I am about halfway through a chapter to be submitted in saturday afternoon. It is a short chapter of around 8-10,000 words, which is short, but it feels really important to me that the content is treated seperately. I'm really stuck on it at the mo' and I am not sure what state I will be in with needing to get 3,000 words done by saturday afternoon.

I' more concerned about the chapter length to be honest. Would other forum members consider 8-10,000 words to be too short for a chapter. The lack of scholarship on this particular area means that I am milking scarce primary sources and a thin secondary literature.

8-10000 words is the norm for 1 chapter. If it is a fairly unexplored area, I think 5000 words would suffice, provided you stress that there is very little written on this area and perhaps suggest reasons for it.
Good luck

Hiya Chris, this is what Patrick Dunleavy writes in Authoring a PhD...

"Of course theses vary a great deal in how far they can be structured into similarly sized chunks. So these targets and limitations are only indicative...It is a good idea to be sceptical about writing chapters that are much longer or shorter than 10,000 words. This central target length can be pushed up or down by 2000 words either way without doing any great harm. But chapter lengths should not go lower than about 8000 words or higher than about 12000 words, except for the most pressing and exceptional reasons".

Hope that helps a bit.

My (very experienced) sup has said to me that writing more than 8000 would likely mean I am waffling ;). I expect the analysis and discussion chaps to be a bit more more than that but generally am looking at 8000 for most of my chapters.

Thanks for your comments. I'll knuckle down to typing.

Wish me luck.

*luck*!!