where we stand now

So here's where we are at the moment. A few days ago I finished writing my part of the work writeups for the annual "Year's Work in Tolkien Studies": four books, 22 articles, total 5400 words. I read and wrote up two or three a day for most of the month; I find it challenging to concentrate on more than that at a time, but the work itself isn't difficult; in fact it's rather fun, especially this time being deadpan over the crashing errors in a couple articles on names. (If you're going to run statistics on a group of Tolkien character names, try not to filch a list off the web that has names that Tolkien never used.)

There's 6 other people also at work on this, and while some of them are quick, others find it slow and painstaking work. It's not capacity, for they're very good at it; I think it's a matter of native affinity for potting writings in a paragraph. Anyway, the ones that have submitted, I've formatted their citations according to our system and otherwise normalized the files (our paragraphing system, for instance).

This Year's Work is covering 2018; now I'm starting on the bibliography for 2018. First step, clearing out the cubbyhole that I kept all the 2018 books and journals in for handy availability for myself and in case I needed to copy anything for another contributor. Now, go into the other cubbyhole with the newer material. Put any 2020 and 2021 publications aside for reinsertion when I'm done, and take all the 2019 items and type up all their contents lists in the TS bibliography format, before putting them in the cubbyhole where they'll live the next year. Then go into my notes file. Oh man, should have done this earlier. The real killers are the ones that I don't have full bib refs for or can't tell from the titles if they're about Tolkien or not, which means I have to find them somewhere now (accumulating them for next year's Year's Work can come later). Hasty interlibrary loan requests and online book purchasing, and there's some I may only be able to find if and when the university libraries reopen. And that's not even beginning trawling the online databases. If the Year's Work was my February job, the bibliography will be my March one.