Resubmission

I wrote in September that my undergraduate thesis adviser, Walt, and I had submitted a manuscript for publication. The paper made it to and through review, but we heard back a couple months ago that the journal decided not to accept the article. The reviewers' primary reasoning behind the rejection had to do with the geographic scope of the project. As an undergraduate, my project was necessarily limited by time and funding, so the conclusions I can draw from the research aren't as broad as I (or the particular journal to which I submitted the manuscript) would like them to be. Nonetheless, I received some extremely helpful feedback and a good deal of constructive criticism, so I wasn't particularly disappointed about the rejection. It will be the first of many.

At the time, my adviser was out of the country, and it took me several weeks to get in touch with him after he returned. He is notoriously slow at correspondence, especially when it has to do with publications. He told me point blank once that, since he's received tenure, he feels much less pressure to publish. Once I did get hold of him, he suggested we resubmit, but also told me to pick a journal. Now I'm torn-- do I go for a journal that has a higher impact value but a better audience, or a lesser journal that is more regional and thus may have less of an issue with geographic scope?

Regardless of the journal I ultimately choose, it's time for me to go back, edit, and rewrite. There are several things I can take care of without reformatting the article to meet a specific journal's submission guidelines. But after that I have to pick. At this point, I'm having two problems.

First, I don't feel very confident in choosing the journal myself, or with some aspects of the rewrite. I'd really like the opportunity to meet with Walt and ask him how to approach some of the editing. More than anything, I'd like to discuss with him the feedback we received. I know that editing articles, choosing journals, reformatting, etc. are going to be large aspects of my graduate school life, and that I'll often be going it alone. I'd just like to take the opportunity for some guidance while I have it, especially with someone I know well and trust.

Second, I have lost almost every iota of motivation I ever possessed to revisit this particular research. This was a study I completed three years ago now, and I haven't thought much about it or kept up with other relevant work on the subject since I finished writing my thesis. Lately, I haven't even been reading much in the way of the research I'm interested in now, instead slipping into a lazy pattern of pleasure reading and TV marathons. (None of these things bode well for my return to school in the fall. I should really, really try to reclaim some semblance of an academic mindset.) Even though I know I should be rewriting and resubmitting the article as soon as possible, I keep putting it off.

For any of you out there that may still be following this blog, how do you stay motivated to work on something you've been "finished" with for years? What's the best way to approach working on a paper in which you've (more or less) lost interest?