Revise with Me: Conference Paper Edition
Are you working on revising writing for publication? Hey, so am I! And I’m writing a blog series on the revision process. In between my freelance editing work, I’ll be turning a dissertation chapter into an article, and I’ll write about the joys and challenges of writing and editing as well as any tips and strategies I employ (successfully or not) along the way.
This spring, I was invited to participate in a conference panel in the fall. I thought, well, seeing as I’m working on revising this chapter into a journal article, I might as well work some of those ideas out in a conference setting. The condition I set for myself, however, was that I would absolutely not be writing this conference paper at the last minute! Every conference paper I’ve ever given has been completed shortly before the conference itself, and I do not care to repeat that experience. I told myself that I would work on it over the summer and finish with plenty of time to spare, including time to solicit feedback and revise.
Reader, she did not work on it over the summer. The summer filled up with work and life as it always does, and all writing work fell by the wayside. When I did a back-to-school evaluation of my professional goals at the end of August, I again felt a squeeze of fear in my chest at the thought of having to write a conference paper at the last minute. So I set myself very firm weekly goals for September and aimed to have a draft done by the end of the month.
Can she do it?? Read on…
Putting together a writing plan
I gave myself five weeks. But a conference paper is 8–10 pages, right? Writing I’m taking from an already-written chapter? How hard could it be? Beware, I have been fooled by these assumptions before! I haven’t written a short paper in a long time, and I do not find it easy to effectively distill a 47-page chapter into less than 10 pages. And that’s before you even worry about making the writing enjoyable to hear read aloud!
I established the following timeline:
Week 1: orient myself and complete an outline of medium-level detail
Weeks 2–3: write it
Week 4: edit it
Week 5: send it for feedback
I made two accompanying resolutions designed to combat foot-dragging (a charming writing-avoidance tactic that I discuss here):
I will devote two to three 25-minute pomodoros to these tasks each weekday morning—first thing in the morning, so as to take advantage of my best brain time.
At the end of each writing session, I will set specific goals for the next writing session. (See my ode to the writing log here.)
Week 1: Orient and outline
I like “get oriented” as an early to-do list item in a writing project. It is low-pressure. It is open enough to not stress me out and it is specific enough for me to be able to feel when I’ve completed it. To me it means “figure out how to get into the flow of this project.” That could mean rereading something, setting up a document, freewriting, making a messy outline, or all of the above. The goal is to figure out what needs to be done and how you’re going to approach it (knowing, as always, that the approach will likely change). When I’m done getting oriented, I know what needs to happen, I have short- and long-term goals, and I have embarked on the first step toward those goals.
In this instance, getting oriented meant:
Reviewing the promises I’d made (the emails I’d sent proposing paper ideas and the abstract I’d submitted to the conference).
Setting up a document in Scrivener, my preferred writing platform. I set up a space to write the paper, then added sections for my writing log, the abstract, the emails I’d brainstormed in, a place to outline, a place to jot down ideas, and a place to discard writing that I don’t want to keep but don’t want to permanently delete.
Freewriting about my goals and aspirations for the paper.
In order to create an outline, I had to do some more reviewing and freewriting. First I reread introduction and conclusion sections of my dissertation chapter for important things I needed to incorporate in the conference paper. Then I reread the evidence sections of the chapter and took notes. I did a freewrite about the main argument of my conference paper and the evidence I had to support that point. From there, I wrote what I’ll call a medium-level outline, meaning that each line had a fragment of a sentence (as opposed to only a few words), but without all the details filled in. As the week progressed and my ideas started to solidify, I would edit the outline a little more at the end of each session. By the end of the week, I recognized that one of my freewrites would serve as the start of the paper.
Weeks 2–3: Write it
Once I had an outline, I could tie the work I had to do to my timeline. According to my above schedule, I had given myself 9 work sessions to get a completed draft. I don’t remember exactly what distribution I started with, because it changed along the way. Ultimately, it turned out to be something like 2 sessions for writing about the primary text, 4 sessions for the theory, and 3 sessions for the conclusions.
Along the way, I kept writing about my work sessions in my writing log and making goals for the next work session. I didn’t always achieve every goal I set for my work sessions, but I just adjusted my goals according to how things were going.
There were days when I felt unmotivated and other days that I blew through goals like they were nothing. I ended up taking a day off, and another day I was sick, but I just shifted my goals by one day. Operating with the luxury of enough time is a double-edged sword, because there was no consequence to me losing a day or two. But having enough time sometimes also means that there is no external reason to make any progress at all, which was the danger that this whole system was put in place to ward off.
A one point, I got a little stuck, and a short freewrite revealed that I needed to change the organization of my ideas. Ugh! I left goals for the next session explaining what I had to do, and then I ended the current session right there. I used a fresh brain the next day to do the work of reorganizing, and it turned out to be not that bad.
This work did take a little longer than expected, but not by much. I finished the draft at the start of Week 4 and sent my paper away for a first round of feedback.
It worked! I had a completed draft within 4 weeks.
To some, this all might seem like much ado about nothing. I’ll reiterate why it was a win for me. I agreed, with myself, to do this conference on the condition that I would not make it a big stressful thing. I was worried about whether I would actually finish my paper with time to spare (something I’ve never done in the past) and whether I could return to the ideas in my dissertation in a non-stressful way. I managed to finish with plenty of time to solicit feedback, revise, and mentally ease myself back into a conference setting. I re-ignited a calm, intentional practice of writing in a way that was generative and rewarding. And this conference (both the writing and the attending) should be a helpful step toward revising this chapter as an article, which is my larger goal (not to mention the topic of this blog series).
We’ll see if the revision process for this conference paper merits another post. Tbd!
How is your practice of writing going?
This post paints a very calm picture, which has certainly not always been the case for my practice of writing. If you’re working on a project and could use content feedback, line editing, or copyediting, that’s what I do! Please reach out so we can talk about how I can best support you. And subscribe below to hear from me occasionally about my own writing journey and other editing-related topics.
