Did you reach your writing goals over Thanksgiving (which, here in the States, we just celebrated)?

Going into the week-end, did you declare, “I’m going to fight to make the most of the time.”

If, by hook or crook, you made the time your own and reached your writing goals, hurray for you!  You deserve back pats and arms-in-the-air cheers. 

On the other hand, if you’re feeling scattered, with your mind racing to the future or dwelling on the past, it’s time to slow down and look at what’s happened to your priorities. For those of you who had goals that you didn’t realize, it’s time to try a new approach, or at least an approach that you haven’t used for a while.

If producing text is a priority, then you’ve come to the right place. I have a plan!  The plan is in the next issue of my newsletter, “Smart Tips.” The new issue goes out this week, and if you aren’t on the mailing list, you’ll miss out on my new plan. I’d hate for that to happen! 

If you are waiting to feel ready to write, you could wait a long while.  How about trying something different?

Would you please rush to my website, www.nancywhichard.com, and sign up today for my newsletter?  Thank you. 

Here’s to a more productive you!

Nancy

Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation and Academic Career Coach
nancy@nancywhichard.com
www.nancywhichard.com
.
Copyright 2008 by Nancy Whichard and NWCoaching.
All Rights Reserved. This blog may not be reproduced in
whole or in part in any form without attribution to Nancy Whichard, PhD, PCC.

Are you the person in the cartoon who in setting a date for a committee meeting says, “How about never?  Would that work for you?”  Is that the attitude you have toward your dissertation?

When you have a big project—whether it’s writing a dissertation or a book or planning a big event—do you throw all of your energy and time into resisting the work? 

You resist by putting the hard, anxiety-producing work second and putting the most ordinary task first, and letting it drag on.  Or you may do something that does not need to be done right away, such as editing an announcement or a committee report or writing a letter of recommendation.

When you’ve finished that straightforward, undemanding but time-consuming task, you then think that you should celebrate because you finished something.  And of course after you celebrate, you don’t feel like diving right back into another project, the hard job, the work that you’ve been avoiding.

You’re never going to make headway on the important work by putting it second or by saying to yourself “How about never?” 

You’ll never make progress until you surrender to it. 

Just give yourself over to it—no holding back.  If you don’t let your big project take precedence, it will never get done.

And never means never.  Will that work for you?

Procrastination is the topic in my upcoming e-newsletter “Smart Tips.” I’m also offering a special bonus that you could use.  Go to www.nancywhichard.com to register. 

All good wishes,

Nancy

Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation and Academic Career Coach
nancy@nancywhichard.com
www.nancywhichard.com
Copyright 2008 by Nancy Whichard and NWCoaching
All Rights Reserved. This blog may not be reproduced in
whole or in part in any form without attribution to Nancy Whichard, PhD, PCC.

An ABD student wrote to me about her advisor’s generous rewriting of the dissertation text.  According to the student, the advisor doesn’t change the thought, only the language.  

The ABD student recognizes that the advisor’s writing is superior to her own, Her question is if the advisor has rewritten a lot of the language of the dissertation, is the ABD student’s dissertation still her own? And is this a common happenstance?
 
I agree that this advisor is amazingly generous and that the student is incredibly lucky to have such a responsive advisor.  I’ve had many clients who complain that their advisors mark up their drafts with little more than where to put commas.

The two or so clients whose advisors did some rewriting were glad to have the rewritten text.  In fact, when, down the road, one of those clients started to feel lost, I suggested that he go back and read what his advisor had written.  There was much to be learned in the advisor’s writing.  Not the least of which was the confidence in the student and the interest in the student’s topic that the rewriting suggested.

As might be expected, my clients also weren’t sure if they could use the text written by the advisors as their own, and so one of them bravely asked.  The advisor said yes. (I think the advisor assumed his language would be adopted.) If this is your problem, please ask the advisor if you can use the language as written.
 
If your advisor replaces your language with hers, I can see that you might feel your revision process is truncated.  It might even raise questions in your mind about how you can learn to write if your process is limited in this way. As for how you can best learn to write academic discourse, you can learn by writing and rewriting and rewriting again—at the request of your advisor—but the down side might be that you would feel anxious and uncertain in trying to interpret what the advisor actually wanted you to do. 

Another way to improve your skill as an academic writer would be to follow the model offered to you by your advisor.  Analyze her discourse—her use of words, her sentence structure, the argument.  Put your text side by side with hers and look for the specific differences.

The dissertation is more about learning than it is about producing a completely original work or an amazing contribution to your field. 

Some of my clients have procrastinated submitting early drafts to the advisor because they know they can’t write as well as the advisor.  Well, duh! Advisors are tenured, published, and have been through this writing and rewriting and editing process umpteen times.  Their use of language shows what they’ve learned. 

If you would rather your advisor give you more open-ended questions, such as “What do you mean here?” you can always ask for that kind of response.  If you have a good relationship, she will most likely give you what you ask for.  It will take a lot of courage to say that you’d prefer to use your own language, but if it’s important to you, speak up.

I would be curious why an advisor might be so generous as to rewrite part of the student’s text.  It would be interesting to have a discussion with the advisor about her style of responding to writing.  I’ll bet she’s trying to give you something that no one ever gave her — specific examples on how a certain sentence/idea/paragraph could be better stated.

Readers, if you have a thought you’d like to share on this topic, I’d be delighted to hear from you. 

In addition, if you are one of those people who procrastinate on sending a draft to your advisor because the draft isn’t perfect, I’d like to hear about that, too.  Procrastination is the #1 problem among dissertation writers.
 
Last month, in my e-newsletter “Smart Tips” I wrote on “Has Procrastination Got a Hold on You?”

In the coming issue of “Smart Tips” I follow up with “What’s It Going to Take to Become a Recovering Procrastinator?”

If you haven’t registered for the newsletter, please go to my website at www.nancywhichard.com and sign up. I’m sending the new issue of “Smart Tips” out within a few days.

All good wishes,

Nancy

Nancy Whichard, PhD, PCC
Your International Dissertation and Academic Career Coach
nancy@nancywhichard.com
www.nancywhichard.com

P.S. The next issue of my e-newsletter “Smart Tips” will not only feature an article on procrastination, but will also offer you a new bonus that you won’t want to miss.  Sign up at www.nancywhichard.com.

 
Copyright 2008 by Nancy Whichard and NWCoaching.
All Rights Reserved. This blog may not be reproduced in
whole or in part in any form without attribution to Nancy Whichard, PhD, PCC

Have you heard the sarcastic references to Obama’s having written two books?  Of course, it’s politics to make a negative out of what would ordinarily be a good thing, but I’m wondering if the people making the jabs believe that large numbers of voters denigrate writers and writing.  I don’t know what large numbers of voters think, but we don’t have long to wait.

As for me, I know that writing is hard work and that a person can learn a great deal about his or her own character as well as his or her ideas by writing. 

As a writer, Obama modeled a strategy to all would-be writers. He was photographed writing his acceptance speech in a yellow legal pad in a hotel room.
 
Where do you go when you absolutely have to write – whether it’s the acceptance speech to be a presidential nominee or to move through a hard patch of your dissertation? 

Do you tolerate distractions?

If you really want to get some writing done, it’s worth the effort to get away from the distractions of home or office— away from the distracting comfort of friends and family and  refrigerator.

Where do you go?  The local coffee shop?  The library?  Both are good choices, but if you take your computer along, you’re probably taking a major distraction right along with you.  Carrying access to email with you may be setting yourself up for a less than productive session.

Here’s an idea — leave all electronic devices behind and just take a notebook and a pen. Give yourself the opportunity to write what you know with no possibility of skipping out to check on email. 

Why stare at a screen?

Legal pads are perfect if you’re trying to produce a quantity of text in one sitting. If you want to have movable draft, buy a notebook. Writing in a notebook is almost a lost art, and it can be fun.  Invest in a new notebook in a color you especially like.  Put a sticker or two on the front, just the way you did in junior high.  Make a date with yourself and re-discover how much pleasure you can have in writing what you know, with no books to quote from, no articles to check and check again, and no tempting email at your fingertips. 

You will remove the pressure of the blank screen staring back at you, and you will give yourself the opportunity to ease into what can be a productive writing session.

What about you?  What have you found to be a reliable way to resist distractions and to produce a quantity of text?

I’d love to hear from you.

Here’s to producing text,

Nancy
Your Dissertation and Academic Career Coach
nancy@nancywhichard.com
www.nancywhichard.com

P.S. The new issue of my e-newsletter Smart Tips will feature an article on procrastination.  Sign up at my website — www.nancywhichard.com.

Even though you may have a stated intention of working on your dissertation and making steady progress, you do everything and anything to sabotage yourself.  Could this be you?

If  this sounds familiar, read on.

A dissertation client is having great trouble moving forward.  Every week when we talk, there’s been another obstacle which has kept her from meeting the weekly goal. 

What gets in her way is that she discounts all of the success she’s had that got her to where she is now.  From what she has told me, I know that for ten years she has been moving ahead in her academic life, but she routinely discounts any academic accomplishment or even the stamina that it’s taken for her to keep on this difficult path. 

She’s doing all-or-nothing thinking. 

Because she doesn’t have her PhD, none of the work along the way matters.  She made it through her qualifying papers, made it through 3 or 4 years of courses, got her master’s, and all the time has continued to work in a demanding job.

But none of it matters. 

She understands intellectually how a person can dismiss past success, but she thinks she doesn’t dismiss it because she intellectually understands how a person could do this.  But she does it. 

She continues to distort her experience.

Without acknowledging how hard she’s worked and how that work has brought success, she makes it incredibly difficult to make steady progress toward her PhD.

Giving yourself credit for each success, no matter how small, helps you gain momentum and ultimately move into flow.  If you distort your experience, you very likely will make procrastination the usual approach to your daily work. With procrastination your first response, you waste time and energy. 

Your work is hard enough without handicapping yourself. 

How about making a list of your successes?  Want to share them?  I’d love to hear what you conveniently forget about yourself.

To your best!

Nancy
Your International Dissertation and Academic Career Coach
nancy@nancywhichard.com
www.nancywhichard.com

P.S. Read more about procrastination in my newsletter Smart Tips. Go to www.nancywhichard.com to sign up.

A dissertation client told me that that a couple of years ago her professor suggested they plan to publish together. But the graduate student could never get herself to devote even a day to work on this project.  She kept putting it off.  Now she feels like it will never happen. And why would the graduate student not take advantage of this offer?  She said that she was afraid that her writing couldn’t measure up to her professor’s view of her work.

What could possibly stop people from doing work that potentially could rocket them forward in their careers or personal lives?

Many of my dissertation clients have told me that when they were younger they breezed along, always getting good grades, being the whiz kids they knew they were, but then they’ve come up against the dissertation or even a great, but challenging opportunity.  Fearing failure or fearing to show that they might be less than perfect, they  putter along, doing a little work but never really getting down to it, never finishing, and never taking a risk.  

If you don’t want to let a big opportunity slip away, you might ask yourself how important is it to protect your dignity?  How important is it for you never to risk failure? 

If this is you, it’s time to get clear on what you’re missing out on and what you’re delaying in your life because of excuses and fear.

If you’ve used procrastination as a shield, how were you able to break loose?  I’d love to hear from you.

Here’s to finishing and moving on!

Nancy
Your Dissertation and Academic Career Coach
nancy@nancywhichard.com
www.nancywhichard.com

P.S.  My newsletter Smart Tips is ready to go out. To sign up, go to my website — www.nancywhichard.com.  This issue is on procrastination.

Procrastinating on finishing your dissertation’s conclusion?  If so, you have company.  Writing the conclusion can be a time when many people clutch.

Needing Feedback?

One reason why many dissertation writers start to slow down when they’re at this point is that they aren’t getting feedback from their advisor or mentor.  If you don’t have a sense that you’re basically on the right track, stopping dead in your tracks may seem the prudent thing to do.

It’s easy to use lack of feedback as an excuse for not returning to your dissertation.  And if added responsibilities that many academics and writers have to assume in September are triggering a case of the nerves, letting the diss slip may seem the only way out.
 
But hold on — don’t be too quick to shelve your dissertation, even for a few days.  If you’re procrastinating on writing the conclusion, there may be a bigger truth that you need to face up to.

Facing up to a Bigger Truth

Writing a dissertation always involves risks of one kind or another, but what can rattle some writers during the conclusion is a greater sense of audience. Many writers say that the conclusion is dangerous territory. 

Are your advisor and committee members researching and publishing in the very same area as you? If so, that usually is a plus, but when you’re writing the conclusion, it can make things a bit sticky.

Finger-pointing at Current Researchers

Some writers are at an impasse because they want to point out that past (or current) researchers have stopped short or have missed opportunities to advance the field.  Is there a diplomatic way to say that?

Giving Credit

To address past research and to finish the conclusion to your dissertation, consider these suggestions, some of which came from ABD’s and their advisors:

1. State very clearly what you set out to do, how you accomplished that goal, and why your accomplishment is important. 
2. Be sure that you carefully outline the issue before you launch any kind of critique.
3.  Pinpoint where the thinking and thought leaders are going to move next and why.
4. Don’t be dismissive.
5.  Be critical, but be gracious.
6.  Give credit where it’s due.

The dissertation, no matter how polished, is a draft for whatever comes next for you.  Later when you write your book and articles, you will have additional opportunities to critique current research and critical thought in your field.

It is always wise to tread carefully and thoughtfully if you sense a minefield.
 
I’d love to hear your tips for pushing through to the end.  Please drop me an email.

For now, here’s to ending procrastination and ending the dissertation—

Nancy

Nancy Whichard, PhD, PCC
Your International Dissertation Coach
www.nancywhichard.com
nancy@nancywhichard.com

P.S.  Have you been putting off finishing your dissertation? Or maybe you’re procrastinating on starting the dissertation?  All procrastinators—please make a note:  The next issue of my newsletter, Smart Tips for Writers, will feature “How to Become a Recovering Procrastinator.”  Don’t delay. Go to www.nancywhichard.com to sign up.

You maximized your time this summer, and you’ve moved your dissertation along.  But it’s September 2?  How did that happen?

If you’re teaching this fall, you have been doing a number of admin things. You’ve over-prepared for the first few classes and have a great syllabus in place. You know your lines.

But to move into your fall teaching or work responsibility, you have had to ignore the dissertation chapter that you had meant to wrap up in August. 
 
Not only did you not finish that chapter—and I’m betting it’s the conclusion that you left hanging—you may have slowed down because finishing the conclusion means that everyone on your committee will read your text.  Perhaps you might be dragging your feet in order to ward off all imagined criticism.
 
At this point, you know that you’re procrastinating.  You know that you will eventually move back into that chapter.  To make that move sooner rather than later, here are three ways to help you get started:

1.  Look at the conclusions of a couple of dissertations.
Are they relatively short?  How many pages? Estimate how long will yours be.  Choose one dissertation and outline it— how does the writer move into the chapter?  What are the parts or subheads of the  chapter?  How complicated does it seem?  How much development and depth does it have? 
 
Can’t you say without a doubt that you could do as well?

2.  Without rehashing your argument and evidence and in no more than 2 paragraphs, summarize where you’ve been and what you’ve said in this dissertation. If you are dillydallying, then give yourself a time limit.  Write your summary in 5 minutes or you have to send 10 bucks to the presidential candidate that you do not want to succeed.  Is it a deal?

3.  What is the personal investment that you have in this work?  How is that connected to the theorizing you’ve done in the dissertation?  Write a paragraph delineating both your personal investment and its connection to the theorizing.

O.k., then, you’ve got a running start on your conclusion.  I know you can take it from here, but just to support you, I may check in with you again tomorrow.

Until then,

Nancy

Nancy Whichard, PhD, PCC
Your International Dissertation Coach
www.nancywhichard.com
nancy@nancywhichard.com

P.S. If you have been procrastinating on your dissertation, you might want to read the next issue of my Smart Tips for Writers newsletter.  In the upcoming issue, the main article will be  “How to Become a Recovering Procrastinator.”  If you haven’t signed up for my newsletter, don’t put it off!  Go to www.nancywhichard.com.

August, for many people writing dissertations, is the month of if-not-now-when?

Other responsibilities are on the horizon, but what can you do to make use of the time August offers you?  If you use the time you have now, you’ll very likely be controlling the space where you will be working and living later on.

1.  How to take control over your time and space –
How does your location affect how well you work?  Tom has the chance to talk with scholars who could give him the job he’s been dreaming about.  To prepare for this conversation, he has several papers written by those scholars.  Unfortunately, he has been doing more dreaming than reading.  The problem is that he’s sitting on the small balcony of his apartment, half-reading, half-daydreaming.  If there is anything you have control over, it’s where you are doing your work.  Go to the library.

2.  How to control the power others have over your time –
Draw boundaries.  Boundaries are a mental image to help you hold at bay those people who would use you. Drawing boundaries can make all of those people outside the boundary a bit fuzzy to you.  You just can’t see out there.  Inside the boundaries, you have space to expand and to grow.  Imagine yourself moving above and beyond the current situation. 

3.  This is the time to do your most important work.  Make sure that what you are doing will move you closer to your goal.

Eliminate distractions, draw boundaries, and focus on your work!  Write while there is time.

Have a great week!

Until next time,

Nancy
Your International Dissertation Coach
www.nancywhichard.com
www.smarttipsforwriters.com
nancy@nancywhichard.com

Dissertation writers, professional writers and editors, bloggers–we all fight the good fight against email.

Seth Godin, famous marketing blogger, asks, “Do you spend your day responding and reacting to incoming all day… until the list is empty? “  He says that unlike the days when he could sort his mail in minutes the “old-fashioned way,” he ( and the rest of us, too) can now easily  “spend the whole day hitting ‘reply’.” Oddly, when we’re done, we feel we’ve taken care of important work.  He calls that the “Inbox Culture.”

Have you reached a breaking point with email?  A client says that she would open her messages every morning and before she knew it, an hour of her most productive writing time would be gone.  Sound familiar?

And even worse—after she had closed her email she had trouble focusing on her writing because she would still be distracted by the “the messages and the work attached to those messages.”

As a way to fight email and the so-called inbox culture, she is trying to write for at least four hours before even glancing at the names of people who have sent her messages.  In addition, she says she won’t read the emails until an hour each evening. 

So far, so good, she says—and as a bonus, she moves through the email much faster, quickly responding when necessary and otherwise deleting.

How about you?  Have you known for a long time that email is sucking the life out of you?

Robbing you of peak writing time?  Robbing you of productivity?

Time’s a-wasting.  How about a pact?  Stuff your email into one hour a night—is it a deal? 

I’d love to hear from you.  Let me know how one-hour-a-night emailing works for you.

And if you haven’t already done so, stop by www.nancywhichard.com to sign up for Smart Tips.

No time like the present–

Nancy

Nancy Whichard, PhD, PCC
Your International Dissertation Coach
www.nancywhichard.com
www.smarttipsforwriters.com
nancy@nancywhichard.com