How to manage your writing?

http://ask.metafilter.com/216737/I-simply-KANT-write-my-thesishelp-me


I went through this recently, even down to the point where I could talk about it but not write about it. Here's what helped:

-Talking it through with a friend. I talked about it with just about everyone, but especially with 2-3 other students in my program. We met every week for an informal thesis support program, and then helped each other through it the rest of the week as well. Literally talk both of you through your chapter, and record or write down the solutions you come up with. Even if you're not good friends with the others in your program, find someone who is also writing (or just finished writing), and offer to trade in-kind or buy someone dinner while you talk it out. Lots of fellow thesis-writers will be happier to help than you might think. (Even in the depths of my panic, I loved taking an an afternoon to talk through someone else's problem.) 

-Write in a new medium. For whatever reason, my brain very easily flips into "this draft must be PERFECT the first time around" mode if a word document gets too big or if I just look at a computer funny. Don't be afraid to open a new document to work for a little while, and you should absolutely get yourself away from the computer. I have about 250 notecards that I made in the last month of my writing that outlined every part of my chapter. I intended it as a big outline but I ended up breaking each chapter down to an almost paragraph-by-paragraph outline with notecards as I worked. It took probably 3-4 days out of the month just to write the notecards out, but oh my goodness they were so helpful. There was just something soothing about firing off cards for an hour or so, spending three hours stretching them out across my living room floor, shuffling and reorganizing them to see if another idea worked better, and then during writing just picking up a card out of the pile, knowing I needed to write about the history of the germ theory for 1-3 paragraphs, throwing everything I knew at it, and then moving the card to the back of the stack when finished. It helped me visualize how much I had left to write, which was also a huge motivator. I also brainstormed on whiteboards, scrap paper, the notes feature on my phone, anything to get away from the computer. 

-Consider the most productive ways to spend your time, and accept that sometimes means taking time off. If you spend 25 minutes staring at the screen and only 5 minutes working, consider how that's your brain telling you "I can't do this right now." So what can it do? Sleep? Go for a walk? Organize a bibliography? Notecards? Taking time away from the thesis to help your brain recharge isn't procrastination, but a really valuable activity. There's a difference between "I don't want to do it now; I work better under pressure anyway" and "I need an afternoon away or MY BRAIN IS GOING TO EXPLODE." Your mind is giving you legitimate signals right now, so don't ignore them. 

-Freewrite. It was stupidly simple to trick my brain into thinking "oh, this part of writing isn't for real so you can go ahead and write now" when I opened up a new word document, closed my eyes, and just started thinking about what I wanted to say. Every paragraph inevitably began with "So... what do you want to accomplish? Well, I guess the first thing is that..." and the first paragraph was always more or less trash, but once I connected to that "I can talk it out" part of my brain I generally ended up producing a lot more quality work. The trick was to keep my eyes closed, or fixed on something besides the screen; watching what I wrote triggered my editing skills, which destroyed the content-generating momentum. 

-Change location often. Do not sit in one place every day. I was dragging 20-25 books to the library every single day just so I would not be at home, because my patterns at home had fallen into a rut. You know that advice about how to keep your bed only for sleeping, so that when you lie down at night you can help trick yourself into thinking "oh it's time for sleep now"? Same idea. If I sat down at my desk at home I triggered the "waste time" part of my brain, and it was a lot easier to actively cut off that process at the library. I worked for 18 hours every day at one desk in the library for a couple days, and then when that stopped helping I packed up and moved to a different part of the library. 

-Tackle the easiest part first. Don't work on what "should" come next, or the hardest task, or the most time-consuming task. Always start with the easiest task. The easiest task is the one your brain is ready to work on, and helps you generate momentum. There are no extra points for working on the harder components first, so don't do it. Even if it means skipping ahead 2 chapters to write an isolated paragraph about some completely minor detail, that's one thing off your list for later. 

-Steal the structure of others' work. I had a hard time writing my introduction because I had no idea how to organize it, so I opened up the book that I thought had the clearest introduction and studied how the author organized it into sections. Then I checked another book, and a third -- they all had similar organizational structures, so I followed that. Sometimes when I was trying to use a more creative writing approach and wasn't quite sure how to do it successfully I picked up a book that did it well and pulled apart its paragraphs for the purpose and structure of every paragraph to help. (I did this when I wanted to use a personal anecdote to bookend the entire thesis because the books that did those were among my favorites, but I couldn't get over the weirdness of using "I" in an academic work so I pulled down a few books to use as a guide.) 

-Finally, take advantage of all your school resources. Your school almost certainly has a counseling center, and do not be afraid to walk in and say you need to talk to someone. Stress from school is one of the reasons your counseling center exists, so it is a very legitimate problem for which to ask for help and one that your counselors are very experienced in handling. Even if they can't talk with you about your subject at all, don't underestimate the value of just having a place where you can go and vent and bawl and catastrophize in ways you can't with your friends or advisors. This type of stress is incredibly hard to deal with, and I wish I had been a lot better about pro-actively managing it. 

Good luck. I rewrote 2/3rds of my thesis the month before my defense, so I know how hard your next 2 months are going to be, but I also know it's doable. It might involve being entirely miserable, not sleeping for days on end, and pulling all-nighters in the library, but there is an end in just 2 months. It feels never-ending now, but this feeling that you have right now is part of the writing process; it too will pass and be replaced with more confidence once you clear this hurdle. The next 2 months will not always feel as bad as this.