Brief hiatus

To my readers,

Clastic Detritus is going to be quiet for the next few weeks. I have a bit of traveling coming up and, more importantly, I need to focus on getting one paper submitted and then finish revisions for another that has been accepted. After reading saxifraga’s post about the relationship of blog writing to paper writing, I’m wondering if blogging about science is stepping on the toes of actually doing science (i.e., writing peer-reviewed papers). I don’t have tons of time to work on these papers during the work week because they are holdovers from my PhD research and not directly related to my job (although I try and argue they are … to limited success). So, I’ve been trying to work on them in the evenings and weekends. Many of you know this challenge all too well.

Last year, when I was finishing my PhD chapters, I was able to blog quite a bit at the same time. I think it worked because I was so focused on technical writing for 7-9 hours a day that taking even an hour out of that to blog did not diminish my overall productivity. In fact, I looked forward to the blogging “break” as an opportunity to write in the freewheelin’, stream-of-consciousness style that blogging allows. By contrast, writing scientific papers is mentally draining … at least for me. You’re constantly parsing every single statement making sure it communicates exactly what you want, you’re always making sure that the reference you are citing is the appropriate one for the concept you are discussing, which often leads to day-long tangents of re-reading papers. And then there are figures to make! I digress.

It might just be the distraction of the internet in general, I don’t know … either way, posts will be few and “light” for the next few weeks to a month while I try and get these papers off my desk(top).

In the meantime, here’s my shared items from GoogleReader and also check out my del.icio.us links. And, as always, the geoblogosphere ticker on the sidebar will keep you updated on the latest and greatest in the geoscience blogging community.

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