Lara I'd go to that lecture if I were you. You can only write so much between now and Monday and one evening isn't going to make a vast amount of difference. No point in punishing yourself any more than necessary.

Thanks PC_Geek. I have vision problems and have struggled in the past to read PowerPoint presentations with too dark backgrounds or too many colours. Plain white background is definitely easiest for me.

Actually found the wrong bit of the website. http://www.esrc.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/Support/postgraduate_students/Studentship_Handbook/index.aspx?ComponentId=370&SourcePageId=1358 and section 9.5 is what is needed for doctoral students. Might be possible, but it depends on what they say. It's more flexible than my funding council who only allow suspensions on medical grounds. I had to arrange one myself and luckily fell under their more restricted rules.

I'm a part-time student and started writing early so I've ages to go. I have to submit by March 2010 per the university, and March 2011 per AHRC. Getting a year's extension from the university wouldn't be a problem given my health situation (seriously ill long-term). Still at about 50,000 words (must reach 80,000) but making good progress and aiming to finish my full draft barring conclusions by around Christmas this year, leaving time to do any more research needed and redrafting.

Good luck with your deadline.

Funding councils tend to only allow breaks for serious medical reasons or maternity breaks. And then they'll only sanction breaks for a limited period. For the ESRC rules see http://www.esrc.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/Support/research%5Faward%5Fholders/FAQs2/#i

And I've always used justified format for thesis chapters. Still have to sort out my margins but I'm yonks away from submitting and am focusing on building the content more for now.

My university specifies double-spacing for PhD theses in the official regulations, so I'm going with that for the versions sent to supervisors etc. While typing/editing though I prefer to use single-spacing myself: get a much better sense of a chapter's overall structure and balance, and the arguments running through.

Lots of pessimism indeed! Been married for 14 years me, hoping fot lots more to come. I changed my surname on marriage, though I didn't like my maiden name much either. And my husband has Doctor on his passport, from his PhD. I'll probably do that with mine too, assuming I get there!

If you're applying for funding then references to other prior research and a roadmap would help to convince the funding council that you know what you're doing, why it's important, and how you'll get there. But if you're part-time and self-funded and just have to apply to the university to get in then I wouldn't worry about that level of detail. I didn't have anything like that detail when I applied to start my part-time PhD. I applied for funding a year later (after self-funding for a year) and had to be much more precise in my revised proposal then.

You should briefly say what the key aims of your PhD are (what questions are you trying to tackle), how it relates to prior research (if you know already), what methods/sources you'll use (just say interviews and qualitative techniques if that's what you're doing), and possibly how you plan to present the results. Don't stress about it anyway. The proposal is just a brief outline/summary to tell them what you're planning to do and to get you in the door. It's possible to change your whole topic/approach afterwards if need be, with supervisor approval!

My husband completed his PhD a decade ago. I'm writing up mine now. We're doing just fine. Then again we both understand what the other one is doing! I was a PhD student before he was, but had to leave 12 years ago due to incurable serious illness. Now I'm on PhD #2, part-time. The only PhD tension we ever had was me finding it difficult to watch him complete after I'd had to leave mine. But we managed it, just fine.

I minute meetings with my supervisor afterwards as well and email him a copy of the resulting Word file. I also take brief notes during the meeting (have a rotten memory: won't remember key points otherwise) and so have those to use while writing up my minutes.

Structuring well is indeed harder for me, and that's what I focus on getting right most in my chapters. But if I have to submit a thesis between 80,000 words and 100,000 words in total then at some point I have to produce all those words. And since I write concisely that's not easy, and I'll be stretching rather than condensing.

Thesis length varies by subject/university. I'm humanities and have been told to aim for 80000-100000. Like missspacey I tend to write compactly so need to stretch to reach the minimum word limit. That's partly why started writing early: so I might have time to do a bit more research and plug gaps rather than end up waffling

Re daily totals I'm often happy with 250 good words to be honest, though I do have the luxury of time. 1000+ is even nicer, and what I'd easily manage if I'm on a roll. I once managed 7000+ in an all-nighter. But 250 good words that don't need drastic editing and my supervisor won't rip to shreds will often do for me, particularly when I'm working on the trickier sections. Re keeping going I find deadlines are the key, as I said above. Oh and working on two chapters simultaneously: lets me switch from one to the other as I get bored, fancy a bit of a break.