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Can tell you about international law certainly:
1. I would first suggest beginning with Malcolm Shaw for the basics, and then reading Malcolm Evans. This gives you a very technical (Eurocentric) view of international law which you can then use to understand the treaty texts. Beginning with the treaty texts devoid of context will bear no fruit.
2. Once you are done with learning international law, it is also important to learn that it is the creator and perpetuator of colonial subjugation. BS Chimni, Usha Natarajan, Antony Anghie and M Sornarajah are people whose articles you should refer to. However, I suggest you refer to this book before going to articles: https://www.routledge.com/Third-World-Approaches-to-International-Law-On-Praxis-and-the-Intellectual/Natarajan-Reynolds-Bhatia-Xavier/p/book/9780367889234.
As for writing papers, I can explain in steps:
1. Do not write a paper to write a paper - write a paper to contribute to knowledge. Quality over quantity. A bad paper will forever stay on the internet to haunt you - do not make that mistake for an imaginary boost to your CV.
2. Always begin with literature review on a topic that you are interested in. 'Why does international investment law have arbitral tribunals enforcing the law, and not international/national courts?', for e.g., but this issue has been extensively covered. Read up everything there is on the topic and then, and only then, try to formulate what the literature does not address.
3. Begin with framing the question - what you ask defines what you search for, and how your article looks like.
4. Then only write the article and always make other people read it to give feedback. Publish drafts on SSRN so that other people can see.
5. Submit it to a journal on the topic - start with a really good journal relative to the quality of the article where you know that even if the article is rejected, the peer review will be immensely helpful. Rinse and repeat.
Don't go for it now.
2. You need to write a piece and submit when there are call for papers issued by the journals. Their websites, or aggregator websites like lawctopus will carry those. There are law reviews that will accept all disciplines and there are specialised journals too. The process is fairly transparent.
3. Blogs like IPRment law may be a good place to start.