at this point in time

It's time for a list I think. Here are the writing/research tasks that need to be completed before the end of June:
-revisions to a paper on helping during computer use
-revisions to a paper on transcription
-revisions to a chapter on restricted interactional activity
-paper for this this conference
-paper for that conference
A list always makes me feel that tasks are doable as does "biting off" a chunk of work each day. So, for now it is back to the revisions on the helping-during-computer-use article. One reviewer's comments have required me to go back to revising what I have said about EM/CA in the article. The information needs to be more accessible for readers who do not have a previous understanding of the approaches. The biggest task I will address is the question of the analysis becoming drawn out ("tedious" was the actually word used). An analysis of a long sequence presents those challenges for the reader and for the analyst. I will try to write over the current middle section analysis in order to draw out points that can be found in the data.

back on the chain gang

I haven't blogged for a long time. In fact, this is the biggest break I've ever taken from the blog. It wasn't intended - somehow time just slipped away. I thought to blog today because I'm just about to start work on a revision of an article that I had submitted to a journal at the end of last year.

I have been asked to give specific attention to the comments of one reviewer and to address these specifically in my revisions. So this morning I printed out those comments which are indeed very thorough. I could feel my heart sinking a little as I read through - not because they are unkind or difficult but because they substantial and the revisions will take a fair bit of work.

For me this is the hardest part of writing. It is one thing to revise one's own draft and quite another to work on revisions based on the feedback of another. I can already tell that some points will be challenging for me to address. For example, the reviewer makes the comment that the transcripts are difficult to read for a non-specialist reader. So, wha tdo I do about that. One solution is to take out a lot of the symbols and to note somewhere that while Jefferson notation as employed in the transcripts that were analysed, the transcripts used in the article have been modified for an audience potentially unused to Jefferson notation.

Well that was easy! I knew it was a good idea to blog.