June writing challenge

[nonsensical]

I've been feeling too bogged down by the general state of the world to be posting here much, but I've also been writing, so that's something. I finalized all documents for the grant I mentioned in my one and only other post in this thread and sent them off to my department's grant office. I am sure they will find things that I need to fix, but in the meantime that big project is off my desk and is someone else's problem. My lab has also been submitting papers and getting a different set of papers accepted, so it's been a good couple of weeks for my CV.

A student I co-advise recently sent me the first draft of a paper based on work we've been doing together. My goal for today is to go through ... at least some of it. I haven't opened the file yet so I don't know how much work it will be, but I'm guessing at least the introduction will be a reasonable goal for today.

[Parasaurolophus]

Plenty of teaching-related stuff to do today, but:

• Go over proofs for an article.
• Work on Book Proposal

I know the latter is pretty open-ended, but there are a few different tasks that need doing if I'm to finish it this week.

[nonsensical]

A student I co-advise recently sent me the first draft of a paper based on work we've been doing together. My goal for today is to go through ... at least some of it. I haven't opened the file yet so I don't know how much work it will be, but I'm guessing at least the introduction will be a reasonable goal for today.

Looked through the whole paper, sent it back to student with comments!

[Parasaurolophus]

Plenty of teaching-related stuff to do today, but:

• Go over proofs for an article.
• Work on Book Proposal

I know the latter is pretty open-ended, but there are a few different tasks that need doing if I'm to finish it this week.

Alas, I only managed a bit today. Other things got in the way.

[Parasaurolophus]

More of the same today.

[nonsensical]

It's late in the day to be posting a goal, and I've been doing things other than writing for most of today. But I'm thinking about a paper that has been rejected several times and that my collaborator and I are thinking about splitting into separate papers. He's currently trying to turn the second part of our original paper into a stand-alone manuscript. My goal for this afternoon is to start outlining what a stand-alone manuscript based on the first part of our long paper might look like. I'd like to do an hour on this before ending work for the day.

[nonsensical]

Did my hour!

[Parasaurolophus]

Good work!

I got mine done, too. It's amazing how long the proofing stage can take. I always expect it to be right quick, and it never is.

[Parasaurolophus]

Need to make some real progress on Book Proposal today.

[ergative]

I have the last real subsection of new content that reviewers asked for to write for my Big Paper.* I want to have a draft of it done by 10:00 tomorrow morning, before my innumerable zoom meetings begin.

*This does not include the clarification and hand-holding for the non-specialist, or the supplementary materials in which I walk through the methods in more detail. Or, good grief, the cleaning-up and commenting of all my R code to be posted with the supplementary materials.

[Parasaurolophus]

Need to make some real progress on Book Proposal today.

Done for the day. Slowly, but surely.

[nonsensical]

Slowly but surely is really the only way to get things done over a long period of time, I think. Good job!

Since I'm in outlining mode I will go ahead and make plans for some other projects I have in mind. My goal for today is to outline a possible grant proposal based on a line of work I want to start but can't quite figure out how yet. I think writing things down for a grant will help me figure out what questions I want to ask and how I want to answer them. Plus, there's the possibility of money at the end.

I also have on my to-do list outlining a potential theoretical paper, but that's a goal for a different time. Then all of my outlines will be complete.

[nonsensical]

Did my outline. Fleshing out the designs of the specific studies is a project for another day, but I have three aims down on a page, and some relatively concrete ideas for how to test each aim.

[darkstarrynight]

Today, my colleague sent me her edits to a third revision after she moved states/changed institutions. I cranked out my edits and sent it back to her before noon. She is going to review it and call me tonight. I am hoping to submit tomorrow (our fourth version for this journal). I hope we figured out how to best address reviewer concerns after a third revision.

I have been resistant to working on long neglected paper though I gave myself and my co-author an arbitrary deadline of the end of June to get this finalized and submitted to our target journal. I do not want to let myself down (or my colleague), so I better stop avoiding it for no reason!

I submitted the revision to the journal last Friday for paper 1. I worked on the long neglected paper 2 very briefly yesterday but I really need to step it up to meet my "finish before July" self-imposed deadline. I am waiting for superstar co-author to send me her draft of paper 3 so there is nothing to do there. I met with my research assistant via zoom to review her analysis. We had to send grant money back to the organization since grant period ran out, so now the student is working on this without being paid. I feel badly but it is a long story why the funding was not fully used before she happened to apply for the part-time opportunity. She is actually a doctoral student in another college, and one of her professors is my collaborator. Luckily, she is about finished with analysis and can work with me on the manuscript so she can get some publications early in her program.

There is one person in my field who has very similar research interests, and we often talk about working together but nothing has happened. I just emailed him an idea to see if he would be interested in working with me on it. That would be fun!

[nonsensical]

I also have on my to-do list outlining a potential theoretical paper, but that's a goal for a different time. Then all of my outlines will be complete.

Time to do this today.