paper binge

[swan_tower]

3,064 / 4,000 (76.0%)

This is often how it works. In three hours or so, I go from having something that is only barely recognizable as a fragment of the paper I'm supposed to be presenting at a conference/turning in to a professor, to having very nearly a complete paper. Which goes a long way toward reducing my stress level right now, since I'm supposed to be presenting this thing in just over a week.

Yeah, I woke up a few days ago remembering with a very unpleasant jolt that I had forgotten about, y'know, writing the damn thing. How could you tell?

Not done yet, but much closer, and it's coming in at about the right length, too. Much of it's morphological summary of Stardust, which unfortunately makes it not my most thrilling paper ever, but I try to sneak in some analysis/elucidation with the summary. And, fortunately, it turns out to work, which I was kind of worried about when I got started. I mean, it would suck to send in the abstract out of your ass, then find out months later (mere weeks before the conference) that your central argument is flawed into nonexistence.

But that hasn't happened. So we can just pretend that fear never hit me.

Comments

[dr_whom]

I mean, it would suck to send in the abstract out of your ass, then find out months later (mere weeks before the conference) that your central argument is flawed into nonexistence.

I've got one of those!

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

. . . congratulations?

Somehow that doesn't seem the right thing to say, but your words sounded so very happy in my mind. <g>

[dr_whom]

I appreciate the sentiment!

My abstract was basically "I'm going to postulate a mechanism for and work through the theoretical implications of Hypothesis H!" And now it's been pointed out to me that there's no strong evidence that Hypothesis H is true, which means I'm basically making conjectures about the way something that may or may not have happened would have happened, and discussing what that would imply for phonology if it had happened that way.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Ouch. Yeah, I can see how one might end up in a situation like that.

[odanuki.livejournal.com]

Just finished Warrior and Witch last night and I thought I'd let you know I really enjoyed it. As I was letting kniedzw know the other day, I felt like I could really see your talents maturing between the two books; I even read it in the shower once or twice. :) I eagerly await your next work.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Glad to hear it. I have zero perspective in comparing the two books, so it's nice to hear that there's a perceptible difference (of the "improvement" sort) between the two.