What A Day!

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Untitled design from Canva. Silhouetted heads and geometric shapes
Could you hear the cogs turning?!

Right, my two proofs (an article and a contributed chapter), and the final version of another article, have all been returned to their editors. It has actually been quite interesting revisiting recent and not so recent research, after some time away from  it.  Such revisitations help consolidate things in one’s mind, and keep the topics alive and vivid.

The Big Idea

Tomorrow, by contrast, is a day for looking ahead: I need to start a book proposal and apply for some funding. Storm Amy will determine which desk, on which side of the country, I might be using. Waterproofs at the ready, but I don’t think I’ll take an umbrella! Scottish wind can invert the hardiest of specimens.

Like Buses, Pre-Publications seem to come in Threes

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Three blue double decker buses, one behind the other

Since Friday, I’ve been sent three exciting emails:-

  • the proofs of one chunky article that’s due to be published next year;
  • the proofs of a contributed chapter with probably a similar timescale,
  • and another even chunkier article that has now been accepted – but needs a couple of final touches before I send it back to the editor.

Not bad, in two working days with a weekend in between!

It’s just the way things turn out, but the first article is a late-in-the day return to a paper that I originally gave in 2019 – I waited to be sure that the original conference organisers wouldn’t be needing it. Not only that, but the paper itself had been a return to, and development of, a topic I researched for my PhD and subsequent first monograph, so it has been a long time brewing! I first ‘encountered’ the ghost of Sir John MacGregor Murray some twenty years ago, and a fascinating ghost he turned out to be. He deserves his article in Folk Music Journal next year. Proofs checked and returned already.

Song book entitled, The Glories of Scotland in Picture and Song.
Collection aimed at …
Picture of a plane, suitcases and a world map with a pin in it.
Visitors …
Embroidered map of Britain commemorating the Festival of Britain, 1951. My own work.
To Britain …

Meanwhile, the book chapter expands on work that I did for my own recent second monograph, A Social History of Amateur Music-Making and Scottish National Identity, focusing on a song collection published in time for the Festival of Britain. And the other article picks up on very different threads from that monograph, but also represents a considerable amount of detailed research since then. I look forward to checking the chapter and dealing with the article.

I do have another article due to be published later this year, too. More of that anon.

When you consider that I’m just beginning to think about a third monograph, it’s all a bit dizzying. Mind you, that won’t be happening immediately. I’m still exploring ideas. (Would it be disloyal to say that this is all so much more fun than cataloguing jazz CDs in my earlier existence …?)

Buses photo: Image by Jm TD from Pixabay

Frayed at the Edges

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

There’s an introduction, eight chapters and a conclusion. (Chapter 7 is more of an interlude than a proper chapter, so maybe I could call it seven and a half chapters …. ) Anyway, I’ve taken two weeks’ annual leave to revise and prune this book draft, and after four days and evenings hard at it, I can now say I’ve only got three (two and a half) chapters and the conclusion left to deal with.

It seems punishing, but the idea is that I’ll spot inconsistencies if I’ve dealt with it all in a condensed space of time, so that earlier sections are still fresh in my mind as I come to the later chapters. This has proven to be the case, so far. Did they move to London in the late 1920s or the late 1930s? Ah, yes, THERE they are! Sorted.

All the while, snip, snipping and re-wording to get the word-count down by 11% across the board.

I had a tiny panic when I couldn’t actually find Chapter 5 this morning. For ten seconds I thought, ‘Don’t worry, it’ll be there’, followed by fifteen seconds of, ‘Oh dear, it’s not in either folder where it ought to be’. Five seconds of ,’OH, SH**!!’, and then there it was. I’d renamed it at some point, but not in the Book Schedule document that’s meant to keep me on track. Phew!

I finally ground to a halt at 9.30 this evening. Chapter 5 is neatly tied up, and filed in two places on the cloud. I’m just feeling a bit frayed around the edges …

But just think how great tomorrow’s going to be! I wrote Chapters 6, 8 and the Conclusion so recently that they should be reasonably fresh in my mind. I just might get Chapter 6 and tiny Chapter 7 revised tomorrow – wouldn’t that be good?

The War of the Words

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Have you ever stopped to analyse which words you’re guilty of using too often?

Chapter 3 was long, making Tuesday a very long day. I had that chapter almost down to size, then Zotero formatted the chapter bibliography and added a few hundred words back. Arghh!

But that wasn’t the worst of it. I was unimpressed by the finished chapter. So on Wednesday morning, when I had planned to start Chapter 4, I spent it going back over Chapter 3 again. The good news is, I am getting it trimmed down some more, and on re-reading it, there are plenty of bits that I do like – even bits where I can say, ‘that’s GOOD’. So, things aren’t so bad, despite having a headache and being slightly behind schedule!

But having spent Wednesday afternoon on Chapter 4, I didn’t seem to have cut out much at all – it was all pretty ‘lean’! Maybe another 3 hours would see some more progress …

And I decided I’d better check if I was overusing any common words. How does your writing compare? Do you find this an issue? Some of mine:-

  • Indeed
  • Nonetheless
  • Repertoire
  • Significance
  • Significant
  • Then
  • Very
  • Whilst
  • (Strangely enough, ‘moreover’ and ‘furthermore’ hardly make an appearance – phew!)

Hooray! My contributed chapter had minimum edits …

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Now, this doesn’t concern my own book. Oh no! This was a chapter I wrote as a guest contribution for an essay collection.

To understand my jubilation fully, you have to know that my last contributed chapter (different publisher, different editor) had HUNDREDS of edits requested. So today, I opened an email relating to another contributed chapter, with some trepidation.

But all was well – the most minimal changes were required. Blink, and you’d miss them. Ten minutes later, they were done ✔️

I expect the finished product will appear well before my own monograph – which is good, because on the face of it, I’ve published very little recently. Book-writing is all-consuming when you can’t do it every day!

How to End a Book

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

This is not a spoiler alert! I haven’t finished yet; I’m just about at the end of Chapter 5, with two further chapters to go. I’m not about to reveal how it ends, either, because (a) I don’t want to spoil it for you and (b) what if the closing chapters end up in a different overall order?

Two cartoon characters hold jigsaw pieces which will complete the puzzle.
Image by Alexa from Pixabay

I’m thinking about structure, really. When you’re writing about a subject that had a rise, a heyday and a decline, it’s going to be hard to end on a high. I’ve been pondering about which order to place the last three chapters in the book, and it came down to this:-

Option 1: Up-Down-Up (and Down)

  • Antepenultimate chapter: Hey look, they also did this!
  • Penultimate chapter: But they missed a trick here.
  • Ultimate chapter: Even though they also did THIS (and I find it so exciting), their heyday was over.

Option 2: Up-Up still Higher but Peaking – Down

  • Antepenultimate chapter: Hey look, they also did this!
  • Penultimate chapter: AND they engaged with this! It’s really exciting, but perhaps the writing was on the wall.
  • Ultimate chapter: And they didn’t do this. Would it have made a difference? Possibly not, in view of the wider context.

My instinctive feeling is that the Rise-Fall curve of the second option is going to be more satisfying for the reader. Indeed, as I was writing this post, I stumbled across a website about ‘story arcs’, with six different arc shapes being outlined. Admittedly, we’re only talking about my last three chapters, and I’m writing non-fiction, not a story with a plot. (In a previous existence, I wrote and published over thirty short stories, so I do have an interest in the genre, in a retrospective kind of way. But that’s irrelevant today.) Nonetheless, if we’re thinking about arcs, then …

My first option isn’t even described, so it can’t be a recommended option! Let’s call it the Tennis Ball Bounce. On the other hand, my second option is a classic ‘Icarus / Freytag’s Pyramid (rise then fall)’ arc.

https://thewritepractice.com/story-arcs/ (Joe Bunting, ‘Story Arcs: Definitions and Examples of the 6 Shapes of Stories’

I think I’ve convinced myself. Option 2 it is! Watch this space.