Friday, June 19, 2009

Free at Last! Hostage No Longer!

Once upon a time, in April of 2004, Crazy gave a conference paper, which she then submitted to the organizers for a potential publication. At some point over the next year, it was decided that an essay collection would be organized with the most fancy of the papers, and so Crazy had to transform this conference paper into a full-length article. This actually involved a fair bit of work on her part, as in the intervening year, she'd had another article accepted that was a variation on this material. So in other words, she had to make sure that she wasn't repeating herself or saying identical things from one piece to the other.

So. Crazy turns the paper into an article. There is interest from a publisher. I think three - perhaps four? - rounds of fairly substantial revisions happen. And then the publisher announces that they've changed the direction of their list and they're not publishing this sort of thing anymore. This was like a year ago? I think? There have been many times over the past years when I've wanted to take this article back. I mean, sheesh. This thing could have been out ages ago if I'd just submitted it to a journal. But my friends/mentors are the editors, and it would have been bad form for me to pull the piece, and it's not like I was desperate for it to be out anyway or like I needed the publication.

But so anyway, it's been a full five years since I had the idea for this article or even cared about this idea. And the collection has just received a contract with a fantabulous university press! Hooray! Huzzah! The article that was being held hostage will finally see the light of day!

5 comments:

Susan said...

oh, this sounds sooo familiar.

Keri said...

Wonderful news!! Congrats!

Kate said...

Fantastic Dr. C!

Sisyphus said...

Yay!

Belle said...

Congrats! Hooray!

A couple of years ago, during my first round on P&T, I was astounded and horrified when a IT prof insisted that getting something published was a matter of a couple of weeks work. "Take a month during the summer, research & write it, and that's all you need!" I noted (nastily, it must be admitted) that that's not how it works in many fields. He refused to believe it. Apparently, for him, the whole process took weeks.

Gah.