Writing is an essential part of completing a PhD in the Humanities. You need to write your dissertation or thesis, and completing that big project will require several drafts and multiple revisions. You may also need to produce papers for classes, conference presentations, grant applications, journal articles, take-home papers for qualifying exams, teaching materials, and writing for other academic milestones, in addition to non-academic writing such as public scholarship, communications work, applications, and more. The list goes on.
However, it is all too easy to not get as much writing done as you want to or need to. It can be difficult to get started: procrastination can supersede all your good intentions and aims, or you may be balancing multiple commitments such as teaching, working, research, and caregiving, which can lead you to put writing off in favour of demands that are or may seem to be more time-sensitive. This post provides seven strategies that may help you with building good writing habits during your PhD, making consistent writing progress, and integrating writing into your daily schedule.
Each of the seven sections provides an overview of the strategy in question. Of course, there are other strategies for building good writing habits that you may have used or may find helpful; this post is not an exhaustive list! Furthermore, as is the case with any advice post, find what works for you and don’t worry if something that seems to work for other people doesn’t quite do it for you; it’s highly unlikely that every single strategy described here will work for everyone!
One. Scheduling a writing date with yourself
If you had a dentist appointment or a work shift or a committee meeting on the calendar, it’s likely that you would attend it, barring exigency or unexpected circumstances. You would see it as a formal commitment because it involves agreeing on a set time and place for an activity with at least one other person, who may be inconvenienced if you do not show up.
Unsurprisingly, working on a solo project like a PhD dissertation or thesis in the Humanities, which is often a long and isolating endeavour, can be something that feels easy to put off and avoid. After all, no one will check that you arrive at your desk at a certain time nor watch over you while you read and write.
You can get around this by treating writing like you would any other commitment. Schedule it on your calendar, write it in your diary, or put it on your to-do list. Treat each daily or weekly block in the same way that you would a formal appointment or commitment; unless something urgent comes up or you desperately need to make time in your schedule for something else at the time that you have scheduled writing, try to stick to the commitment that you have made with yourself.
Scheduling time to write in this way, even if it is only for 15 minutes each morning during a busy semester, will help you maintain a regular writing habit and instinctively see writing as an activity that is as important as the other things that you have to do.
Two. Arranging to connect with someone else
If you are finding motivating yourself to write challenging, consider setting up some co-working sessions with a friend or peer. These sessions can be in-person or online, depending on your location and your preference, but even if you live in the same city as your writing partner, you may still decide to connect online instead of in-person; some people like to avoid being in crowded public spaces such as some coffee shops, and others simply prefer to work from the comfort of their own home. Virtual commitments can be as equally as effective as in-person writing dates at forcing you to set aside time in your day to write and holding yourself and others accountable.
It can be fun to write with other PhD students, but you do not have to restrict yourself to this pool of potential writing partners. Many freelancers, contractors, and people in salaried jobs spend a lot of time doing solo work blocks and may welcome the opportunity to connect with you on a regular basis to keep each other motivated.
You can start each meeting or call with a short chat about what you plan to accomplish and then check in with each other at the end of the session to share your progress. The format of the sessions is up to you and whoever you decide to write or work alongside; you may want to meet for one hour a couple of times a week, two hours once a week, or less frequently or for longer blocks of time with built-in breaks.
If working alongside someone isn’t for you or if you can’t find a willing participant whose schedule aligns with yours, explore other ways that you and your peers can motivate each other. Some people like to check in with friends via message or email at the start or end of each day to share their goals and progress. Others have mentors that they update weekly or monthly. Don’t hesitate to ask friends, peers, and other people that you come into contact with if they would like to work together or become accountability partners; an increasing number of people spend large parts of their work day alone and may welcome this kind of mutual support and connection.
Three. Set yourself realistic deadlines
Depending on your advisor or supervisor’s preferences, working style, and the relationship that you have with them, you may or may not have set deadlines for chapter drafts, section drafts, and other types of writing during your PhD. If your advisor or supervisor does set interim deadlines, these dates can help impose a structure and encourage you to produce regular writing to a certain quality, ensuring that you make steady progress towards your dissertation or thesis.
If your advisor or supervisor does not work in this way, there is nothing to stop you setting deadlines for yourself if you find it helpful in terms of making sure that you make enough progress. And even if you are working to submission deadlines, you may still need to set yourself a series of smaller deadlines to make sure that you meet them.
Think about what you need and want to achieve and work backwards. For example, if you want to produce twenty pages per month that you feel comfortable sharing with your supervisor, decide on the date on which you want to have these pages ready to send and work backwards from there. How much time do you want to leave for editing and refining these pages? How long will it take you to draft these pages? And do you need to do any additional reading or research before you begin this mini writing project? Calculate how many work days these tasks are likely to take and allow yourself a few extra days for troubleshooting, for example if you find that you need to do some additional reading or if your writing time does not go as smoothly as planned.
View your deadlines as a rough guide. It’s important to try to stick to them to maintain a steady amount of progress, but equally, if things take longer than you thought they would, it’s not the end of the world.
Four. Remember that it’s usually easier to edit existing words than it is to write new ones
As long as you respect any formal deadlines you may have been given, you do not actually have to show your work to anyone until you are ready to do so. To this end, don’t stress about your first draft or any subsequent drafts; they can be for your eyes only! Writing an excellent chapter or article or review or conference paper may seem insurmountable when you are sitting in front of a blank page or an empty Google Doc: where do you start? And what if whatever you write is simply not good enough?
It is usually much easier to edit and improve work that you have already produced as opposed to expecting yourself to write something usable immediately. Sometimes you do write something high quality straight away and that’s great! But if you are struggling to get started or if you are experiencing writer’s block, try to just write anything, even if you are typing out random fragments or sentences related to your topic that don’t yet flow.
Once you have some random sentences, you can move them around, fill in any gaps, add extra quotations and sources, work on your language, and do anything else that you need to do to get it to where you need it to be. It can also be very motivating to say that you wrote a few hundred or even a few thousand words in a day, even if you know that you will be reworking them at a later date.
Five. Try to avoid starting with a blank page
This point maps well onto the previous section. The blank page is daunting and may only become less daunting when you start filling it up with words, so why not make it so that you never have to start with a blank page in the first place?
There are several solutions to the blank page problem. You can type out a rough plan for each paragraph, noting the main points that it will cover and the relevant examples. Alternatively, you can insert all the quotations, references, and other pieces of evidence that you think you will need in a paragraph, section, or chapter and then write around them. Other people find it helpful to write out prompts or questions to help them get started. These can include: why is this point or example important? What does it add to my argument? Where do I need to take this section or chapter next? Writing a response to a question may feel more natural and less intimidating than just starting to write from scratch.
You can also begin your writing time by free-writing, namely writing out any idea that pops into your head about a topic that could either be related to your work or to anything else that you feel compelled to write about. You can choose a set amount of time for this activity and you do not need to worry about syntax, grammar, or vocabulary in ways that you might if you were trying to produce something presentable; it is important to write continuously for this time to ease yourself into refining your ideas later on and to get your initial thoughts down on paper.
Six. Look for writing sessions or groups aimed at PhD students
Increasing numbers of universities are setting up initiatives to help PhD students stay motivated while they are writing, providing structured spaces in which students can write alongside each other and support their peers. Departments, graduate schools, and other units on campus may organise one-off or regular writing groups which are usually relatively informal; there might be some time to think about or share your goals for the session before you spend most of the time working on your own projects in silence. Food and drink are often provided to help motivate students to attend. Keep an eye on mailing lists and posters for information about such sessions and consider setting some up yourself if they are not currently available at your university but they are something that interests you.
Some universities also offer a wider range of writing sessions and groups to support PhD students. Writing centres often offer services to support students such as feedback sessions, semester-long peer-facilitated writing groups that you can apply to join, and subscriptions to online resources and courses. You can also search for Dissertation Institution Fellowships or similar programmes that provide you with financial support to dedicate uninterrupted time to your writing alongside other students.
If your university does not offer any group writing sessions or their current programming does not suit your needs, it is always possible to connect with other PhD students on social media, at conferences, or in other spaces to set up your own writing group sessions.
Seven. Incentivise yourself to complete writing tasks
Extrinsic motivation can play a key role in encouraging you to put pen to paper. You might find it easier to commit to a couple of hours of writing if you promise yourself that you can watch an episode or two of your new favourite show on Netflix once you are done, or go out and get a nice coffee that you couldn’t make at home. Some people also use systems such as reward charts, spreadsheets, notes, and social media posts to track their progress and to keep themselves accountable.
You can take this technique one step further by focusing on bigger rewards. You might be looking forward to taking a whole week off at the end of the semester, or to a trip you have planned over the summer; imagine how good it would feel to be able to enjoy these experiences without worrying that you haven’t done as much writing as you might have liked to have done before departure. Additionally, some people find it helpful to think about post PhD life as a motivator for getting their thesis or dissertation done; they may be looking forward to moving to a new city, having a different kind of job, or simply the sense of accomplishment that they will feel when they receive their degree.
Rewards can be a useful tool in stimulating your writing process, but avoid using them as a stick to beat yourself with if you don’t manage to accomplish everything that you wanted to do in any given period of time. You should never deny yourself rest or relaxation or any other thing because you didn’t meet a writing goal that you set for yourself!
There you have it! I hope that this post has encouraged you to make some small changes in your routine if you feel that you have not been making as much writing progress as you might like, and that you manage to build some new writing habits in the hear future. Comment below if there are any techniques or strategies that you have used to organise your writing time.
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