Well I've hit (the dreaded) year three - finally finished data collection and now have to tackle a full on year of transcribing, data analysis and writing to get me to the finishing line. A long shot for Sept 2013, but I'm optimistic at the moment :p

Anyone else aiming for Sept 2013 finish?

yeah, i'm targeting to finish around that time too iA :)

ready, set.. GO!

I'm a month into my 3rd year and funding runs out at the end of September 2013 so I'm going to try my hardest to get finished on time. Still got some experiments to run but already have one chapter almost complete so I suppose that's a good start.

We can do it! :-)

Yeah, I'm aiming for somewhere similar, fingers crossed!

We can do it!

The plan:

Write 500 words per day
finish analysis by Christmas (at least descriptive statistics)

My plan is similar - finish the bulk of my analysis by the end of the year and then a daily 500+ word target :-)
An exercise in self-discipline!
We can do it (up)

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I'm doing something similar. Am aiming for 'summer' 2013, so June at best, September at worst. I am also trying for 500+ words per day, but not sure whether I'm making that or not because some days I do well over 1000 words but most times I edit or do other stuff like picking up bits of research and don't really add to the word count per-se.

I have about 32,000 words complete at submission standard and about a further 14,000 words in first draft. My thesis is going to be about 80,000 words long when finished, so that means I need to write about 40-50,000 further words.

I'm curious to know how much other people have to write, where people are up to.

I'm aiming for next September too. It's going to be a really hard year but I'm desperate not to go past my funding! I'm humanities so need to sort of write and research at the same time, I'm aiming to have rough drafts of everything by the end of May, and then spend three crazy months over the summer trying to weave it into a coherent thesis. It should end up having seven chapters of 10-15k each, Eska this is where I'm at at the moment:
Chapter one: drafted. Chapter two: nearly done, should have a complete draft by next week. Chapters 3+4 halfway there, draft by the new year. Chapters 5+6 work on Jan-April, Conclusion chapter in May.
Hmm, somehow writing that out for all to see makes me skeptical and more nervous about the task ahead. I'm staying optimistic for now though! Good luck all (up)

I know, sometimes I feel as if writing that many words in that amount of time to PhD quality is not possible and when I think about it my head blows off... But it must be possible because others have done it.

I find the hardest thing is the amount of formulating I'm doing. For example I've been working on a 6k chapter for the last few weeks and the process has taken the framing of my thesis to another level - that's great but it's much more time consuming than just writing 6k words... The next chapter I'll be doing - which I hope to have finished by Crimbo or thereabouts will be similar. I also find that sometimes I need a day or so inbetween bouts of writing and editing for my ideas to formulate.

This is a good thread. Just what I need at the moment.

Fingers crossed I'm hoping to finish for then too - Just finished fieldwork so starting on analysis now and hoping to have that finished by March (I have so much data!). Have written about 20000 words so far and am aiming for 80000 - it's the writing that gets me - I've hardly done any during fieldwork and probably won't do much 'proper' chapter writing during analysis, so that's what I'm most worried about.

Me! Me! Although I haven't actually finished data collection yet as my supervisor decided that my sample size is too small - have to finish data collection by the end of this month...

Hiya, I hope to have my first draft completed during that time too. My funding more or less runs out around that time, so whether I like it or not, I really need to complete my thesis !

I am aiming for something around 80K words and currently have 40K now. Here's hoping we'll all get there !
(up)

I'm definitely finding that framing is the hardest bit (not that the other stuff is easy)! Trying to figure out how to structure such a mass of information... I'm developing a massive hatred of 'linearity', and feel like I can't possibly explain something properly/ convince my imaginary reader of something in one chapter, without their having imaginarily read all the later chapters too! It feels like a great challenge at the moment, and I'm sure that once (/ if) I do figure out the right structure it will be very satisfying, but it's just so frustrating and slow at the moment!

Sorry, just needed to vent there :p Hope everyone else is doing well :-)

Guys!

It's been almost a month? How have you progressed?

I had some parts of my methodology written, and I started editing them and putting them in context. However, soon after that I had to finish a conference paper, and then do some improvements in 2 reports I submitted last academic year, so after almost a month I had made so little progress!

I am getting so stressed because of all the things I have to juggle together with writing up! Do you guys have distractions too? I get furious when a day passes and I have not progresssed on the PhD. I am so much looking forward to Christmas, so I can have some quiet writing up time ....

I can definitely agree with you Dr Jeckyll!! Over the last month I have finally finished transcribing (yay, but it took longer than I originally thought), I'm now in the midst of analysis and am writing odd bits in the evenings for my methodology chapter.
It's frustrating as every time I want to get on with something, something else gets in the way. My children have been ill - all at different times so I've not had time alone to crack on as I usually would - I'm so easily distracted if they are about, which is nice but frustrating on the PhD front. I had to amend a paper extensively after some negative, but constructive reviewer comments. I also madly took on some more shifts at work (why?????).

Luckily these are (hopefully) behind me now so I aim to forge on through December with my qualitative analysis and write in the evenings (I down tools at 4pm when the children get home so like to do a bit in the evenings, however small) and then write more productively in January.

Slow and steady (I tell myself)