Thesis/Dissertation Writing: Five Tips for Getting Unstuck (Part 1)

If you feel stuck in your academic writing, you are not alone. It happens--a lot. Before trying to remedy the situation, it can be helpful to get to the root cause. Ask yourself, "Why am I stuck?" There could be several reasons. If you can identify the root cause, it can help you find a solution that will be most suitable for you in your situation. In this five-part blog series, I ask you five questions--one per blog. Each question serves as a prompt for reflection to help you identify your reason/s for feeling stuck. If you cannot identify with one reason, wait for the next blog. By the time the entire series is out, you will probably identify with at least one reason. Each reason offers a corresponding tip to get you unstuck. I'm sure there are more reasons out there and more tips as well. These are just the reasons I felt stuck while writing my dissertation and the actions I took that helped me get unstuck. I hope you will find these ideas to be practical and useful. (I saved my favorite tip for last, so stay with me!)

Are You Stuck Because You Don't Know How to Develop Your Academic Voice?

Tip--Practice Your "Writing Scales"

What Are Writing Scales?

If you play an instrument, or you know someone who does, chances are you know what scales are. A scale is a sequence of notes ordered according to pitch. Musicians practice scales (typically before practicing pieces of music) to build technique, to develop a sense of rhythm, to get their fingers and hands in shape, to learn pieces faster, to warm up before playing, and to build overall confidence. The writing exercise I'm about to share with you is something I made up when I was going through my doctoral coursework, and it helped me to develop my academic voice. It's something I refer to as my "writing scales." Just as musicians typically practice their scales as a warm-up before playing a real piece of music, I practiced my "writing scales" as a warm-up before getting to the business of my real writing.

How This Exercise Works

This exercise takes some preparation before you actually sit down to do it. Create a notebook (physical or digital) of all the phrases, all the strong verbs, and all the vocabulary you like in the articles you are reading during your coursework. Call it your academic vocabulary notebook. If you can, have sections in your notebook that correspond to the different sections you often find in your articles--literature review, methods, results, and discussion. Ideally, you would begin creating this notebook during your coursework and not while you are writing your thesis/dissertation, but you can still do it if you are in thesis/dissertation mode now. Just take a day or two to go through some articles from your coursework to create your notebook.

When you sit down to do this writing exercise, you can follow these steps:

• Put your notebook, computer, and article in front of you.

• Skim the article to get a general sense of it.

• Ask yourself how YOU would write that article if YOU were the author.

• Type the section headings "Literature Review," "Methods," "Results," and "Discussion" in a Word document.

• Go to the literature review section of the article and reread it.

• Look at your phrases/verbs/vocabulary from the literature review section of your notebook, and use those words to write a few sentences for the literature review section of your article under that heading in your Word document.

• Go to the methods section of the article and reread it.

• Look at your phrases/verbs/vocabulary from the methods section of your notebook, and use those words to write a few sentences for the methods section of your article under that heading in your Word document.

• Repeat the same steps above for the results section and the discussion section.

(You get the idea. You take words from your notebook and apply them to writing new articles.)

An alternative way to do this is instead of taking one article and practicing the writing of several sections, you can take several articles and practice writing one section. Take the methods section, for example:

• On your desk, have your notebook your computer, and several articles.

• Skim the methods section of the first article.

• Use the words from the methods section of your notebook to write a few sentences for the new methods section for that article.

• Do the same with the other articles, one at a time, just focusing on the methods section. The repetition here will help you to get into a rhythm so that when you do your real writing it will be more automatic. It will make your real writing easier and faster. This technique is particularly helpful if you are focusing on one chapter of your thesis/dissertation. In the same way as musicians who want to play Chopin's Nocturne in E Flat Major will warm up by playing the E Flat Major scale, you, who are writing the methods section of your thesis/dissertation, can warm up by practicing types of sentences found in a methods section. Just focus on practicing the particular section you are currently writing for your thesis/dissertation.
  

As long as I am talking about music, as a side note (pun intended), I'll just add that while doing this daily exercise of my "writing scales," I listened to music from YouTube. Check out Peder B. Helland's channel as well as OCB Relax music. You can minimize their videos on your screen as you write, and you can maximize their videos to watch them when you take a break. Both channels offer beautiful, relaxing scenes of nature to parallel the beautiful, relaxing piano music.

Once you become proficient in using your notebook's phrases/vocabulary/verbs, you can kick things up a notch to have sessions when you experiment with varying your sentence structure as well. Continue to use your notebook for vocabulary, but now try to write different types of sentences--simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex. Write some sentences that start with a dependent clause. Vary your sentence length. Variety in sentence structure keeps your writing interesting.

For how long should you do this exercise? It's up to you, but I would suggest about 30 minutes. That's how long I did it, at least. I found that after 30 minutes of doing this exercise, I was in the groove and ready to do my real writing.

Why This Exercise Works

This exercise can help you to learn and practice your academic writing techniques. It can help you develop a sense of rhythm in your writing. It can help you to get to your academic writing muscles in shape. It can help your mind get into the mode of academic writing. It can build your capacity to do your own writing. You will soon start to develop YOUR OWN vocabulary, YOUR OWN phrases, YOUR OWN varied sentence structure, in other words, YOUR OWN ACADEMIC VOICE. If you need a way to become more competent and confident in your academic writing, practice your writing scales!

If you are sill here, it means you aren't writing yet. Are you still stuck? You don't have to carry that burden alone. If you need some support, either through editing or through coaching (or perhaps both), click below. Let's get you unstuck!

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