Week Three - help a conference is coming up!

Maximum number of words: 80,000
Words typed so far: 8,881
Words typed this week: 3,129
Days I managed to write this week: 5

Well as you can see from the word count and the number of days this week, I have now written over 10% of my thesis, also I have finished the bulky part of the chapter and started one of the smaller parts. On Tuesday  I had the first bit of my thesis writing back from my supervisor with only two corrections!  One sentence to cut out and another sentence to put in otherwise it was fine. I don't suppose this is normal and It was also only around 3,500 words long, so not even 5% of my thesis.

However next week I am actually going to have to take a break from my thesis writing. I can feel fairly relaxed about this as I have a week in hand, but that is not the reason. On Monday this week I learnt that there was a postgraduate conference happening on one of the major strands of my thesis. However it was happening in December and I had to enrol by next Monday and if I wanted to present a paper then I also need to have the abstract written by then! Gulp!

It is on topic and by Tuesday when I saw my supervisor I had managed to think of a way to write a paper drawing on material I have already prepared for other reasons that actually sounds quite good. So  I have enrolled and found accommodation but like many, many academics at conferences I am going tomorrow to write the abstract and only then start writing the paper.

Second week: pace somewhat slower but another section written

Maximum number of words: 80,000
Words typed so far: 5,761
Words typed this week: 2,226
Days I managed to write this week: 3

I am still managing to write over 2,000 words a week, admittedly these are the easy words which is probably why I managed it in three days, actually I am hoping to do a fourth day tomorrow before my parents come but as they are over I knew I could not type them up then so I had to do it today, so it may well show as five days next week (only I have equal time problems next week).

The thing is that this really only covers part of the process. This week as well as writing these words I have also been preparing for a supervision, which has meant sending last weeks words off to proof readers and editing them plus making sure I have all the references in. I am supposed to do that when I type the words in, but I don't always, for a variety of reasons. For instance this week I still have a couple of references to put, these are to books that I have at work and are only peripherally of interest to my thesis but are useful for establishing a point. So I will have to find the references at work.

The other thing is I have actually managed to do some background reading as separate from the reading for the chapter I am actually writing. Some of it was just general methodology stuff, although Erving Goffman's The Presentation of Self in Everyday life is probably more than that, he is probably one of the people sitting around the table of my thoughts and I will need to explore him more when I get to writing my introduction, although I must admit present reading is methodological. I also finished one theory of Religion book and started another one on Reformed Spirituality. My reading is nothing if not eclectic.


Next week includes as supervision plus I am at a conference for work on Friday so is again busy, plus I suspect I will have finished this very easy part and will be having to write something more tricky by the end of the week. So lets see how I do.

First week's progress

Maximum number of words: 80,000
Words typed so far: 3,526
Days I managed to write this week: 5

I know this is only the start and I am settling in and tackling the easy bits, but I am pleased with my progress so far. I am especially pleased that I managed to write for half and hour on five days this week because I also had a cold bug and needed to be in to work early one day. Now I tend to write before I go into work. So this combination was not good and I had planned a back up time in case I was not up to getting up earlier than usual to write. I naturally got up on time and did it.

However I am going to fine tune my working practices in a number of ways. Firstly I am going to try and write on four days a week not five. I have no difficulty as you can see from the figures above writing 500 words in half an hour! Indeed the writing against the clock seems almost an energising exercise that gives me a high that lasts until lunch time. What I did find difficult was getting those words typed in. I don't want a huge back log (it was not a problem this weekend but I can see it being in the future) and that gives me quite often my study day clear for typing in!

Starting off

Right I am just starting out the serious business of writing my thesis. The triskele opposite here is going to be my way of seeing how much progress I have made.

So far and today has really only been the first day I have seriously been working on it, I have only planned my Methodology chapter (or what I can of it, given that there is so much of the writing and work around writing left to do). I am therefore starting Monday going to be writing in real earnest and that means 400 words (or one page a day). However I am only going to count words when I have finished typing them up at the weekend.

Therefore writing one of these blogs on a Friday or Saturday night telling how the last week has gone is going to be the norm. Hopefully more and more of that shape should be filled in as the weeks go by!

This is a method to keep me accountable and my thesis progressing, lets see how it goes.