And Now for Something More Academic

It’s been a crazy week already. My ninja plan is in place, and making me feel a bit excited, even though nothing is for sure. At least I have something to work toward.

I also, miraculously, through failing to check my calendar and thus attending a very important all-day seminar, got some work done. I know, it was hard for me to breathe for a minute, too.

My list of accomplishments from the last 4 days includes:

• Submission (and subsequent acceptance) of my abstract to the 2009 MeCCSA Postgraduate Conference. I will be presenting my paper “The Shifting Author-Reader Dynamic: Online Novel Communities as a Bridge from Print to Digital Literature.”
• Submission (and subsequent acceptance) of my abstract to the 2009 Great Writing Conference. I will be reading my short story (WIP, but completed by then), and using accompanying visuals and discussion for my adaptation to digital format.
• A very behind-the-ball submission of my paper “The Shifting Author-Reader Dynamic” to Convergence. As I started my research into journals to submit the paper to, I came across their call for papers on “Words on the Web” – absolutely perfectly suited to my paper. Only the deadline passed 3 weeks ago. I sent my abstract to the editor anyway, acknowledging my lateness, but noting that I’ve only just finished and discovered the CFP, and my paper is pretty well-suited to the issue’s theme. She agreed, and so I submitted the full paper today.
• Submission of my short story “Last Stop Bar and Grill” to various respected journals. Time to get the fiction show back on the road.
• Finished the AHRC Grant application for funding for the College of Arts & Humanities conference I’m chairing this summer. It was a pretty well-written bid, if I do say, but then I did it for a living for years. I wonder if that’s cheating. Anyway, it had a LOT of input from the faculty members involved in the conference (well, maybe not input, but a bunch of condescending notes), which I don’t think is really kosher, but I’m smiling and nodding and trying to piss as few people off as possible.

Next week will suck again as all 3 of the creative writing classes I’m teaching have workshops, so it’s unlikely much work will get done then. For now, I’d just like to bask in it, and pretend that I’m always this industrious.