Roll up roll up Autumn Writing Challenge!

[bigkidsdidit]

Welcome everyone to Autumn Writing. Post your targets to be done before Christmas. Small or large!

[bigkidsdidit]

I wrote not one single one. I'm fed up! I did go to an interesting seminar, chat to all my colleagues, and clear my inbox. And did the hoovering and cooked a curry

[saltedcaramelhotchoc]

I need this thread! But I am snowed under in induction. Are none of you stuck with undergraduate admin as well as research? I am drowning in it....

[Yogafire]

I managed just over 1000 but they aren't that clever. I was more focused on getting words down thanks to this thread. But it's good actually - making me keep writing regardless. I like the motivation this thread is giving me

Keep up the good work all! Yeah I can imagine induction etc is drowning everything. I don't have t this year thankfully

[worstofbothworlds]

Our induction week isn't till next week, calm before the storm. I signed up for one graveyard intro slot. There's no flies on me!

I'm module coordinator for one easy to manage module and all the other ones with teams of cats teaching on them are somebody else's problem.
I have a horrible REF job to make up for it.

[ArbitraryName]

Our induction week was ages ago. We're two weeks into the semester now.

I have bought some books the I need to read (in order to write). When exactly I'm going up do that...

[PoisonedIvy]

Hello,

i. Journal article written and submitted by October 27th.
ii. Journal article written and submitted by December 8th

Good luck to all of you!

[NeverEverAnythingEver]

I'm going to plan out a paper today and even write most of it.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Did nothing yesterday except admin/meetings. Hopefully today will be better - I have the whole day in the office so I'd better make it count. I really hope I can finish this chapter draft today.

salted - yes, I'm adminning, though not too horribly much since I am very part time (mostly looking after baby DD).

I am irritated this morning as I have discovered at very short notice that I'm down for three lectures I didn't think I'd firmly agreed to do. I can write them and it'll be fine, but it'd have been nice to have a heads-up before I saw them printed in the lecture list with detailed blurbs about what each lecture will contain (not written by me).

[ArbitraryName]

Rather than any of the things I need to be doing today, I have gone to give blood (fairly unsuccessfully), pondered the potential of a research project about blood but concluded that I don't know how to make such a thing happen.

So then I started to put together ideas for a book (not on blood, for everyone's sake) and am now considering the madness of trying to get someone to consider publishing it.

Given all this has currently happened in my own head, I thought I'd sit it here so you can all tell me what madness it would be. Especially those of you currently trying to write books.

[PoisonedIvy]

Gah, I've had a shit day today. I wanted to sit and get some proper good writing done but I had to work in the dining room because of builders working in my study and I can't get anything done in here.

I tried to sketch out some ideas but they're all shit. I've farted around online most of the day.

I have done nothing.

I'm cutting my losses. I'm taking the dog out and then finishing for the weekend.

It's freshers week starting Monday so I'll get bugger all done next week as well

[Hatstand]

Hello all, am new to this board.

By Christmas I hope to have written two articles, a handful of paper proposals and a CfP for a journal special issue. I'm on maternity leave from my PhD at the moment, so I also have to decide whether to restart in January, April or July.

[NeverEverAnythingEver]

I've done most of what I wanted to do today, so I'm going to go and panic about getting stuff ready for DC to go on an outing.

[Yogafire]

I tinkered with all the words I wrote yesterday and didn't finish

[bigkidsdidit]

Welcome hatstand!

I did piss all today too. Ah well. Onwards!

[saltedcaramelhotchoc]

I am still mired in induction stuff but just to say to LRD - isn't it so typical that they assume you can do it without actually checking?!

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

It is!

[GaucheCaviar]

By end of this week: finish translating two articles, write three-thousand word encyclopedia entry.

End of the month: translate three chapters of a book, write article.

November: check proofs of new book, research and write article for December conference.

Probably not all doable.

[worstofbothworlds]

OK today's jobs:
2x pomodoro on the technical manual.
Chase article no 1 with ex-PhD student and journal he was supposed to have resubmitted to (if he didn't I will be beyond mad as we've way, way missed the deadline yet we had revised it already so it was nothing to submit it. I only added him to the article - review article - so I could do less on it and he could get an extra publication!).
Warn ex-PhD student that we will be finishing article no 2 without him unless he pulls his finger out.
(And check the videos for my lecture...)

[worstofbothworlds]

By the way, those with hefty ethics applications - are these NHS type ones? Or other external e.g. US IRB applications?
Our internal applications are not really that much work - in fact if we have undergrads doing e.g. survey work they manage them on their own, kind of. I'm surprised they are taking people so long (seems to be as long as an article?) but I have however heard horrible things about NHS and US ones!

[ArbitraryName]

My ethics application is internal. However, our ethics procedures appear to be about making it as laborious as possible. I suspect they modelled it on the NHS.

And far too many of the reviewers appear to be determined to prevent any research happening. It's not about oversight; it's about petty power plays.

[worstofbothworlds]

I used to be on our Faculty ethics committee. I have to say, some of the applicants seemed to think I was on a petty power play. One was very rude when I said that the research actually needed to be worthwhile (I didn't say it wasn't, I just didn't understand the research because no references were given) in order not to waste the time of the participants.

But I'm not, honest!

[ArbitraryName]

In our case, it's the reviewers (many of whom genuinely aren't qualified or experienced enough to be reviewing) and then the committee being so overworked that they excercise no judgement of their own.

So you're stuck with a knock back because you aren't going to ask for signed consent forms from toddlers or dogs (or something equally bizarre).

I really wish I was making this up.

[worstofbothworlds]

I once had a suggestion (fortunately it was merely a suggestion) for some overseas survey work with non-English speakers who were perfectly fluent in their own language but were unlikely to be able to write it (as it's not really a written language). The reviewer worked with adults with LD (so a completely different situation) and used picture consents, and suggested we do the same.
I pointed out that if they could understand the complex language in spoken form, there was no point in giving them much simpler pictures that really don't explain it as well.

BTW my ex-PhD student must have heard me moaning as he's finally replied to say he's been quite unwell over the summer (I think the kind of thing that one can be in denial about so suspect it started earlier) and has done nothing but is trying to pick up the pieces. (I have nothing but sympathy for someone being ill but it's not massively helpful to ignore communication/pretend things are fine, though I know it happens, it's just irritating).

I've suggested he go cap in hand to the editor of article 1 and ask for an extension.
So I may put off working on his article 2, and start a new article from data co-authored by flaky ex-PhD student 2.

[bigkidsdidit]

My ethics is nhs, with quite sick patients, so needs careful writing.

I am battling on but not getting much done. I am being swamped with other bitty work

[worstofbothworlds]

bigkids I can totally see why that would be tricky!

I realised after announcing my good intentions to get on with The Papers That The Students Wrote (or didn't) that I got a notification that reviewer 2 from a Frontiers paper (streamlined light touch review process it's a real paper honest) didn't see fit to reply to my revision i.e. having said for ages I wanted to deal with both together, I've been needlessly leaving Reviewer 1 hanging (not that Reviewer 1 cares!).

So I will now get on with that and after that I've worked out a clever way to test my lecture slides as if I was in a lecture IYSWIM.