How many hours writing for the doctorate?

By Ian Brailsford, Postgraduate learning adviser, Libraries and Learning Services, University of Auckland.

The rose-tinted view of the leisurely doctorate taking as long as it needed to complete (if it ever really existed) has been consigned to history with global drivers for ‘timely completions’. But it’s fair to say that doctoral candidates have more flexibility in determining their work schedules than most other ‘knowledge workers’. So, in determining this schedule, how much time should doctoral candidates devote to the business of writing a thesis?

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The Perfect Coat: Form and Function in Thesis Writing

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Wring style, writing structure

By Dr Anaise Irvine (Auckland University of Technology) and Dr Ian Brailsford (University of Auckland)

Anaise works as a researcher development coordinator at Auckland University of Technology, ensuring that the university offers opportunities for researchers to develop their skills. She has been providing writing tips via AUT’s Thesislink blog for a few years, and gives writing feedback to all students who submit abstracts for AUT’s Postgraduate Symposium. Ian works as a postgraduate learning adviser at the University of Auckland, supporting postgraduate student learning. He has had a long career working with postgrad students in mostly workshop and orientation sessions.

In her new book Developing Research Writing: A Handbook for Supervisors and Advisors (co-edited with Susan Carter), Deborah Laurs points out that learning advisors like ourselves “see many more instances of postgraduate writing than any one supervisor” (p.43). While supervisors become well-versed in the writing standards of their discipline, we witness the writing struggles that occur across disciplines. This equips us to engage in ‘big picture’ thinking about principles of good academic writing that transcend disciplinary norms.

We find it useful to translate these big picture ideas into metaphors and heuristic techniques that enable students to process the discipline-specific advice they are already (hopefully) receiving from their supervisor/s. If supervisors are giving detailed feedback on thesis drafts, then these heuristic techniques can help students to make sense of details by understanding the general writing principles underpinning the feedback they receive.

Through recent collegial coffee conservations, we’ve devised a metaphor to help students grasp the fundamental notions of thesis form and thesis function. We offer it here, in the hope that it can be useful in our colleagues’ conversations with students.

Mental health, doctoral study and supervision: Can ‘troubles with writing’ mask other problems?

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Mental health and doctoral writing, mental health and supervision

By Claire Aitchison

Corridor conversations often reflect problems more widely felt. Recently a friend, just back from dealing with a particularly difficult student-supervisor issue, revealed how concerned she was about the mental health of both parties. She had been called in to help because the student reportedly was having ‘trouble with her writing’.

For those of us who regularly work in the space between supervisor and student, being called in to help is likely to expose us to a disproportionate number of ‘troubles’. Whether identified by supervisors, research committees or students, I have come to expect a relatively predictable range of ‘troubles with writing’. These ‘troubles’ can often be sheeted back to the following:

• unhelpful feedback (typically inconsistent, contradictory, incorrect, uninformative, inappropriately delivered);
• neglect (typically little or no feedback, no formative feedback, feedback too late to be developmental);
• student resistance to taking advice;
• writers’ block.

As a literacy adviser and/or academic developer across different institutions over many years, I have also learned that such ‘writing troubles’ often coexist with intensified emotional states. Writing is a deeply personal and emotional activity – and doctoral writing is particularly fraught because the stakes are so high. For supervisors and students alike, much is riding on the ability to explain one’s work eloquently and to argue convincingly for significance. The research has to be sound, but so does the medium for conveying this good work: the writing.

But I am interested here in the co-existence of ‘writing problems’ and mental health.

Writing groups, writing retreats, boot camps and other social writing events for doctoral writers – a call for posts

By Claire Aitchison

The editors of this blog have long been keen advocates for doctoral writers to come together to do, and share, their writing – whether that be in regular small writing groups, or in writing retreats, boot camps or the like. Over the years we’ve had numerous conversations about running and attending such groups and written here and elsewhere on the subject.

Not only have we frequently facilitated such groups, as academics and personally, we continue to be convinced of their benefits for getting writing done, for learning about writing and for developing valuable networks. In fact, Susan Carter and I first met back in 2011 when I was lucky enough to join her on her annual writing retreat. You can read about this wonderful week-long event that continues to be held in New Zealand biennially. In addition, Cally and I have written and presented about writing in groups.

Given our enthusiasm for these kinds of writing practices, it is curious that, to date, we have given them so little space in this blog. We’d like to make amends – and hence this post, which is also a call for blog proposals.

Decongesting writing through revision: The unwriting workshop

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writing skills development

By Susan Carter

Sometimes students have writing habits that make for bulky prose where the content to word ratio is low: too many words and not enough content. Often decongesting writing can be achieved through revision in peer review–in our posts, we often mention this. This post proposes the idea of a new group workshop for doctoral and academic writers: an ‘unwriting’ workshop where peer review focus is on trimming verbal excess. As someone who puts on writing workshops commonly, I like the idea of an unwriting workshop.

My own writing is always more stylish when I am forced to shed words. Usually I begin culling words due to journal limitations on length, and then later see how much stronger the writing is, and easier to read. (Sometimes my academic friends suggest some chops. This paragraph’s first sentence is better for the unwriting I have done, prompted by Claire. It was originally  I’m prompted to have an entire workshop focused on unwriting by the way that my own writing is always more stylish when I am forced to shed words. I like the trimed version much better.)

New Year’s resolutions and doctoral writing: best wishes!

Tags

writing habits, Writing motivation

By Claire Aitchison, Cally Guerin and Susan Carter

Turning from one year to the next brings out self-auditing tendencies, the New Year resolutions. We have written on this before: drawing on psychology to build self-control so that those resolutions are actualized (2016) ; suggesting a series of practical approaches that might help doctoral writers get more pleasure and productivity (2015) ; and considering ‘habits of mind, body, time, place and pace’ with a range of options used by famous authors (2014) . That was useful advice, and the posts are still there for any wanting new year re-energisation. This year, though, we thought we would each describe our own aspirations for 2017.

Claire

This year Susan has set us on a provocation to declare our New Year’s writing resolutions. It’s a delightful (although slightly scary) suggestion to make something public that is generally private.  As usual, during the Christmas break I took down my annual writing schedule from above my desk, and before throwing it out, reviewed what I had achieved. It’s a satisfying task to reflect on what has come in as anticipated and to ponder further on what was not achieved. The most exciting thing for me is the little buzz that I get from the writing that happened serendipitously, not even imagined at the beginning of the year.

Over the years I have become better at planning my writing for the year ahead. I’ve also learned that the most crucial variable is how much control I have in my life.  There have been some years when new demands have seriously limited my ability to progress my writing goals. As a consultant over the last few years I have had more control over my workload and thus have had greater success.

I often co-author with colleagues with whom I have established productive working relationships.  Some years January commences with a number of commitments already in train and other times the horizon is pretty clear. Conferences and colleagues are always built into my planning – for me, both are powerful motivators.

But, what of my plans for 2017?  This year my job has changed and I am beginning to see how I can bring the learning from that into my work around doctoral writing. I enjoy new challenges and particularly enjoy working with colleagues who push my thinking. I always learn so much from working with others, whether it’s a simple trick with Word, or a new perspective; I find it invigorating. In addition I find stimulation from my work – many workshops have ended up being posts and then extended further into papers.

I also like to extend myself with a new theory  or a topic.  For example, I may be intrigued with a thought that returns and shapes up over months (or years!). Sometimes the theory comes first and sometimes it is the problem or issue that surfaces and troubles my thinking. The beginning of a year is a good time to do a stock-take to see if I can nail this down into something publishable.

So, what does this add up to? I’m devising my own year as a foray into new areas of interest.I will also continue to write with old friends and colleagues. Reflecting on my process for this post lets me see what might be of use to doctoral students; namely:

• Make a schedule: to keep you anchored when things are madly busy and for a self-auditing.
• Use the aspects of writing you know inspire you as motivation—acknowledge them and factor them in.
• Accept that some writing obstacles are outside of your control.
• Identify and acknowledge the learning you do as a writer.

 

 

Cally

Last year I tried to finish off a few writing projects that had been hanging around for some time. I wanted to get them off my desk to clear space for new thinking in 2017. So now I’m allowing myself to start work on some new projects.

As a first step, I’m preparing a couple of ethics applications. I hear from others about their frustrations at being forced to fill in the forms, and what they experience as delays when they have to amend applications to meet the requirements of their ethics committee. But in my field I don’t have the complications of human drug trials and medical interventions, working with children, with indigenous communities, nor negotiating the sensitivities of vulnerable groups. My work is regarded as ‘low risk’ in that I just want to talk to people about topics that are not particularly contentious or disturbing. This means that it’s usually fairly straight forward and at my university these applications can be approved by the core committee – I don’t need to meet particular deadlines posed by the less frequent meetings of the full committee. On the whole, I find ethics applications provide a very useful process that makes me think carefully about method and project design, why I want to do what I do, and how it can be useful to others. Obviously, I want my research to be ethical, and paying proper attention to this at the very beginning is appropriate and leads to better outcomes – in my experience, at least.

I’ve also been thinking about more creative, alternative research methods, and want to take the opportunity with new projects to try and push this a little further. One book that has inspired me is Helen Kara’s (2015) Creative Research Methods in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide (Bristol: Policy Press). She talks about shadowing, mapping, and transformative data gathering, all of which I find interesting. Others are doing fascinating work using big data and social media in their education research. I certainly don’t feel very confident about how to do anything like this, so it’s bound to be a steep learning curve! It feels promising to start the New Year with some new writing challenges – I’m keen to get on with it.

Susan

I’ve been in the habit with my academic writing of simply listing what I want to complete in the new year. There is something confirming about reviewing the year that has gone and looking forward to the one ahead. Primary questions are

• When I reach the end of this new year, what writing will I be most satisfied to have completed?
• What must I do?
• What really interests me?
• How theoretical am I willing to be? Am I willing to go further into theory this year?

Doctoral students usually find ‘what must I do’ the most important of these, and rightly so, but it is worth taking the annual cusp opportunity to face up to other relevant questions about direction.

It’s quite a personal consideration because it includes the persona in style and voice as well as the topic focus. I sit with an overview in mind and list goals for the year, usually on paper. I think about the pattern of the year, that is, when I might want to take a break; when teaching might be heavy; when there are deadlines that I already know I will need to meet. As the year feeds through, I follow this up with monthly goal-listing and weekly goal-listing. Somehow sitting and writing this down usually anchors my writing flow throughout the year. The trick is to take your own deadlines seriously.

This year, though, I am thinking differently. I want to focus on increasing the pleasure that I find in academic writing. So I intend to consciously treat both my writing and my academic work as a game. I am convinced by Jane McGonigal (2010): when we’re in game worlds I believe that many of us become the best version of ourselves, the most likely to help at a moment’s notice, the most likely to stick with a problem as long as it takes, to get up after failure and try again. And in real life, when we face failure, when we confront obstacles, we often don’t feel that way. We feel overcome, we feel overwhelmed, we feel anxious, maybe depressed, frustrated or cynical. We never have those feelings when we’re playing games; they just don’t exist in games.

I want to put behind me the irritation that I feel when writing doesn’t go well, or the dread I feel towards the drudgery of revision for consistency. I want to find pleasure in what I do, and courage to change my own patterns if I feel that they trap me in the same rut. For me this year, my ambitions are less with productivity and more with attitude.

McGonigal, J. (2010). Gaming can make a better world. TED, Feb, 2010. Available at http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world/transcript?language=en#t-161000