Revisions

There is something very exciting about submitting an article for publication. For weeks or months, the effort to find just the right word, just the right phrase, has consumed the writer's mind. Friends or colleagues read the paper and comment about what makes sense and what could be strengthened by writing it a different way. Eager to make the paper most readable and clear, the writer hastens to make the changes. This sometimes involves changing the direction of the main thought or adding large explanatory sections to it.
After all the writing, the magic day comes when all the words are on the page. Then the grueling day long task of formatting it to APA standards begins: hanging indents for the reference page; block style paragraph for the abstract; correct referencing in the body of the paper, and appropriate levels of headings. All of this must be done before it can be sent to the publisher. When it is completed, it seems a miracle to even hold such a precious document, or to contain it on one's hard drive. But there it is.
It is very exciting to then submit such an article for publication and heave a sigh of relief as it sails off into cyberspace (if electronically submitted) or via the postal service. The thought of the article in print is like the image of wearing pearls--really lovely, flattering, and something that enhances anyone at all.

What typically happens, is that these literary darlings are returned full of battle scars. Editors are known for tearing such things to shreds, and since articles are by blind review (they don't tell you who is making the editorial comments), they often are rather direct, critical, and challenging to the ego. I have received such letters. After my stomach, which feels as though it is dropping into my ankles, stops lunging, I often ponder how I could have ever made it through a rigorous doctoral program and still be as shortsighted as these letters indicate I am.

This evening I received such a letter. However, it is a second request for revisions. The first letter shocked me, since I felt the paper had real merit. Of course I would think this--it was my "baby" and no one else has written on this topic in the way that I have. But four people had very strong opinions about the way I wrote it. Because it was so overwhelming to try to rework, I procrastinated for several months, not so much as looking at it. When I finally got to it again, the week-long angst I experienced over that set of revisions still did not produce something that would get past the reviewers.

I don't think that very many people know what it is like to go through this process. People who get published are very patient and persistent. It helps if they can write, but some are as dry as the Sahara and still get published.

Any road, I'm going to have to burrow back into that miserable manuscript in the next couple weeks and try to make all the requested changes. We're not talking about minor things here--my methods section (the way the study was performed) isn't up to par. There was no method, but when I said that in the first version, they wouldn't stand for such a paper to be in their journal. So then I said there was a method in the second version and they didn't like it. Now there's a bind. I could fabricate a method, or say it has nothing to do with data collection and is purely an observation or clinical idea of mine. And that wouldn't be what they're looking for, either.

Well, that's the issue tonight. Some things can't be good enough until they're gone over and over and over and over. It reminds me of the Bible verse that says, "The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong..." (Ecclesiastes 9:11). Persistence is a quality that I prize--one that has served me well. I have worked very hard in many areas of my life to gain a host of things. I will slug it out with these editors until I get this article in print, too. What I wonder is this: am I willing to work hard and go to great lengths to make strides in my spiritual life: in terms of Bible study, character building, Christian disciplines? The question is one we all have to answer.