Chasing PrintGenerating topics

Rather than thinking exclusively about time-periods, composers, or specific works that interest you, think about approaches you find congenial.

What kinds of research-work appeal to you: Score-study? Primary sources? Biographical links to compositions? Culture/context/reception of works? Interaction b/w music and other cultural/historical phenomena? Oral history? Etc…

What repertoires appeal? Orchestral? Chamber? Solo? Song? Non-traditionla/vernacular? New music?

What time periods or geographical regions appeal? It is no longer the case that musicologists "only deal with classical music"; musicology is now very widely-understood to encompass the whole world of music and the whole gamut of analytical approaches.

Different topics will tend to demand different types of research approaches. If you have a sense of the research approaches you might find congenial, you can reverse-engineer to find topics that respond well to those certain approaches.

Headline: begin by considering the type of work you want/like to do; allow topics to proceed from that (rather

than the reverse)

Chasing PrintIdentifying targets

Identify publishers, publishers’ series, and journals which address topics/approaches you intend to engage.

Read sample Tables of Contents, Indices, Bibliographies, and “Guidelines for Authors”

If a publisher: identify the editor most directly engaged with the subjects under which your topic falls.

If a journal, read sample articles, paying attention to both topics, writing style, and also technical specifics.

Different topics will tend to demand different types of research approaches. If you have a sense of the research approaches you might find congenial, you can reverse-engineer to find topics that respond well to those certain approaches.

In targeting certain journals or publishers, know and employ their own internal “guidelines” language

Link to ttumusicology.wikispaces.com

Headline: identify a target and know its subjects, content, approaches, requested formats, roster of authors, etc

Chasing PrintSharpening skills

Seek opportunities to write on topics relevant to you as widely as possible.

Conversely, protect your writing time and energy.

Develop venues that permit—and demand—that you write regularly. Elicit editors who can help you make the writing better.

As you write, regularly, continually seek to hone your voice, perspectives, tools, and topics; continue to critique your available scholarly tool-set and to fill gaps in it.

Likewise, reflect upon your topics of expertise; develop clear language—even a personal “Mission Statement”—which succinctly and effectively articulates the fundamental connections in your own scholarly work which might not be obvious to a casual observer.

Use this “Mission Statement” as a means of reflecting upon topics, creating a public scholarly profile, and assessing the relevance of a new piece of writing to your overall scholarly profile as you wish it to be.

Lose no opportunity for “audience education” about the content, significance, and relevance to everyday life of your own work.

Headline: writing well and appropriately is a skill. Like all skills, it improves (only) with extensive practice.

Chasing PrintSerendipity and visibility

Assume that any full draft will need to go through multiple edits, both self- and other-generated.

Assume that any full draft will benefit via presentation to and critique by audiences of diverse makeup.

Assume that any full draft, rewritten to most suitably address diverse audiences, has the potential to garner additional hearings.

Seek and take advantage of these hearings: colloquia, service presentations, conferences, proceedings.

Render and re-render: professional competence, multiple templates, and “The Peter Burkholder Dictum”

Headline: no piece of writing ever suffers from additional rewritings for contrasting audiences; hence, seek those

audiences.