Strategies for writing a PhD dissertation: write before you’re ‘ready’

You’ve completed the coursework of your graduate programme and passed your comprehensive exams with flying colours. You know the literature, you have a novel idea, and you have collected preliminary data. It’s time to write your thesis.

Why is it so hard to start (never mind generate momentum and make steady progress)?

Graduate programmes in the US are often structured on the assumption that reading, discussion and research will prepare a student to write the thesis. But reading isn’t writing. Knowing about your topic isn’t writing. Conducting research and having great conversations with your advisers do not automatically translate to a capacity for writing papers or chapters. Even writing seminar papers may feel surprisingly different from tackling this long, significant piece of independent scholarship.

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• ‘Augmenting’ the doctoral thesis in preparation for a viva

What you need is a writing practice, a habit of using writing as part of your thinking and research. In a writing practice, you write before you are “ready”, before the ideas have crystallised in your mind and, crucially, before you officially enter the thesis-writing phase of your programme. You don’t wait until you are assigned to do so to write or until you need to produce and deliver professional work. You write for yourself, to develop your facility for translating ideas into words and sentences.

Writing for yourself to turn practice into words

If you want to do something well, you need to practise. No wonder, then, that many graduate students who wait until they enter the thesis phase to develop a writing practice may find themselves stuck. They are confronted with the need to write on the spot at the highest-stakes moment in their programme. When this happens, to comfort their apprehension, they return to reading or collecting more data, as though these comfort zones will make them more “ready” to write.

You don’t need permission from your adviser to start a writing practice early in your programme. This writing is for you. Yes, you will likely write material that finds its way into your thesis drafts. But the main value of this work is that you establish a comfortable relationship with writing, with its pleasures and its challenges. You will reap the benefits of your practice through your dedication over time.

I recommend experimenting with these approaches to developing a writing practice.

Write regularly

Put “writing practice” in your calendar and show up for it. Do this with a frequency that is aspirational but actionable. You will build the habit and build trust in yourself. Try my version of the pomodoro technique to shape your writing sessions.

Keep a dialogic notebook

To take dialogic notes (a form of Cornell Notes), draw a line down the centre of a page. On one side, note what you’re taking in – what you are hearing, observing or reading (for instance, at a lecture, note key concepts, explanations or equations). On the other side of the page, engage with what you’re taking in. What does it provoke you to think about? Does it raise questions to explore? Uncertainties to clarify? Connections to forge?

Dialogic notetaking is a tool of memory; it helps you to retain what you hear and read. It is a tool of thought; it sparks ideas, insights and questions. You can explore and experiment and play. It is also a tool of expression; you learn to put your perceptions and ideas into words. It worked for Leonardo. It can work for you.

Pause regularly to review and synthesise

Amid the demands of graduate school, writing pieces that you will not hand in or don’t “count” may seem like a waste of time. But regular writing review sessions will pay off. I recommend that scholarly writers (graduate students and faculty alike) set aside about 30 minutes a week to write about the important things that they are learning and/or thinking about and connecting them to what they already know.

Synthesis is an essential skill that requires intentional effort and practice. Take time in your writing practice to bring together the disparate things you are learning, to connect them to each other and to your own research questions.

Ask and explore questions

Turn to your notebook to write out the questions that arise in your mind as you work in the lab or read the literature. Take a few sentences to explore those questions. You don’t need to figure out the answers. The value lies in the practice of moving that amorphous sense of a question from your head to the written form. When you get stuck in a project, ask yourself: “What am I trying to figure out?” Your goal is to move yourself from the inchoate feelings of inadequacy and discomfort to the empowering experience of problem-definition and problem-solving.

When you write before you feel ready, you will learn a surprising truth: that you get ready by writing.

Monique Dufour is an associate professor of history as well as a faculty fellow in faculty affairs at Virginia Tech. 

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For further reading on this topic, see From Student to Scholar: A Guide to Writing Through the Dissertation Stage by Keith Hjortshoj (Routledge, 2019).