Here's my grand plan. Not particularly innovative. Small chunks. Bit by bit. Nibble away. Concentrated effort at times of low work pressure; full-time for 50% of holidays and whatever-whenever for the rest. At least 5-6 hours on the weekend if full-time work is full-on. Bite size bits....research via TROVE, reading an article, writing a paragraph, interviewing by phone... can all be done in chunks. A hour here. An hour there. Chunk by chunk it is coming together. 30000 words and 6 folders of information and only 50000 to go. Of course, there are days when it takes 3 hours to get started and it's 3pm before I manage to formulate a single useful sentence.
June 2013
As this post has been hit quite a lot, I'm guessing that there's a lot of PhDers like me out there.. juggling real-life and the compulsion of academic creativity (and hard slog!) A year on I have just hit 59000 - how have I done that? I still 'chunk' and 'steal' time but Thesis Bootcamp gave me a huge boost. One weekend of writing using the Pomodo technique. In that first weekend I had 15000 words which over the next 4 months translated into 3 chapters. Now I do monthly 'Veterans' day at Melbourne Uni in a quiet space. It's working for me. Read about pomodo - http://blog.widbook.com/the-pomodoro-technique-for-writers/
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