I'm in my third year. been writing up for few months now. Its stressful but generally okay. Had a conversation with my supervisor a few hours ago. She told me that she will write up my papers. Authorship is not in dispute - apparently I'll be first author. She said that she has a lot invested in my work and wants to write the "story". I think this is very uncool. Now, I accept that she may write better then me, but its still my work - right. She said that most first authors are not the writers anyway, rather that the lab heads are the ones who write. This really annoys me because part of doing a PhD should be about learning how to write...right? Your thoughts ...

I agree, writing about your research is one of the most important skills you learn doing a PhD. I'd say it's fine if she wants to edit your work but she should at least let you have a go at it! I don't think she should write any of your chapters, stuff you submit for publication is more negotiable though.

She's dead wrong about team leaders writing the papers. In my experience, the grunt who did the work writes the papers and everyone else just adds their name. This is way too controlling.

Oh dear. What will you do.

sometimes I get writing blocks; thankfully they are not permanent, but when it happens I do wish that my supervisor was the one doing the writing!!!
But then again, I know its my research and I have to write it myself anyway...

good luck

Yep, had something not too dissimilar when my sup said he would write that one paper for me (which would go into the thesis as a chapter). I agree, this is uncool. At the time he said it I did not disagree with him openly as I figured that he might not do it/have the time in the end after all. But yes, I am not sure what to do if he is serious about it. It is kind of weird how he is otherwise "generous" and lets all his postdocs, phds be first author (no authorship disputes), but then wants to do this sort of thing. I completely empathise with you, you're not the only one in that position and yes, I find it uncool and it is not helpful in any way (with respect to learning how to write)...

thanks for the responses - They have actually been very helpful. I've spent most of my PhD working on my own (no other phd students in my building) so its difficult to know what is normal. I understand that this may not seem like a problem - that having your boss wriite your thesis is a pretty good thing really. I would've agrred untill a few weeks ago when i got a phone call from the press office. A paper that i am co-author on (but did not write - or contribute much to apart from a part of the grunt work) is currently in press. The very nice press lady asked me to comment on the summary she had written, which was to appear on the University webpage. I found that i could'nt do it and i felt very sad. I could not comment on the work as i had not written the paper and as a result had not thought deeply about the subject. I don't want to be in that situation with work that appears in my thesis.

I read your post and was completely shocked. My own supervisors would never offer to write sections of the thesis or a paper. I'm not sure if this is because I am in a humanities subject and this blurred authorship is a bit more common in the sciences...

But eitherway, I can see why you felt sad about your recent paper. You certainly don't want to be in that position in your viva. Also it could cause problems later in your career if your thesis is not entirely written I(and thus understood) by you.

Perhaps if you supervisor is insistent on having a lot of imput ask them to provide detailed comments, or break down parts they don't think you do so well. Then leave you to do the idea generation and writing?

I think it's a strange thing to offer to do for a student and rather dodgy considering it's supposed to be your own work. As you say, writing is all part of the learning process, so how on earth will you learn to be a competent researcher if someone writes your work up for you! Has she done this for any of her other students? What would other students or postgrad staff think if they knew what she was doing? It all seems a bit unethical to me. The most my sup has ever done is fiddle with odd sentences or words, but we have different writing styles so it would be obvious if I hadn't written parts of my own thesis.

There was a similar post on this topic a while ago, maybe some of the replies would be useful to you too...
http://www.postgraduateforum.com/threadViewer.aspx?TID=10762

I think you are forgetting one main point - what happens in the viva and the external asks "What did you mean when you said such and such?". It is your work you are defending and only you know how it is structured and then how to defend it. The procedure your supervisor is suggesting means you having to explain what you did and then her explaining back to you what she meant when she stated certain things in the final document - impossible and just waiting for a slip up to happen.
I thought everyone in an ideal PhD would submit work periodically, have constructive criticism given back with some understanding of the works relevance. Instead, it is the total opposite ... work dismissed on ten seconds reading and back tracking of previous advice.
Check out what the situation is with other PhD students in your group and if this is not the norm, make pro-active measures to improve the writing style. That may mean other people rather than your supervisor reading your work thoroughly.