ONE WAY TO WRITE YOUR DISSERTATION: A day at a time

This article is designed to help dissertation writers who are early in the writing process and have time to be flexible. If you have kicked the can down the road and time is short, parts of this guide will still be helpful but you may be more interested in dissertation writing services than another guide.

Be mathematical.

This might seem overly fussy, but it works. If you are required to write a 10,000- or 30,000-word dissertation, it can be difficult to think about anything other than that enormous word count. If you are a multi-tasking worrier then you can skillfully alternate between worrying about the size of the paper and the date it is due.

Sorting it out mathematically can take you from the unending drama of “I have to write to write 100 pages in 3 months!” to realizing that you only need to write 300 word each day.

Now, of course, you know that you will need to do research and take notes. If you are a worrier, you are now thinking “But I will not start writing for weeks, maybe months!” This is where we point out that you are actively looking for ways to be upset. It is time to put that habit aside for your own sake.

As you do your research and take notes, whether you take notes on paper or in a computer, you can still start putting down 300 words a day. One mistake people make on large projects is doing all of their research before starting to write. This is a mistake because you lose so many details between your original reading/ note taking and writing.

When to write

You have probably experienced doing research and having a moment where you cannot stand to do any more reading or note taking. That is the time when you take a break and do some writing! When you feel you have had enough, get a glass of water and a snack, then take those notes to your computer.

Write out your notes, including citations^*. Develop them into sentences and paragraphs in the appropriate sections. Yes, you may need to move them later, but no one writes their first dissertation without moving paragraphs around.

*Never leave citations or references for later

That you got all the way to your dissertation with this terrible habit and your sanity intact is a real feat. Stop now. Remember the frustration of putting references into a 12-page research paper a couple hours after you wrote it? Now imagine trying to fix those references in a 40-page paper, two or three months from now. Not a good time.

Oh, and do the bibliography as you go, too. Any professional dissertation writer can tell you that two of the biggest time and sanity savers are 1) writing as you research and 2) full citations and references as you write. Why would you save writing the reference entry for a book you are reading right now for another day, week, or month?

If you are thinking, “Because I am so stressed right now!” remember that there is no way you will be less stressed when the dissertation is due in two days and you have returned the book to the library and someone else has it. Yes, you are under stress, but do not make the mistaking of using that stress to make things even worse for yourself later!

Imagine how good you will feel when you have put down three or four hundred words that do not already need more work:

How to prioritize

When writing your dissertation, there is always going to be something to do later. You will find better, more up to date research; you will realize that paragraphs need to be rearranged. Those are not evidence that you have done anything wrong. They are also not things that you can plan to avoid. If you want to do those things perfectly from the start, you are going to be miserable. Let them go now.

When you are trying to decide whether a thing should be done now or later, the first question to ask is whether it can be done now. Including full citations and putting an entry into your bibliography can be done now, and so they should be done now. Conversely, you cannot know what you have not yet read, so it is reasonable to expect those elements of a paper to change.

Another thing that cannot always wait is editorializing. Sometimes, something you read gives you a wealth of ideas that you want to write down. We recommend using a different colored font. Do not use a different font face or size. Also, do not put these in a separate file. Use the same font color for all editorializing. This will be easy to see, but also easy to fix.

Why? 1) Your editorial comments will be the thing most likely to change upon further reading. 2) You do not want to wait to write them down, because they are also easy to forget. 3) Having them in their own color can help you iterate through the text and look for contradictions or alignments. 4) Even if you keep all of your editorializing, you may need to move it to your discussion section later in the process.

Do not organize yourself into oblivion

You will notice that we discourage adding layer upon layer of organization. When you are first getting into a big project, parsing it into smaller pieces can feel like taking control. Unfortunately with big projects, you can find that rather than having four larger things to think about, you have made 4,000 tiny things that you need oversee.

Different files for every section, a file for writing and a file for notes on that section, another file for your bibliography, and reams of handwritten notes and color-coordinated post-its is a recipe for disaster for the average student. Instead, consider a simple goal of one or two pages a day; make them as good as you can and do not worry about perfection.