May writing challenge

[Puget]

Tomorrow, a modest goal, which I will try to accomplish BEFORE grading:
At least 30 min. revising long neglected paper

Done! For tomorrow:
30 more min. on paper
Draft feedback for honors thesis student (again mentoring rather than writing, but needs to happen)

[JCu16]

Today Managed to Achieve the Small Elements Following:
Planning meeting for getting that June 1st proposal out.
Reviewing half a Masters thesis.
Sorted out code holding up graduate student.
More meetings than sense.

Tomorrow:
More meetings.
Writing 30 minutes on the proposal.
Writing 1 hour on my research narrative due no later than Friday.

[Parasaurolophus]

• 200 words of Book Proposal
• 200 words of June Paper

I did it! 400 of the proposal, 300 of the paper. I guess that somewhat makes up for yesterday's failure.

[Parasaurolophus]

Today should be an easier day. Let's aim for:

• 300 words of Book Proposal
• 300 words of June Paper (the deadline was just extended to mid-July, but since I also have July Paper, this will remain 'June Paper'.

[nonsensical]

Congrats to you all on all of your writing!

I addressed some more comments on my grant today. I have one more substantive comment for the main text. After that, I'll need to write a summary of the changes I'm making for the re-submission, send off to others for feedback, and work on other parts of the grant while I'm waiting for their comments (supplemental documents, budget, all that fun stuff). I will set an easy goal of addressing that final substantive comment for tomorrow, but hopefully I'll progress to some of the other things on this list as well.

[Parasaurolophus]

• 300 words of Book Proposal
• 300 words of June Paper

440 and 400 words. Done!

[Parasaurolophus]

Today, I'll try focusing on June Paper: 400 words.

[nonsensical]

I made sufficient progress on my grant to send it to other people (addressed the last substantive comment, wrote a summary of the changes I made in response to reviewer comments, read through the whole thing and made a final set of edits). It feels good to have this be on someone else's plate for a bit.

[Parasaurolophus]

Today, I'll try focusing on June Paper: 400 words.

500 words, and did some re-organizing. It's looking a little better now, if still extremely rough. But I know what needs to be done next, and I'm in striking distance of having a paper-length paper to work with. It's starting to look possible!

[Puget]

Worked on the paper a bunch yesterday, but today was a total bust writing-wise-- it got consumed in practice honors thesis talks, and finishing slides for the online department graduation-- good lord did that turn out to be a major time sink! I still have to record an award presentation tomorrow (very deservedly won by a graduating student in my lab), and update the slides once we have department and latin honors certified, but this will end soon. . .  then I have to grade papers, THEN I can get back to my own writing.

[Parasaurolophus]

I'll try for 300 words of June Paper today.

[nonsensical]

I went into my office this morning to grab some things I needed to work from home, and now I feel sad. I haven't been in my office for several months, and walking in felt like a reminder of my past life that I miss very much but won't be returning to anytime soon. I'm also frustrated because working from home has been a challenge, and my office is in such an out-of-the-way place that I could easily work there without coming within six feet of another person even under normal circumstances, but my university is insisting that faculty members should not be using their offices for the foreseeable future.

Then the first work-related thing I did when I got back home was to look through a set of reviews that a co-author and I received a few days ago. The first reviewer had some suggestions but generally seemed okay with the paper, but the second reviewer hated this work with the passion of one thousand suns. (I am probably horribly mangling some metaphors there...) Their review was about five pages long and was no fun to read, and was also only a little helpful. I mean, I guess I'm glad that I didn't read through the entire thing for no benefit, but I want there to have been more helpful stuff in there to make up for the amount of time I spent reading it and the amount of negativity that was in there. This is also a paper that's been rejected before, including after one very long review process with multiple revisions, so another rejection feels particularly not good.

The office run and review together on the same day are making me feel sad and low energy and not motivated to do any more writing. I am going to go have some lunch and then open a paper draft that a graduate student sent me a few days ago. This is a review paper that we're working on together, and I've enjoyed working on this project with her, but I'm not sure how productive I will be today. Given the kind of day I've had so far, I think any writing or editing that I do today will be a bonus.

[Parasaurolophus]

I'll try for 300 words of June Paper today.

Done. If I have time later, I'll try some more.

nonsensical: I'm sorry. I also miss the work/home distinction, and also received a pretty nasty and unhelpful referee report not too long ago (at the start of the crisis). My coauthor and I set it aside while we dealt with the crisis, but our motivation to deal with it is quite low even now, almost two months later.

[JCu16]

I declare victory!

Managed to finally get the research narrative for external review done and sent the packet off today, which has taken the past several days of writing effort (~3000 words). Also had to write a short proposal to support an MS student over the summer for another 500.

This week I did manage to also get through corrections to an MS student who successfully defended their thesis today, so on a roll. Less meetings next week, no less decisions though, and finally have the opportunity to put in some grant effort and get started on the real research for the summer.

[nonsensical]

Thanks, Parasaurolophus, and I'm sorry to hear about your paper.

I gave feedback on half of my student's review paper today, which was more than I was expecting to be able to do. I, like JCu16, declare victory.