The Only Way to Finish Writing is to Start Writing

One of my dearest mentors in graduate school continually reminded us that “The best dissertation is a done dissertation.” He was not being flippant and he pushed us to produce quality work, but he recognized that all of us have many avoidance techniques that delay us starting and finishing the gateway paper to academia. He continued with reminding us that our dissertation is NOT, in fact, our magnum opus but rather just the beginning of our exploration of our professional identity and writing. Very few people are able to immediately publish their dissertations as a book or articles without major revisions. And, these revisions should be targeted to the publisher or journal audience. Therefore, it is counterproductive to attempt to have a “perfect” dissertation before submitting it.

Theresa MacPhail, an Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow at New York University, had a wonderful blog post that addressed many of these ideas - The No-Fail Secret to Writing a Dissertation. And, although her advise sounds almost as glib as my mentor's, she understands that “there is only one fail-safe method, one secret, one guaranteed trick that you need in order to finish your dissertation: Write.”

As many people before her have mentioned (Howard & Barton, 1986; Zinsser, 1988), writing is thinking – and it takes time – and it requires lots and lots of writing that will never make it to the final piece. Embrace this, rather than fight it, and the act of writing can be more liberating than drudgery.

Howard, V. A., & Barton, J. H. (1986). Thinking on paper. W. Morrow.

Zinsser, W. K. (1988). Writing to learn. New York: Harper & Row.