Done (in)

Gina's feedback means a big redraft but also that the help doesn't stop today, deadline day. I shall publish, and with expert help, but for now, today, I'm done. I still have to grapple with the concept of methodology and finding an academic tone that is not a straitjacket but from today, I step out of the course and into the real world of academic publication. It helps that The Journal of Media Practice emailed this week to say that my first piece will be published in the October issue.

And now, the end is near..

My 4000 article is done, the film is ready to be cut, my research has found original findings and I'm really rather excited.  This summer, I shall take it to the next stage of testing whether or not the teaching of dance in secondary schools can make kids want to write, as well as give them some rhythm with their words. If six out of eight Year 9 students said that they hate writing, something's got to change. 


So while my article percolates a little before its final tweak on Friday morning, it's time to look through my tick boxes:

...your thoughts and feelings on each aspect of the module including:

• The 2 day workshop  - wonderful opportunity for sharing ideas and networking across the university.
• The negotiated plan for writing. Good idea to put dates on an email and send to a critical friend. Not that they checked up on me but hey.
• Your experiences of planning and writing your piece. Loved having the opportunity to get my teeth into something but got stuck in my head too much at first. Had to be harsh and remind myself that this is what I've been doing for 20 years.... Thinking like a journalist again helped enormously.
• The role of peer support and feedback in your writing process  This is what I put on the WAP blog:

Hi all

I thought a lot about what we learnt on Thursday and Friday and realised that the notion of the 'critical friend' is probably the answer to life, the universe and everything. The difference between getting your husband to glance over a piece of work and having someone who you know has signed up for telling you what you really need to know is really quite profound.

In fact, it was also the subject of our Saturday night author dinner party. We host these evenings on occasional weekends to encourage writers and would-be writers to share an evening with a well-known author to discuss the business and ideas of writing, and this weekend we had journalists Lucy Cavendish and Miranda Glover down to talk about their self publishing imprint, Queen Bee Press. They've just published an anthology of women's writing, but what was far more interesting than the future of publishing in the hands of the authors themselves was their critical friend approach. Calling themselves The Contemporary Women Writers' Club, they set out to encourage each other with their short stories, meeting regularly around a kitchen table in one of their homes and rigorously, but supportively getting those words out and on time.

What was fascinating about it was that nobody around the table had ever heard of such a thing before. Even the documentary producer from Sussex University didn't recognise this as the critical friend approach until I told them all about our course. There were business women and writers of all shapes and sizes around the table but the thing that we had most in common was the solitary nature of our work. We may pop in and out of where we do our thing but most of the time we're on our own. The idea of finding like-minds around a kitchen table, or as on Saturday night, around the dinner table, was really quite moving, and they all took it away as something to use in their own lives.

So thank you critical friends, not just Jane and Ming, but to all of you. I'm now facing this uphill battle of academic writing with new boots on. And they feel really rather warm and squishy..

• The role of individual guidance and feedback from the tutors     Gina's advice was solid and real which made it all feel very accessible. I liked the exercises on the stuff that stops, the mind games we play and as a regular writer, I hadn't experienced that for a long time. So it was funny when it all came up again, this time about not being rigorous or heavy weight enough. Enough; it's a funny old word. It also means 'give it a rest'. 

• What are you finding enjoyable about writing for academic publication?    The getting over the mind games and getting stuck in. Having the opportunity to think about a project that I can make real change with
• What are you finding less enjoyable?   The mind games. The things I can't do yet - like online library searches, reading dense text books, doing a literature review which I've never done before - worrying that it might not be good. Enough
• What are you finding easy? Writing, seeing it in my head. The journalistic bit. 
• What are you finding less easy? Writing in the academic 3rd person. Pretending to people I'm researching that I have a clue about what I'm doing (it was better when I told them I didn't)
• How does it feel to ask for and receive feedback? Worrying, so I haven't really. I did and then Gina didn't respond so I got paranoid. Then I did some work, submitted again and got nice feedback. Did she read the first ramblings? I hope the God of Email secreted it somewhere in Cyberspace
• How have you made space and time for your writing? How easy/difficult have you found it to make time and space? Yes - too much time. This project which I did for my PG Cert and WAP took way too much time and stopped me earning. So we have to sell the house? There are worse things in life... And yes, that's true (except we;re clinging on to the house) but I saw it as an investment in my academic career.