Wednesday, February 28, 2007

The universe wants me to publish more

It never fails. I call it Jane's Law of the Call for Papers. It goes something like this:

Whenever Jane decides to not submit a paper to a conference due to lack of time/focus on other things, the paper deadline is invariably extended at the last minute for such an amount of time to make submitting to the conference worth her while.

Yes, I realize this is a good problem to have. I'm not complaining. And yes, this just happened to me....again.

About a week ago, I looked at my calendar, noticed the deadline for this conference coming up, looked at everything else currently on my plate, and decided not to throw something together---even though when the call came out months ago, my first thought was "I really should submit something to this conference." Part of my decision was influenced by the fact that I didn't have a crystal-clear sense of what exactly I would submit---I have a few things I could submit, but I didn't want to expend the time and energy to sort through and figure out which would make the best sense for this venue.

But now that I have this reprieve of sorts, I actually have two strong ideas for possible submissions. One is the previously-unpublished work from this journal article I've been working on. (Yes, the same journal article that I said I would submit, oh, a couple of months ago. I hit a major roadblock with it and basically set it aside for a month. Which, I think, was ultimately a good thing, because I just picked it up again and figured out where the block was coming from, and I think I know how to move past it.) The other is some work that a student did for me last year that I just finished writing up/analyzing. My original thought was that this particular study was not strong enough to stand on its own, and that I would have to combine it with other work; but the other day, I had a revelation that perhaps with a bit of tweaking this could be good enough on its own.

So my inspiration to submit to this place is back. I just have to revisit the CFP, reread what I have so far on each possibility, make a decision, and write the damn thing up. I'm hoping that the writing will be fairly straightforward, since I have some stuff written on each idea already. (One of the benefits of writing up results as you go along!) Thank god I'm on sabbatical and thus actually have time to do this without completely disrupting my life for the next few weeks.

Let the games begin!

UPDATE: Man, when it rains, it pours....I just found another completely appropriate CFP with a deadline around the same time as the conference with the extended deadline! So now I have two decisions to make: which idea AND which conference. (Because, realistically, I only have the time and energy to submit to one of them, unless I want to spend all of my work time writing over the next two weeks....)

2 comments:

CSDL said...

Wow good luck Jane! My paper deadline was also extended, and it should be just enough time for my work to be stellar instead of just good.

Jane said...

It must be International Paper Extension Week, or something. :) Good luck with your paper, csdl!