I am just beginning to write up my PhD (Humanities based). I was wondering if anyone had any advice before I get going with it all? I am already procrastinating (as you can see) and finding it hard to get going!

Also how long people generally took to write up their results chapters and how many drafts of analysis chapters did you generally do?

Thanks all! :)

The biggest thing I found to help me was to draft out and outline of the chapter headings ie like a contents page.  Once each chapter title was done, I progressed to subheadings and then put notes in for each area of what to include. I got my rough outline of the thesis structure agreed by my supervisor aswell. This gave me a little control of what needed to be written and roughly where it was going to fit in with the larger picture of the overall thesis.  It was then a case of writing the smaller subsections within a chapter which ultimately gave me a draft chapter for my thesis. Once all the chapters are written you will have a draft thesis.  The order of which chapter to write first is up to you, although I did write mine in chronological order. You could pick the one that interests you the most to start with.  The outline of the thesis structure will also help you to define your lit review section more.

For mine, the results chapters took the longest as I was re-checking the stats and figures as I went along. I did have all data files already constructed, analysed with graphical presentation. On a part-time basis it probably took me 2-3 months for four results chapters, although the methodology and structure was similar so really the first one took the longest. I had each chapter sent to my sups for comments once it was in draft so that when the whole draft thesis was sent to them, there were no major issues. So I had the first draft of each chapter, the comments were addressed and went out as the first draft thesis, then another set of comments necessitated the second draft thesis which pretty much became the final submitted copy.

Someone on the forum a while ago recommended Bryan Garner's 'Legal Writing in Plain English' - I have only read part of it but it was invaluable in helping me write a couple of chapters I had to write for my upgrade. Like you I am about to start writing - also in the humanities - and so perhaps I will re-read those parts of it I have looked at so far!

Good luck