e-mail me at billdeg@umich.edu

1/21/2007

revision

Two rounds of revision to the working-class poetics article. Both rounds involved adding further material. Explain this point further. Provide another example. Incorporate a discussion of this particular text you had overlooked. Give some more context. The article is almost there, almost there, almost there...

And you find yourself WAY over the journal's word limit. Some 2,500 words over. Cut out this particular tangent. Edit for brevity. Eliminate a couple endnotes that now seem off topic. Cut out another tangent. Almost there...

I always bristle when students say things like "I don't understand what you want me to do on this paper." It's your paper. Make decisions. Have some ownership over your ideas. Don't do what I want you to do.

But then I find myself following advice of reviewers, making changes they suggest, losing ownership, asking those same questions that student ask: "What do you want me to do?," and wanting to be finished.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I am glad to know that in that feeling, at times, I am not alone.