Summertime writing blues

[Acinonyx2]

Anyone else labouring to get a paper(s) done before term starts? I have this one particular Paper. I started it with my co-author last summer thinking - oh yeah - we can get this submitted by Xmas. Well, we got about half a draft done, then with teaching and all that it sadly died. But this summer we made a plan to get it done. So I have to get a complete first draft to M this Friday. Then M will bat it back to me mid Sep. Then 2 more exchanges and submit Oct before it dies again. I'm at 8K words and limit is 9 so looks like it will be the right kind of length for my target.

It was my baby - but sitting trying to finish it this week feels like I'm having my finger nails pulled out. Just needs the final section, organise the refs and 2-3 figures. But things keep popping up - other page proofs, reviews, relatives coming from overseas, pg students in distress.

And if one more person asks me how I'm enjoying my long summer 'holiday' I will slap them.

I feel with you. Need to work on revisions to a paper and am procrastinating heavily. You seem to be in a good place though. Daytime television on and just get through the last bit. By the way. I raise "how are you enjoying your summer holidays" to "nice working at university, so you have got the summer off now the students are gone".

I have not even opened it today yet - totally procrastinating today (MN....). "nice working at university, so you have got the summer off now the students are gone" Yes this is exactly what everyone thinks - really annoying! I had a school teacher friend ask me point blank one summer 'but what are you doing...?' 😩

Any progress on the paper, OP?

I feel you. I have a couple of papers I'm actually quite excited to write but can't find the time or headspace.

Then I had a meeting with my HoD the other day who told me I was "done" for the REF - i.e. I have all the papers I need for 2029. I took this as permission to drop any/all of my writing plans. Ooops.

Don't be too harsh on yourself, OP.
Mid-July to mid-August is the only real clear time we get as academics to properly commit to writing. Once you've taken some leave, enjoyed a bit of a slower pace, the "summer writing" period actually only ends up as a couple of weeks.

Yep, especially when kids are at play. All my books etc. are in the office, but I only go in approx. 1 per week because kids are still at home.
I made progress on my paper revisions last week. The comments were actually not be an external reviewer, but by the editors of the special issue who I know well. I have now checked all references and have gone through all the small niggly comments. Now I just need to print the paper (going in tomorrow) and check for overall coherence / address one larger comment affecting the whole paper. Hoping to be done by tomorrow night!

Well I got the draft sent but I'm not super confident that we will get it properly wrapped up for submission before term starts.

Then if and when we do - there will be all the comments to deal with. Papers sure are a lot of work! Sometimes I think about a paper I could do and I just can't face the effort involved - I'm not far from retirement now so only doing pet papers.