It seems like weeks ago that I published Cites & Insights 6:11, September 2006–but no, that was just exactly a week ago. Yesterday was my original target for the issue.
I already had a head start on the October issue, and by the end of the long weekend I’d finished a five-year-later review of my 2000-2001 study of pioneering ejournals. For reasons too wearisome to discuss, I had a stack of annotated pieces organized such that I could write four or five good essays or sections working directly from those pieces. I organized some material on Tuesday–but also thought about doing a little more on the ejournal review: To wit, checking for listings in the Directory of Open Access Journals dating from 1995 or before that weren’t in my article.
I didn’t write anything Wednesday. Got home from work, exercised (to the last segment of one of the most incoherent “SF” movies I’ve seen–if it came from the 60s instead of 70s, I’d assume too many recreational drugs on the part of the filmmakers), showered, and was too tired to write. At all. (Well, I did a little more DOAJ tracking, but no real writing.)
Thursday? Watching a taped TV guilty pleasure from Wednesday night (9-11, Travel Channel, that’s all I’ll say). And a little more DOAJ work–coming to the recognition that there are a lot of additional journals that now show as being online before 1996, although many of them weren’t really online then–and even more of them aren’t pioneers (they didn’t begin as e-journals). Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending), I’m finding the process interesting enough to want to finish, although I’m not sure what the result will look like. Were there 200 ejournal pioneers by 1995? Possibly.
Today? Various stuff, and starting to prepare for a brief trip (an invitational symposium!), mean that this is all the writing I’ll be doing. Tomorrow, some postponed yardwork plus packing. Sunday-Tuesday: travel.
So it will be a solid week without writing. Which may not be such a bad thing.
The annotated lists are still there. The essays will get written, sooner or later. Preferably at a point where I really want to write, which usually happens after taking a few days off.
Possible outcomes:
- The October issue comes out in very late September/very early October but is “chunky,” with the ejournal essay taking up half the issue or more.
- The October issue comes out in October, probably still chunky but with more content.
Then there are the PoD books I keep threatening to do. When my day-stretcher arrives, maybe.
In the meantime, despite a phony set of urgency (coming from who knows where), there’s considerable virtue to taking a few days off.
