Stuck with your PhD writing? Try this 10-minute reset
Writing your PhD is not all that easy. You can have a couple of hours of writing time blocked out in your calendar, a clear thing you need to be writing, yet still… no words on the page. When you do manage to tap something out, it’s just waffle, and you’re like, “Have I forgotten how to write?”.
Good. 😆
This is what we want right now.
Don't try to make it better yet.
Try this instead.
The Messy Writing Reset
This is a simple 10-minute PhD writing exercise for those moments when there's something in your head, but you can't quite get hold of it. Or, as one of my PhD Momentum members said recently, “It’s like trying to plait fog”. I love the accuracy of that statement.
The first thing we need to establish is that you're not trying to produce beautiful academic prose on your first attempt. All the greatest writers from academia and beyond wrote first drafts that were, to be completely honest… shite. They needed to be. The whole point of a first draft is to get your thinking out of your head and onto the page so you can actually do something with it.
Okay? Ready?
Step 1: What are you actually trying to work out?
Don't scuttle away from the keyboard muttering, “Well, I’ll just go read a bit more first.” Stop that. That’s read-crastinating. Don’t worry about whether you've read “enough” literature yet - because “enough” for what? By this point, you’ve probably read enough to develop a coherent thought of your own, even if you might need to read more later. So come back to the page and complete one or two of these:
The thing I'm trying to understand is…
The problem I'm having with this section is…
I'm not quite sure why…
Something that doesn't quite make sense to me is…
The question going around in my head is…
That's it.
Step 2: What do you actually think?
Set a timer for five minutes and write. Like - BADLY. Stream-of-consciousness, unstructured, brain-vomit-type writing.
No editing, deleting sentences or disappearing down a Google Scholar rabbit hole because you suddenly think you need another 17 references.
Just write.
If you get stuck, try one of these sentence starters:
I think what might be happening here is…
One possible explanation is…
What seems important to me is…
I keep coming back to…
This might matter because…
I'm not completely sure about this, but…
If I had to explain this to someone else, I'd say…
The thing I can't quite get past is…
Remember: this isn't PhD writing for your examiner. It's writing for you.
Step 3: Interrogate the mess
Now read back what you've written.
But don't start rewriting it yet - resist that overwhelming urge to fiddle with it. You can do that later.
Instead, look for four things:
(1) “There's something here” - An idea, connection or explanation worth developing.
(2) “I need to think about this more” - Something you're uncertain about or haven't quite worked out yet.
(3) “I need evidence or literature here” - Something you now realise you need to investigate or support.
(4) “This probably doesn't matter” - Something that helped you think but doesn't need to go any further.
Then complete these sentences:
The strongest idea in what I've written is…
Something I need to investigate further is…
The literature I might need here is…
Something I can probably get rid of is…
Now, we’re getting somewhere. You’re starting to turn the big messy pile into something you can actually work with.
Step 4: Find your point
Now for the important bit.
Complete this sentence:
What I'm really trying to say is…
Then this one:
This matters because…
Then finally, this one:
The reader needs to understand that…
Have a look at what you've written.
There's a reasonable chance you've just found the beginnings of the point you've been trying to make. HURRAH! 🎉
Step 5: Stop
Seriously. No fiddling, restructuring or general faffing around with it. What you've just done is writing for understanding. It isn't writing for submission. Not yet. That's the point
Some of the writing you produced might eventually make its way into your thesis. You’ll rewrite some bits of it. You’ll bin the rest.
That's fine.
It wasn't wasted PhD writing just because your examiner will never see it.
Its job was to help you think.
Do you feel better for that? I hope so.
Ready to turn that thinking into thesis writing?
Once you've worked out what you're trying to say, there's another job to do: turning those ideas into coherent writing that does what it needs to do in your thesis - and that you don't feel ashamed to send to another human.
That's something I cover in much more depth in my Discussion & Writing Up PhD Survival Guide.
It takes you through the practical business of writing up your PhD - including developing your discussion, working with your literature, making your contribution visible and bringing everything together into a coherent thesis.
Click here to take a look at the Discussion & Writing Up PhD Survival Guide.