One Down

One of the four large-scale writing tasks that I’ve set for myself for the rest of this year is finished. Several years back a couple of colleagues and I wrote a small (35,000 words) Guidebook for our students on how to write term papers and research reports. We’d gotten a grant to do so and it turned out pretty well. We self published it within the department just for our students, but we’ve had intentions ever since of expanding it a bit and then attempting to find a publisher for it.

My first task this summer was to revise the work with such an attempt in mind. I expanded it to a bit over 40,000 and updated a bunch of references, as well as making the book more generic rather than targeted at Xavier students. One of my two colleagues has retired, but I’ll send the revised manuscript to the other and he’ll double check my work as well as putting in stuff that he feels we need. Then when he’s done I’ll give it a final go over for consistency’s sake and we’ll send it off.

But as for now, and as for my part, I’m done and am going to take this Memorial Day off and read. I’ve started another of L’Amour’s Hopalong Cassidy novels, and am also just getting into Mahars of Pellucidar by John Eric Holmes, an ERB pastiche. Both are good so far.

Enjoy your day everyone.