How did you start writing your dissertation?

[spunky]

So... yeah, basically what the title says. The place where I work part-time doing data analytics/modeling wants to hire me full-time now (yay!), but my boss did ask me to make sure I had, at the very least, finished my PhD dissertation or, ideally, have my PhD before April 2017. "No problem!" - I thought - "I only need one more chapter to go up for publication and the rest is just writing an intro and a conclusion". That was back in May.

Fast-forward today and I only have 1 paragraph sitting on a mostly-empty Words document. I feel like I have the most massive writer's block in history and I dunno what to do :/

Help? How did people start writing their dissertation?

[fuzzylogician]

Well, mine involved two chapters based on existing papers and an additional 4 that were new (based on presentations and proceedings papers to some degree, with one that I would say was basically brand new from scratch). So the first thing I did was compile the stuff I already had in my dissertation format (Latex) just to feel like I have already accomplished something. Then I set a plan for what needed to happen roughly when, based on when I wanted to defend and working backwards, leaving time for last-minute unknowns (which definitely happened!). What I chose to do on a given day depended on my mood -- some were serious writing days, some were editing days, some were silly formatting and other troubleshooting days. I kept daily track of my progress to get a sense of whether my plan was reasonable. There were definitely days and sometimes weeks where less happened. I am going through the same kind of thing now with the book based on my dissertation, which I am basically writing in bursts -- some very good days, some not so good days. It's important to have a routine and to give it a try, but to recognize bad days and cut yourself some slack. The worst thing you can do is both waste the time and be mad at yourself. If you're not having a good day, it might be better to try to do something else for a while and be forgiving of yourself, because this will and does happen to everyone.

The best thing for writers block (for me) is free-style writing. Write down anything, don't worry about how it looks or sounds, just get something on the page, even if you know you probably won't end up using any of it. It also often helps me to change my physical environment. If I have been unproductive at home for a day or two, it may be time to spend a day working in a coffee shop. If you have friends around who you can work in the same room with, the presence of someone else will sometimes help you feel more accountable. Since your dissertation is a collection of already-written papers, each of them should already have an intro and a conclusion of its own. Is there text from there you could use to say what each chapter is going to do (/did)? Can you tell the story of how they hang together? That's really all that you need to do. It doesn't need to be perfect, or even good. It needs to be done. You can do it. 

Edit: Oh, and congrats on the job offer, that is great! 

Edited August 10, 2016 by fuzzylogician

[spunky]

58 minutes ago, fuzzylogician said:

The best thing for writers block (for me) is free-style writing. Write down anything, don't worry about how it looks or sounds, just get something on the page, even if you know you probably won't end up using any of it.

I do this too! But do you do anything to keep track of your citations/references? One of my biggest issues once I start "free-styling" is that I need to go back, re-read what I wrote and write the proper reference/citation where I took it from. Sometimes I spend hours looking through articles trying to find which one had that one idea that I'm using in X or Y paragraph. 

59 minutes ago, fuzzylogician said:

someone else will sometimes help you feel more accountable. Since your dissertation is a collection of already-written papers, each of them should already have an intro and a conclusion of its own. Is there text from there you could use to say what each chapter is going to do (/did)? Can you tell the story of how they hang together? That's really all that you need to do. It doesn't need to be perfect, or even good. It needs to be done. You can do it. 

Edit: Oh, and congrats on the job offer, that is great! 

Yeah, it's the whole "tell me the big picture part" that freaks me out. Like I feel I'm a very good... I'm not sure how to phrase it... like "single-issue" writer as if "ok, so we have problem X let's say everything we need to say about X". But if I need to link X to Y to Z I'm like " aww c'mon peepz. Just read the papers yourselves and get the gist of it!" Maybe I'm just lazy, I dunno.

 

Oh, and thanks! It's gonna be weird being on a payroll  and whatnot after so many years of freelancin'. I guess no more "I can wear my PJs while I work" for me

[fuzzylogician]

18 minutes ago, spunky said:

I do this too! But do you do anything to keep track of your citations/references? One of my biggest issues once I start "free-styling" is that I need to go back, re-read what I wrote and write the proper reference/citation where I took it from. Sometimes I spend hours looking through articles trying to find which one had that one idea that I'm using in X or Y paragraph. 

Oh no no no, free style writing definitely does not involve multiple pauses to check literature. You put a note saying "add citation/check who said this first" or whatever and you move on, you don't get distracted. You go back to check the citations when you're feeling stuck, as a way of staying productive when not writing, but you do it as its own task that you can check off your to-do list (if you're that kind of person. I definitely am). Point being, it's not a quick errand you run between actual tasks, it's its own task and deserves to be given the appropriate attention. That aside, you can't get into a good writing groove if you are constantly stopping to verify this thing and that. Unless it's absolutely crucial to know the thing you are stuck on, you move on and you come back to it later. Just flag it. (And as I said, filling in the gaps is a good way to feel (and be) productive when writing isn't going well.) 

 

18 minutes ago, spunky said:

Yeah, it's the whole "tell me the big picture part" that freaks me out. Like I feel I'm a very good... I'm not sure how to phrase it... like "single-issue" writer as if "ok, so we have problem X let's say everything we need to say about X". But if I need to link X to Y to Z I'm like " aww c'mon peepz. Just read the papers yourselves and get the gist of it!" Maybe I'm just lazy, I dunno.

Alright, if the big picture scares you, break it up into chunks. How did problem X benefit from Z? What specifically does one have to do with the other? Now, how more generally does topic Z' inform work on X'? It's just like doing a lit review on X, assuming that you are not the first person to ever claim that X and Z are related. So, start with small local connections relevant to your own project, then how the broader topics are related and inform one another. Eventually you probably should have a unifying theme and some discussion of how studying X, Y, and Z together furthers our knowledge of [blah], but you can get to it by building up small parts that you feel more knowledgeable about. It's usually the amorphous nature of the task that scares people, it looks large and not well-defined. Starting locally and small can help with that. Until you have a good amount of text and some bits about every part of your dissertation, just don't worry about how to connect the dots. Once they are all there, you've already done 80% of the work and now you can worry about that final part, but hopefully by then it may become easier to see how to write it, because most of it is actually already there. If there are other dissertations that similarly look at X, Y, and Z, you might at this point also look at how they discuss the connections, just to see some way of going about it. 

[dr. t]

17 hours ago, spunky said:

I feel like I have the most massive writer's block in history and I dunno what to do

Whenever I hit this point on any paper, I always put away my computer and take out my notebook and pen. I might write long form or I might outline, but I try to put down what I'm thinking, even if it's a mess. Somehow, it feels less formal and final than typing it in.

"Writer's block is a lot like constipation: sometimes, you just have to work it out with a pencil."

[rising_star]

22 hours ago, spunky said:

Fast-forward today and I only have 1 paragraph sitting on a mostly-empty Words document. I feel like I have the most massive writer's block in history and I dunno what to do :/

Help? How did people start writing their dissertation?

Have you ever read the chapter "Shitty First Drafts"? I can't remember the author offhand but, I found it helpful to read about seasoned/experienced/successful writers and how they find it helpful to just put anything down, even if it's not good, and not worry about editing, proper citations, etc. (at least not at first). Like telkanuru, I will turn to pen and paper if I'm really faced with writer's block. I'm also one of those people who loves making incredibly detailed outlines, sometimes to the level where I list the argument/topic sentence for each paragraph, which I can then more easily flesh out.

[spunky]

Thanks everyone for your great recommendations. Now my proposal is ready and, with some luck, I'll get to defend it before the end of September so I can officially become a PhD candidate.

OMG! Everything is moving so fast!

[fuzzylogician]

Yay, congrats!