Hi

I had planned to start writing 2 weeks ago but I haven't started yet and don't see myself starting soon. I'm not sure where to start as I just have a sleazy short literature review from my first year and some scattered experiments with different results after two years. The paper I was supposed to submit for a journal isn't ready yet due to lack of novelty and the biggest problem is that I've stopped reading and doing experiments for some time and now it looks too difficult to figure out where to start with. I know that I want to finish my PhD in September 2011 as my funding will finish by then, I just need a good plan and guidance to know what to do or where to start. My supervisors are useless in this as they don't have the technical knowledge for my project :(.

Any suggestion is more than welcome.

Sheryl

Hi Sheryl,
(ive only done a masters thesis at present-so respectively you are more than welcome to ignore advice if it doesn't fit-but my thesis did follow all the usual steps for most theses and dissertations even though shorter-it might be helpful).

What about your introduction and literature review? Are they written in draft form yet? I know the intro can/will be changed the more you progress through the other chapters to really reflect your findings and what you've done-but even working on a polished draft form of this can really sharpen your focus as to what your thesis is all about. Particularly if you work on the background to the problem and the statement of the problem parts of the intro.

The literature review also will be honed and changed, but working on it will remind you of all the material behind your thinking (hypothesis). Finally, what were/are your methods? It sounds like you have finished with your research tools (???-not sure from post?), so writing up the methodology behind what you originally proposed and what you have done might assist to getting some of that writing down.

Hope this helps but as stated above, just ignore if it really doesn't apply to your circumstances-I'm sure you will get some other really helpful posts.
Cheers:-)

I'd recommend working out what will go in your remaining chapters, i.e. the overall chapter-by-chapter structure of your thesis. Then work out which of those chapters are easiest to get on with, and start breaking that chapter down into sub-sections. Then pick which is the most appealing (or least unappealing!) sub-section, and start writing that. You don't have to start writing at the beginning of a chapter, or with your first chapter.

The important thing is to get words down. You will need to redraft later, and restructure and reorganise. But once you have words down you have something to work with. That should also apply to your existing literature review. It may be short, but it's something you can develop.

I had a really tough time finding my writing voice when writing up my PhD thesis. I had to nearly restart my writing from scratch at one point. But I got there in the end, mainly by breaking things down into small achievable tasks, and getting on with them in the order of easiest first.

Good luck!