal (producing a publication-ready essay) than I was when November began.
2. I work best with uninterrupted blocks of time solely devoted for the activity at hand.  This means: no email, no browsers open, office door stays closed.
3. I think it is better for me to set monthly goals rather than overarching, annual goals that I never seem to meet.  I think I will get more tangible work done this way.
4. I like doing research.  

Even though the November challenge is over, I am going to stick with my research schedule (Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays 8-9 am and Thursday evenings 6:30-9:30 pm).  I like this special time I have carved out for my work.

Now, I am setting aside (temporarily) the project I was working on in November.  Here's what's on tap for my December goals:

1. Revise and prepare a paper for presentation at the Women and the 19th-Century Lied Conference, which I will be attending in Maynooth, Ireland later this month.
2. Begin seeking copyright permissions and revising a paper I wrote earlier this year for possible publication in an online journal.  (The deadline for this is February 1.)

I intend to continue blogging regularly about my creative academic pursuits.  Thanks again to my loved ones for supporting me.

Checking in: Third-to-last day of NaBeCreMo

It has been one week since my last session.  I got to my office a little earlier than normal this morning just to discover that I had left my remaining sources at home.  So I decided it was a sign that I should actually start writing my essay, which didn't actually happen but I am closer. . . .  My writing process consists of this:

1. Freewrite to generate ideas and hopefully a thesis
2. Study my subject (usually a piece of music or set of pieces) and continue to take notes and flesh out my analysis
3. Gather and take notes on cards from relevant sources
4. Create an outline
5. Re-read and order my cards according to the outline
6. Write the essay

With this process, by the time I get to step 6, the paper nearly writes itself because I have already organized my thoughts (through the outline) and every thought/idea/supporting point has been written on a card.  So I just flip through my cards in order and transfer their content to my document.  So, I am in the middle of step 5 right now.  I have many cards, and I feel like the paper is really taking shape.  I look forward to typing the prose very soon.

Thanks to all of you who follow me for your words of encouragement and support.