Lessons in Article Writing
I'm revising a conference paper on Dracula that I delivered at ACCUTE two years ago. The paper isn't half bad, actually, and with some tweaking I think it will make a decent journal article. I'm making the tone a bit more formal, extending some of the critical junk -- for conferences you can do a lot of riffing off the top of your head, but that doesn't help a journal reader -- and trying to come up with a conclusion that actually wraps everything up without sounding too pithy and half-assed. I think I'll be done by tomorrow evening, if I keep at it. Right now my head hurts and I need a nap.
I have learnt a lesson, however, and it is as follows: when one is writing conference papers, one tends to think "I don't have to include a works cited, right? Who cares if these quotes are a little off in numbering? I can ad-lib this part, right?". The answer to all three of these questions is nonono (repeated for emphasis). It's so much more of a pain for one to try to find one's quotation two years after one has completed a paper. One really wishes one could go back in time and kick two-years-younger one in the pants.