If thrown correctly, boomerangs return to you. It’s been a boomerang term for academic writing. I did a lot of writing during my research term and I threw it all out there. Then, during this academic term, it all returned to me.
In theory, I knew this was likely to happen.
In practice, I didn’t plan for this.
I knew that accepted articles and book chapters weren’t complete and that they still required revisions, corrections, additions, and copy editing. I knew all of this required additional time. I’d forgotten how much time revisions would take. I’d forgotten that boomerangs return with new deadlines that are often determined by someone else. I’d forgotten how those deadlines felt alongside lectures, guest lectures and talks, and conference obligations. I’d also forgotten that when writing is returned to you for minor revisions it feels like an invitation to undertake major revisions; and I’d forgotten how lousy I am at turning down this invitation.
Writing facilitators, Jo Van Every and Katherine Firth discuss this exact topic on their YouTube discussion (43 mins.) Academic Writing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-6EdCOI8Fg). They advise academics to rethink and revise the time and effort that goes into making the original submission. Instead of putting, as Katherine Firth says, “110%” into getting the thing done, she suggests putting in 80% of the time and effort required and accounting for the other 20% in a writing schedule for when it returns.
Jo Van Every and Katherine Firth suggest that revising submissions in this way has some benefits: it respects the peer review process because it opens up a conversation with reviewers about what needs to be done and it shifts the ‘publish or perish’ mentality away from a model of individualism and towards a model of scholarly conversations about writing.
This is important information about throwing techniques for boomerangs. It’s especially good advice for proficient writers and those with clear arguments whose 80% effort is not likely to be desk rejected. If I’d had this information at the beginning of the term, and had time to think about it, I would have realized that I could already have accounted for 80% of my writing workload between September and December. I would have mapped out a much more modest amount of new writing and just sat at my desk waiting for my boomerangs to return.
Unfortunately, that’s not what I did.
Next term, I’m going to count my boomerangs before they return.
upalonger 