Yes! Indeed, I sent off the e-mail that contained my article submission. I could hear my heart thumping in my chest as I typed the address in the To: window. I couldn't quite understand why I was feeling nervous.
Anyway its off and now may the gods or universe or the fairies be with it on its journey. I sat with a colleague of mine yesterday as we discussed her comments on my paper. She had agreed to read and provide feedback on the coherence and grammar of the paper. It was really useful to see someone else point out sentences that don't make sense or ask questions about assumptions that I take for granted. We worked through some of my sentence constructions, with S suggesting alternatives and reasons for her suggestions. I'm always nervous about my grammar and it felt really reassuring to ask seemingly stupid questions and get an honest, but informative and non-judgemental reply.
I keep wishing I had paid more attention to the grammar lessons at school - but this is a very interesting 'thing' that I am doing here in academic literacies terms - I am ascribing my concerns about my writing as grammatical problems or inaccuracies, with the assumption that if I 'fix' the grammar, my writing will be improved or be better. An academic literacies practitioner worth his or her salt would identify this kind of thinking/assessment as an ideologically informed myth associated with academic writing. Good writing has less to do with grammar and is almost always about understanding the very context specific ways of structuring your writing and language so that it is recognised as appropriate for your field or discipline or supervisor. Funny that I know this, I've even spoke to one of my supervisors about this very tendency I always seem to slip back into; this way of judging my writing as being in deficit of something. Maybe this highlights just one of the many complexities that surround the act of academic writing.
Otherwise - its been a good couple of days. I needed that 'off' day on Wednesday to spur me on to better and brighter things. I've realised August is practically over and I reckon I'm about 2 weeks behind my intended schedule. My conference presentation in Lille, France is next on the agenda and I have to get it translated into French (oh la la!) so really need to pull my finger out. If I want to discuss it with my supervision team next week, so looks like I need to put some extra hours in tomorrow.
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