Since we lost Cathryn, don't know if anyone is interested in scientific writing (although as Brian points out, good posts here can take some work). I am a research scientist and don't teach due to being really bad at it (disordered mind, anxiety problem. I do work with students, but one at a time and not by lecturing. So, I should publish a couple of papers a year as first author, or at least one in a major journal. I have not had such a paper published since 2007 (I had a long one on Palos Verdes area rejected in late 2009, and have not had time to revise and resubmit). I wrote a 4 page extended abstract with 4 figures that was not too terrible on 1 day for the 500th anniversary of the 1509 Istanbul earthquake. So, I thought I could turn it into a submittable manuscript with maybe 2 weeks of work this past July. However, all that time plus the first 2 weeks of August when I was supposed to be on vacation went to a proposal to survey offshore Haiti, and I wrote little of that. There were 5 Institutions involved and about 6 people (including HW chiming in from China)working on the proposal. I did many of the figures and a little text.

So, I've been working on this manuscript since mid August. Yesterday, I completed the figures except the first one. I re-read part of the draft text and it was not good. It is not ready for editing by co-authors. It has taken 3 months partly because I started a draft back in late August, and found I had to go back to interpretation because I did not know enough about certain things, and then also worked with a Turkish professor interpreting areas that will not be in the manuscript (but will be in hers). Then, I had to spend a week re-reading some papers published from 1999 to 2005. It looks like I have to re-read others, read some I have not read, and check the ones I re-read to make sure what I am saying is accurate.

It could take another month before I have a draft good enough for co-authors, although I will shoot for 2 weeks. I have too decide on which journal to submit to (Geological Society of America Bulletin, Journal of Geophysical Research, or Tectonophysics come to mind.)

Chris