Diary of a 'Positive Rejection': Part Two

(Click here for part one)
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It’s Thursday, and I have (re)submitted my article, and I am now exhausted.

tl;dr: □+□=□.

— Ellie Mackin (@EllieMackin) February 11, 2016

So, here are my big takeaways from this experience:
 

1. It’s great having a knowledgeable person read over your work before you submit it. Quite a few people read over this article, and the reviewers still picked up things no one else had considered. The point, I think, is that maybe I should cast my net of readers a bit wider to begin with. Although I obviously don’t know who the reviewers are, so have no way of knowing what kind of background they have.
2. My writing isn’t bad. One of my Master’s examiners really ripped into my writing and my style (the other one actually praised my style, but you never take the good stuff away, do you?!?). Since then I have been really, really anxious about how I write. One of my reviewers commented that this article was ‘well written’, so that kind of lifts the stone a bit.
3. I know stuff, I think stuff, and I should say so. What I mean is that when you (read: ‘I’) are learning to construct new arguments, then you inevitably want to show the reader (or, very likely, the examiner) that you have thought about all the things and you have read all the things. You build an argument step-by-step and then at the end you meekly say ‘and so given all of this, I think that it’s probably kind of reasonable to assume that maybe xxx’. Sorry, self, that’s not convincing. So, state what you want to say and own it. This is the thing! Bam! And then you say, and here’s why, a, b, c.

 
In many ways I think this has been one of my big post-PhD learning curves. This may well be the first post-PhD piece of scholarship that I get out and it kind of sets the tone for how I will deal with other pieces of writing. At least in the immediate future. I’m sure each piece will bring an opportunity to develop something new. And, perhaps that’s what so exciting about this process.
 
For now, I have plenty to crack on with, so I am well and truly in the ‘fire off and forget’ stage of the process. For now the work is done, and we’ll see what happens.