Today's project is answering a Call For Papers. I have done this twice before and was accepted once; however, with regards to the conference I was not accepted into, in all fairness, my paper was slightly outside the scope of the convening org's guidelines. It made sense to me to include it, but it was about 15 years outside of their desired chronological range and they were overrun with papers that did meet their criteria. Oh well.
Previously I was either finished with the paper or had made significant headway when I submitted my abstract. This time, though, I haven't even written the paper yet. It's still just an amorphous sort of cloud-like topic. Granted, I will definitely have it done by the time the conference roles around or I will fail one of my classes this semester. My undergrad advisor told me that I shouldn't feel bad about not having a completely crystallized paper when I answer a CFP and my grad advisor told me just to submit something vague, but with a catchy title. Still, it feels like pulling teeth. It's only got to be a page and it feels enormous.
**Miss Clio
Image from http://accio.zymurgy.org/05/call4papers.shtml
