Back to the Draft:

A Piece of Wild plant Garden all tidied up 

for Autumn outside a local School

The first thing is to tackle how I have got on with the settling back into re-writing and re-drafting mode.

The first thing to say is I said I could not let my supervisor know until next weekend. This was because I knew I was busy this weekend. Indeed I was working for about half of Friday and had some other bits a pieces to deal with. However,this does not mean I have been inactive.


I have fought off using Scrivener for a while. Some of this caution is due to the difficulty of using Scrivener with references from Mendeley. However I was faced with a challenge I really did not want to tackle in Word and that was trying to reorganize an entire thesis. the other thing is that Scrivener has story boarding facilities.Now of course ideally you would do that at the start of your thesis but mine, like Topsy, just grew. Actually that is not fair, I had a plan but it has been changed so many times since I started writing that really I have lost control.

Thus I took the plunge and got hold of Scrivener and started to use it to Reverse Outline so as to get some idea of what is where in the thesis. The fact that Scrivener has a story board facility means I can reverse outline with the text right alongside.  Actually that is not quite right as I am also working through the pages as I go and trying to reorganise things so they are in the right place.

Having now sat down, I must admit that the thesis last Wednesday was not at a level I would have liked to defend. The process of reverse outlining is taking me back into the thesis and seeing where it is weak. I am also aware that the reordering and a couple of insertions as suggested by my supervisor starts to make the thesis tell a story.

The aim at present is to have got through the reverse outlining by next weekend, which will basically give me a set of edits to make to my thesis. Then to write to my supervisor and tell he what the process is and how I want to organise it.

Perhaps what I am most happy with about this incident is that it showed my research instincts were right. What I was producing was not good enough. Now having been through this I have things slotting in much better and I think I am starting to know the story I am telling. The storyboarding should allow me by next weekend to actually be a lot clearer on where I am going and to stick to it rather than get diverted by new interesting ideas. My instinct is a lot happier at present and is beginning to run with the situation.

However due to Scriveners weaknesses I am expecting to have to do quite a bit of work at the end of the thesis to tidy it up in Word and to sort out the references.