Why I'm Losing My Mind

Well, it's not because I don't have enough material to draft my paper, or because I waited too long to start, or because I haven't given it enough thought.  I'm pretty sure that I feel like I'm going crazy because I've never written a paper like this one before.  The peer review is Friday (today's Sunday), and this entry is supposed to be about problems I'm having.  The way it's going so far is that I keep thinking of stuff I needed to put in my outline but didn't, so every time I finish one task (for lack of a better word), I have to go back and put something else ahead of what I just wrote.  In other words, this thing is growing in every possible direction, and it may be totally out of control.

The one "task" that's given me the most trouble is defining a term:  action hero.  I guess that if I knew more about action/adventure stories in the 1800s, I'd be able to come up with a more scholarly definition that would take that into account.  As it is, I'm basing the definition on a couple of sources (the Tasker article and the one about Gladiator), and I think/hope I've finally got it to work.

The argument itself is shaping up okay, thanks to that Slate.com article.  I'm refuting it point by point.  My conclusion sucks.  That's the next big problem.

Speaking of peer reviews, my feed just popped up a batch of articles about a group of academics "corrupting" the process of academic publishing.  Take a look:

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