Signed, Sealed, Delivered...I'm done!

The deed is done!

Despite a tiny panic attack and some very sweaty palms, I successfully submitted my paper to a literary conference. This conference is for the organization called The New Direction in the Humanities Knowledge Community, and I thought my paper, about both literature and its accompanying media, might just fit right in.

Here's the link to where I submitted my paper proposal. 

Here's what it looked like right before I hit the submit button! Eeek!

How exciting is that?! And at last I mustered up the courage, believing that my paper was worth all this nervousness... and submitted a paper of mine to a conference, a very official one I might add, for the very first time! What an adrenaline rush!

Here's my acceptance letter!

Naw, just kidding. But it is a confirmation that they got my submission and will call me back about it in a few weeks. Here's to hoping I make it.

This has been such a cool experience for me. Although it has been stressful, and sure, maybe I've cried myself to sleep a couple nights (kidding again), but my confidence in myself has grown. I never thought I could even submit to something like this, and just in knowing that I can has opened my world up so much.


I'd like to thank my-

Kidding, once again. Man, I'm on a role.

But it really has been a great experience.

Perks of Publishing

From Wikipedia

One of my new favorite things to do is sharing my work, or work in progress, with others. Whether they may be interested or not, people are prone to give useful feedback that will benefit you. Many of the people I've talked to have definitely improved my process. I decided to share my draft with some of my peers from my dance technique class. I see them everyday for two hours so they are peers I am pretty familiar with. It was so satisfying talking to them about my paper because they reacted exactly how I intended: they related to the idea. My teaser discusses how The Perks of Being a Wallflower involves the concept of loneliness. The author, Stephen Chbosky, says this story is very autobiographical in terms of how much it relates to his life. This is the purpose of the book, to allow audiences to relate. When I shared this draft with my peers they began telling they're stories of loneliness and how they experienced it but overcame. This reassures me that the topic is supported and easily understood.

Now its time to start thinking about not only sharing my work but publishing! At first, it sounded a bit intimidating. Thinking about strangers reading my work and critiquing sounded scary. Now I'm thinking "Read my work, rip me apart, make me better!!!!!". This process is for sure to help me improve.

1.The publication I think would fit my paper the best would definitely be Digital America. Since I'm focusing on the novel and film, it goes with their interests and would make a good argument to them.

2.The conference I'd like to submit to is the BYU English Symposium. I feel more comfortable here at my own school because I know my peers are supportive. The due date might have passed but it still sounds fun.

3.For the guest blog post, I am stealing the one I read on Kate's post which McKay used as well. The blog is called New Directions in the Humanities and it seems very modern which I appreciate. The name describes it perfectly "New Directions" so it focuses on fresh ideas and topics that have not been commonly discussed. My paper would fit pretty well into this. They even have a promotion on their home page about a book that discusses the transition between literature and cinema....BINGO!

Publish...Me?

I had never even considered putting my work out there so far, so close to the flames of publish-ing-ness (surprising I'm an English major). But now I'm considering it. And it seems wonderful. 

Finding conferences and articles that were tantalizing was not hard. Through the confidence-building blog post Moby Digital and its links, I was able to find some really interesting stuff. And for the first time in forever (try to read that without singing it) I have gotten excited about sharing my work. 

Professor Burton was right. Now I really want to work harder at this paper and really nail it down. Maybe it'll be worth sharing! Maybe I'll get to be a part of something greater than just getting a letter grade! Oh, the places I'll go! (Hopefully). 

Creative Commons 2.0UK / Jisc Corp

1. The publication I'd really like to submit to would be Digital America. Looking through it, I knew my paper would match their interests, as well as my own.

2. Why not? I'd like to submit it to the Scholars Archive at BYU. I didn't even know this place existed, and now that I know, I want to make something I'm proud enough of to submit to it.

3. If I were to write a guest blog post, I'd  post in  the New Directions in the Humanities blog that I found by reading Kate's post on this blog. So much blogging. But, thanks to Kate, I got really excited about adding to this site and store of knowledge. On the homepage it states, "This knowledge community is brought together by a shared commitment to the humanities and a concern for their future" which I think my paper would really fit into.

4. The conference I found that would really be interesting to apply for (and hasn't already finished) is the EKPHRASIS 2014 : Urban Symphonies. Creating, Performing and Writing the Space in Cinema, Visual Arts and Literature Conference. It's exactly what I was looking for, and it's located in Romania, which is an extra bonus.

This is a whole new outlook on my education. To think that my work could be worth more than a grade and a dusty box, is better than I expected. I'm excited to continue working on this project with potential new end goals. 

Conferences? Journals?? Publications???

This is how submitting my writing makes me feel.
Source: suttonhoo.blogspot.com Creative Commons License

As an English major and an aspiring writer, conferences, journals, and chances at publication are all things I yearn for and am simultaneously terrified of. They seem unbelievably hard to attain, even now. I'm going to be honest and say that I'm having a difficult time finding appropriate venues and opportunities to submit this paper for publication or conference proposals.

I did find a good website called New Directions in the Humanities that seems to be a good resource for conference publications. Their next conference is in Madrid which makes attending out of the question for me, but they offer options in virtual presenting/attending, which is super cool.

The same website also offers opportunities for journal publications, which is also neat. They require you to review other articles to keep the community circulating through each other's work, and they require you to submit a conference proposal and have it accepted, which is a lot of work, but I can understand where they're coming from.

I also investigated the possibility of submitting to the PCA/ACA conference, which I attended two years ago in Boston. I was bursting with ideas for papers and conference presentations when I left that conference, so I've always wanted to try something like it. Their conference is in just a couple of weeks, so going this year wouldn't be possible, but they might open up submissions for next year's conference shortly after this conference ends, so that could be a possibility.

As far as guest blogging goes, I investigated a few of the ones listed on the Moby Digital post we read for class, and the best one I found was Interesting Literature, which looks like its general call for guest authors is still open.

Digital Humanities Now also looks like a plausible option for a guest blogging sort of submission.

This past week I've been getting really good feedback on the blog from some peers, but my experiment on the Facebook group didn't go as well as I hoped. I asked for help, received many enthusiastic pledges to give help, and then got very little back after that. Like we talked about in class today, sometimes you get fast, healthy responses that quickly wither after a while. This is a step up from last week, when I got hardly any feedback at all, so I'm learning!