1. Write your introduction LAST. I know some people disagree, but for me, I didn’t even know what the main argument of my dissertation was until I’d written half of it. So if I’d written my intro first, the whole thing would have been scrapped anyway. Some people argue that writing your intro first helps you plan out where you want to go, but I just put together a table of contents and outline (which actually changed quite a bit) and went from there. Then when I was done the whole thing, I went back and wrote my introduction and then edited.

2. Do you editing at the end.
After I completed a chapter, I would bring it to my committee members who gave me lots of feedback. I would look over their remarks, make some notes and then move on. I didn’t start revising the chapter then and there because of course, things change as you write more. So I put the chapters in a binder and left them there until I’d finished writing the whole thing. Then I went back and edited them one by one, taking the comments of my committee into consideration and then what my main argument ended up being. The chapter I’d written first ended up being almost entirely removed. I think I kept maybe 4 or 5 paragraphs from the original.

3. Think about your project chapter by chapter. This helped me from getting entirely overwhelmed. I could focus on the specific project at hand, rather than get freaked out by the fact that I still had so much to do (especially helpful when I’d only written one or two chapters).

4. Join a writing group. I have to say that the Thesis-Chapter Reading group we had was amazing. We read one chapter from someone a month, but spent most of our time decompressing. We met for dinner at someone’s house, discussed the chapter, drank wine and relaxed together. It was wonderful. I also got the best piece of advice from Mark Crane in this group who repeatedly would say to us “This is all very interesting, but what is the point of your chapter?” After that, each chapter had a sentence somewhere in the introduction that said “in this chapter, I will be…”

5. Bounce your ideas off of more than just your committee members. Sometimes it’s good to just talk stuff out or have other people read what you’ve written (I’d be happy to!).

6. Remember that it is just a dissertation. It doesn’t have to be perfect ( and it won’t be). You will have holes that you can’t fill up. Just get it done and remember that you can revise and change whatever you want to publish it!