Outside the Comfort Zone

[faustus]

I would say that in the last ten years I've only written a couple of unsolicited articles or books - they have either been projects I've initiated or been invited to take part in, or I've been offered a book contract. I suspect I haven't gone to a non-specialist conference in the same period - save for departmental ones where collegiality outweighs sense. I can't remember the last paper I delivered that wasn't genre related (Delany and porn in the mid-1990s?).

I've just stepped outside the box and sent off an abstract about comedy to a conference on comedy. I feel twitchy, but it is a big world out there.

Comments

[pennski.livejournal.com]

Well done you!

Stepping outside the comfort zone is v brave. Kudos.

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

I found that giving sf papers at general conferences was a waste of time.

The last serious non-sf paper was on poetry, and I decided not to bother with the chapter for book version - until they solicited it. They complained that I had not taken into account the vast secondary literature. I looked around again (this is just pre-www remember and the days of MLA index being on a CD-Rom as a major advance over the paper index) and found maybe one more article. Eventually it was rejected because they wanted to balance "pre and post-twentieth century materials". The latest this can have been was 1997.

I've tended to load the dice a little more, since.