What is the best thesis writing advice for scholars?
There is a glut of writing advice that is available for scholars, particularly that is related to thesis writing. The internet is flooded with books, blogs and articles that are getting circulated with writing advice and tips to allow them to handle the writing task easily. However, most of the available advice is repetitive and does not come of much help to the writer.
Some of the most common tips you would find available for your phd thesis writing:
1. You must write every day, right from the beginning of your PhD
2. Do not overthink while writing as this may come in the flow of your writing
3. Believe in doing work rather than doing perfect work, as improvisations can be done at a later stage
4. Take rewriting as an integral part of writing and not as a separate pressure or load.
You must surely not be oblivious to these tips being a PhD scholar but despite that all scholars, sometime or the other time, do encounter stressed phases in the process of thesis writing. The tips above are common and applicable to all but may not be effective for all, every time.
Writing is not a straight path. It is a process involving a lot of complexity and narrowing the thoughts down to a single statement advice is actual oversimplification of the complexity of the ordeal of writing.
Just trying to follow these tips blindly, I think would not work for the main reason that before following advice, you need to incorporate the skill for being able to apply these tips in a customised manner that could benefit you.You need to leave the simplification of the advice and the subtlety behind to be able to make it useful for you.
You would surely be reading advice from many corners and would come across theoretical models that claim to bring skill development, end of they though, it is your expertise that will determine the amount of efforts taken by you. As an amateur, a lot of concentration is wanted in all aspects related to writing but to a seasoned writer, the flow of writing comes more as a spontaneous action rather than a conscious effort.
Practice as a means to perfection isn’t just applicable to sports coaching but the flow is equally well in creative activities too because to come in the flow of doing things effortlessly, you must have high level of expertise. However, you being good at something doesn’t necessarily makes you a good advisor too. It is ultimately the writer who has to polish and surface out those skills to be able to adopt and adhere to the tips given by the advisors.