Good Success on Goodreads

So this week I posted several comments and questions on reviews on goodreads, and actually got a response back! It made me realize that if I choose to talk about the extent of God/Providence in Edmond Dantes life, researching a little more carefully into Alexandre Dumas’s religious background would be a good idea. Also, she brought up free will, which has come up repeatedly in my conversations with people about my idea and in just talking about Count of Monte Cristo. So I am thinking of considering that as a potential point to talk about in my paper.

Publishing Avenues:

The idea of publishing my paper makes me more excited about writing it (which honestly, I need all the excitement I can get as we near the end of the semester) and a little more nervous about doing a good job on it.

I have never heard about BYU’s ScholarsAchive until this week, and have decided that submitting my paper to it seems like a low-risk, low-stress option.

I also looked into the BYU’s English Symposium, and I really like how it covers a vast area of literary space, and I am super interested in submitting something to it next year.

Sophi mentioned the blog, Interesting Literature and I checked it out and read some of their articles. I really like the style that they have and their topics. I noticed that a lot of their Guest Blogs are in list form, and I think it could be a cool way to adapt a paper to blogger-friendly.

Welcome to the Real World.

Logo from goodreads.com

I have been on Goodreads exploring different reviews that members have written about the YA novel Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine. I stumbled upon an extensive review with a link to a whole article on feminism in Ella Enchanted. I was pretty excited, because it relates really well to the ideas I have been exploring for my literary analysis paper. I messaged the author of the article (a college student from Pace University) to thank her for her helpful article and asked her if she had any thoughts about feminism in Young Adult Literature specifically in fairy tales. She responded to me in literally 20 minutes:

"Hi Tori! Thanks for getting in touch. It's so nice to know people still find that review on here and actually read the article..."

She went on to give me links to several more articles and her thoughts about my topic. Wow. That was so helpful and it happened so fast. Plus, it was so easy. People really do wan
t to talk to me about my little paper! I was blown away by her eagerness.

I also have an old Facebook group from a class last fall semester and we have kept it going this semester even though we are all in different classes now. I don't know the people very well, all I know is that that are a little bit nerdy and have a lot of great thoughts about my ideas. This Facebook group I have quite honestly ignored for the past few months has become a great resource. 

I have also been looking for ways I can get my paper out to people who might care about reading it after I finish writing it. I had no idea that there were so many ways to publish undergrad essays online! I am very grateful for this informative blog post about how to find authentic audiences for my work, even while I am still a student. It has been very motivating.

BYUlogo.png

First of all, I am definitely going to submit my work to the BYU repository called the ScholarsArchive because it accepts any kind of student research. It would be a cool place to be published since I am attending school at BYU and I'd feel like I was leaving my mark here. 

I would also love to submit to the International Student Journal because I love the variety of topics and the range of research that they accept. People from all over the world can submit to this journal. I think my paper about YA literature, feminism, and gender roles will find a home there.

This blog: Interesting Literature is calling for any papers on literary analysis which is exactly the kind of paper I'm working on right now. This is one of my favorite options becuase I feel like guest blogging is more low-key. I feel pressure to write something worth reading, but I am not overwhelmed by the formal elements of a journal submission.

Chris on Flickr: shutterhacks

This blog: PURM is more geared toward bloggers who want to discuss the process of undergrad research. This isn't one that I could submit my paper to but it is something that is beginning to interest me. It makes so much sense for us to be looking for authentic audiences now while I am a student, and yet, I have never done it before. Why haven't I? I've decided it comes down to two things: fear and ignorance. I'm afraid of an authentic audience and I haven't bothered to learn how to find them. It's much more comfortable to settle for a contrived audience.

But no more. 

Real life is beginning. Undergrad researchers of the universe, are you with me?!

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!