One Checked, More To Come

I've just submitted a paper for a 2011 conference last Tuesday. It took me almost a month to write six pages of conference paper. To be honest, I struggled a bit when I was preparing it. By end of June, this is the checklist of my writing looks like:

Introduction - check
Method - checked
Experimental set up - checked
Results from simulation -  checked
Discussion - ??? urrgghhhh
Conclusion - checked, OF COURSE you can't really have a conclusion when you have not yet completed your discussion. 

I keep pondering about what may I contribute to the research field. I have a handful of simulation results, and I've tried many possible routes of analysing the data. I surely must have something in there somewhere which I can put a stamp on and say "Hey, THIS IS MY IDEA". There is one area though which I think no one (to my knowledge) has even bothered to look at. But then, my insecurity started to creep in and I found myself thinking, "If this is sooooo great, why haven't anyone take a dip into it?"

So I hold back and squeezed my brain again trying to find other contribution. At the end, I gave up and just wrote down my initial idea. I e-mailed the paper to my supervisors and keep praying they'll accept it without much correction. Alhamdulillah, both of my supervisors appreciate my effort and like the idea I thrown into the paper. So now, I'm nervously waiting for comments from the conference reviewer. I have to be ready for any kind of comments and just try to be positive. Urgh... I know it isn't easy to keep your cool when your hard work is being criticized. I am reminding myself, 'If the reviewer takes time to read through my paper and give lots and lots of comments, my paper must have some worth in it'.

Note: Just be confidence. You'll never know. Ever wonder what happen if people like Ibnu Sina (more info here) and Al-Khwarizmi (more here) keeps to themselves their discoveries?  

Then on Friday morning last week, I met up with my supervisor for some progress meeting. After some discussion, she said "We think you are so ready to write a journal paper..."
What else can I say? Of course I want to write a journal paper. This was a task we discussed since err... January this year. Its get to be placed on the shelf for a while because I was hold up for THREE MONTHS studying and investigating one itty bitty part of my research. Yes, I spent three months and may be more ( I ignore the calendar when the going gets rough) on just one small part. But I guess its alright because that one small part will probably be my contribution to the research area. See, every cloud has a silver lining :)
Apart from that, I need to concentrate on the conference paper.

Now, other than continue with my simulation, reading and reviewing lots and lots of related journals and books, I really don't have any other excuse to not have a go at writing a journal paper. Oh! How I wish I have magic fingers...