26/11/2011 by lizit.

In September, I had a first, very rough draft of my thesis. One of the issues was the number of words in the drafts (approaching 100,000), which somewhat exceeded the permitted word limit of 80,000. My task was to try to edit and organise my material more concisely without losing the most relevant content. In an earlier post, “Getting excited about my thesis,” I described how I came to see the draft as a number of containers, or buckets, each with mixture of content.

The first thing I did was to think again about what the underlying argument of my thesis is. What is it I am actually addressing. Over the past three years, I have read and gathered a lot of information and learned a lot. Although much of it is interesting, by no means all of it is relevant to my thesis. In order to decide what is and is not relevant, I had to know what it is I am trying to say and what contributes to that argument.

Having sorted out what I am saying, I then looked at the material again and how I had structured the first draft. I had followed a fairly standard model of introduction, lit review, methodology, findings… but I realised that this might not be the best structure to support my methodology and argument. I was using three distinctly different approaches to the problem I was addressing, which meant I was looking at different bodies of theory and different methodologies. I decided to divide the thesis into three sections, which would enable me to address each approach separately, and draw connections between them.

During October, I focused on the first two sections, which were the best developed of the original drafts. By the end of October, I had my revised drafts (currently awaiting supervisor comments), but the original word count had swelled to 110k.

Radical measures were needed. I first focused on the essential content - the literature and methodology - and the word count increased a little more! I needed to do something more drastic. I printed out the remainder of the content, reminded myself again what the focus of my thesis is, and started working through the material with a blue pencil, putting lines through everything not directly relevant to my argument.  I still have a way to go, but over the past fortnight, I have reduced the word count by about 25k and I am beginning to see how I can bring ideas together which were previously hidden in the undergrowth. The material being removed is not uninteresting, in fact some is very interesting and may well form the basis of articles or conference papers, but it is not part of the argument I am making in my thesis and therefore has no place there - much the same as some garden weeds may look quite pretty in meadowland, but in a garden may hide or choke the plants that are meant to be there.

Hopefully, having cleared the weeds, I can begin to construct a more coherent argument, and lose more words in the process. Who knows, I might even reduce the word count enough to include the still missing discussion chapter.

No doubt careful editing can deal with small numbers of excess words, but dense undergrowth needs a chainsaw and flamethrower!

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03/11/2011 by lizit.

This morning I read a blogpost from Martin Eve labelled a dissenting voice on#AcBoMoWri. As I understand it, AcBoMoWri has been initiated as a response to #NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Whereas, Martin suggests that the aim of AcBoMoWri is to “bash out words to get as close as possible to writing a book”, I see it more as one of a number of recent initiatives to encourage academics to get writing. Others include pomodoras, #shutupandwrite, creative writing workshops and 750 words. Lying behind each of these initiatives seems to be a search for ways of breaking through procrastination and writing avoidance and getting our research findings down on paper and out into the public domain. Given that one of the reasons we engage in research is to share our findings and out thoughts, what are we to make of these initiatives?

Martin quite rightly raises concerns about the risks of churning out material without the necessary thinking and evaluation that makes our writing meaningful. The debate that has emerged on Twitter also recognises the very real problems of short-termism and the need to produce and be counted. A culture of short term grants and a requirement for outputs, can lead to a multitude of books and articles that say very little and which fail to consider the bigger picture. This is something we all need to be concerned about. Research, whatever the field, is about so much more than inputs and outputs.

At the same time, we can be resistant to put pen to paper. Discussions in #phdchat week after week reveal the anxieties of graduate researchers as we seek to find ways to express our ideas, always questioning whether we have any kind of conceptual or theoretical framework, whether what we are wanting to say has any real meaning, and, in any case, is what we want to say good enough, not only for sharing but to gain the accolade of a doctorate.

It seems to me that incentives to write are positive. Not all will resonate. I have not been able to see the point of 750 words and writing every day - some days, I have nothing to write, apart from a short note to myself about what to think about and read next, or a shopping list. On the other hand, shutupandwrite can work for me, as long as I plan what I will focus on in the writing session. There is something energising about writing when others are too - but then I get the same from knowing that colleagues in the #phdchat network are working alongside me, albeit each in our own space, at times when most sane people are engaged in leisure activities or doing stuff with the family.

So what of AcBoWriMo? My initial response was one of how crazy - why put pressure on myself to deliver a given product in a specific time? Then I looked at it again and realised it resonated with where I currently am with my own thesis writing. I know what I want to write and I know what the structure will look like. The chapters are sketched out, but the writing task needs to be done. I have been working to a fairly loose aim of completing the next draft by the end of term, but actually, with a bit of effort, there is no real reason why it shouldn’t be done by the end of this month, and if adopting the hashtag #AcBoMoWri will keep me focused and remind me I have a commitment not only to myself but to others, well and good. What I write will not be polished or fit for publication, or even submission as thesis, but will be the next step on that journey.

For me AcBoWriMo has come at an opportune time. At a different time, it would be no incentive or value whatsoever. It is not about writing a given number of words in a day, but writing what is already well-digested material and doing so in a timely manner.

But the concerns raised by Martin about the more general nature of academic writing remain.

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