entangled

•Pieces of writing written but not yet published= 16

•Pieces of writing commissioned but not yet written= 10

(These numbers are different from the ones I gave a few weeks ago, but I’ve finished some things since then, had a couple of others published, and also made a mistake in counting.)

The major culprit in the first category is anthology chapters, and this is the main reason I’m going to start saying “no” to them more often. Publication always occurs in these cases at the speed of the latest submitter (not that that’s never been me, but usually it’s not). And while it’s not the end of the world, there’s a certain staleness in seeing something published that you actually wrote 4 or 5 years ago.

My recent approach has been not even to write such chapters until it’s pretty clear that serious movement is underway, and in a number of cases I’ve decided to pull out once it’s become evident that there isn’t even a publisher behind the project yet.

I’m not saying you should do it that way, I’m just saying that that’s how you have to do it once you start finding yourself overloaded with commitments. Priority has to go to the things you’ll see in print relatively quickly. (This is one of the reasons I’ve published a lot lately with re.press and Zero. They’re certainly fast. But I also have to salute Edinburgh University Press for getting the Meillassoux book out in a relative hurry.)