My Productivity Record for Aug. 2015 to Aug. 2016

This hasn't quite been a Keatsian annus mirabilis, but the last 12 months have nonetheless been extremely good for me. (I mean, outside of getting married, of course!.) Last July, I came back from London after the fantastic Tolkien Seminar in Leeds, and I almost immediately began writing out the paper I had presented at the seminar -- and my presentation, for the mildly curious, is available on youtube, along with the presentations of numerous others. I ended up scrapping the Strauss part because, quite frankly, it was a half-rate idea. Instead, I concentrate on fleshing out my argument for the essential "unity" of the whole 1977 Silmarillion. (The textual history of the book doesn't bear that thesis out, but, thematically, I think I have a very compelling case.) So, classic case of a conference presentation directly leading to a later peer-reviewed article.

So, anyway, my productivity:

  • Essay on the issue of narration in The Silmarillion (forthcoming in Tolkien Studies) -- 10,000 words.
  • Essay on Verlyn Flieger's two novels (forthcoming in the festschrift edited by John Rateliff) -- 7,000 words.
  • "The Aztecs in Historical Fiction: Liberalism, Postmodernism, and the Problem of Human Sacrifice"  (in circulation) -- 9,000 words.
  • Essay on The Hobbit and Jackson's film adaptation -- 9,000 words, under review for an edited volume.
    • Doubles as chapter 2 of my dissertation
  • Chapter 1 of my dissertation (11,000 words)
  • Essay on Saruman, Plato, and rhetoric (published in Journal of Tolkien Research) -- 16,000 words. 
    • Doubles as chapter 3 of my dissertation
  • one book review
    • one on Christopher Bell (ed), essays on identity in Harry Potter -- 2,600 words.

So, all in all, two finished publications, one upcoming publication, two essays under review, a dissertation chapter, and two book reviews. All in all, around 63k total words, just over 52,000 words of published writing. That doesn't seem too bad for academic writing which includes tons of research.

And that was with teaching two classes as part of my assistantship. With my upcoming Writing Fellowship, I might be able to beat that record by a good margin. We'll see.

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