Thursday, September 16, 2010

A new challenge

I've been asked by two colleagues in the UK to be a participating author for the new Oxford Dictionary of Human Geography (existing dictionaries in the series can be found here).  I've spent the last week working on a draft headword list to decide on the c.2000 entries that will need to be written.  An interesting task in itself.  We've decided to go the writing rather than editing route and no doubt writing the 700 odd entries we'll each be assigned will be a challenge.  Entries will either be 50-100 words, 100-500 words, or 500-1000 words.

I think this might just complete the publishing/disseminating set on the academic side of things as I've already: written monographs, written school and university textbooks, written chapters for edited books, edited books, edited a reader, edited journals, edited an encyclopedia, edited book series, edited special issues of journals, written reports and policy documents, written for popular magazines, written editorials for national newspapers, made a TV documentary, done live TV radio and debates, and had books translated.  Writing a dictionary makes a full house?  Regardless, I'm feeling buoyed up by the whole project at the minute.  Should be a fun challenge.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Rob - Sounds like a fascinating endeavor. I wish you all the best with it.

Jose Ignacio Escribano said...

Sounds great Rob, have fun.

seana graham said...

700 entries? That sounds like a life's task. Hope it doesn't get in the way of your fiction writing.

Rob Kitchin said...

If I write one or two entries a day and have a couple of weeks of intense research and writing it shouldn't be too bad. Missing from list of academic outputs is a handbook, but I'm under contract to do one of those. The great thing about doing these kinds of project is you learn a huge amount.

seana graham said...

Well, it's obvious you're a more disciplined soul than I am, but that's not surprising.

I was hired to co-author a trivia book about Southern California a few years ago, and though it was basically sheer torture, I was actually happy to have done it once it was done. It was quite a journey, and in some ways a much more personal one than I would have anticipated.