Progress report on #AcWriMo 2013 week 3

Checking in after another week of the month, and really pleased with progress in the last 7 days.

Conference paper proposal for the SHARP (Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing) 2014 conference in Antwerp has been finished and submitted online. Was really easy to do. They even asked for my Twitter handle in the submission process! My proposed talk is titled “Fanzines and British TV series Doctor Who, and their changing relationship over nearly 50 years”. I’ll find out by mid February if they’ve accepted my proposal, but I’m going whatever.

And I’ve almost finished my other big goal, revising and resubmitting an academic journal paper this month. I finished scribbling my many changes to the text a few days ago, and last night spent a very productive hour typing them into the Word document. When I originally submitted the paper it was 9999 words long – yes the journal did allow 10000! And I’m amazed that even with all my additions and clarifications the new version isn’t much over 9900 words. Though I did hack out quite a bit of text in one section, including a lengthy table the anonymous reviewer thought was superfluous. I’ll easily be able to finish and resubmit this paper by the end of November, which is superb.

IF Comp also finished in the last 7 days. In the end I played and judged 10 games out of the 35 total, which given my other time constraints I’m quite pleased about. And I now have all the other entrants, including the eventual winner, to look forward to playing more slowly.

I also resumed writing my own interactive fiction game. It’s a whodunnit / mystery, set in a Scottish Borders castle circa 1500. Much of the game involves talking to other characters, to try to figure out the clues. The other night I filled out more of the Inform 7 conversation tables for this, which is great progress, that I’m really pleased with.

So good progress. Alongside finishing my journal paper revisions in the next 7 days I’d like to do more urban history research / thinking, and also roleplaying / history crossover articles for my book in progress. Will see what happens!