How to plan, draft, write and finish a doctoral thesis or dissertation

198 ◆ AUTHORING A PHD
a project, recognizing that its imperfections and deficiencies
(so intimately familiar to the author) have just to be lived with,
tolerated, perhaps never remedied or improved upon?
An apt parallel for writing a PhD is taking part in an amateur
dramatics society’s production of a play. In the early days there
are apparently endless casting meetings and leisurely orientation
sessions. The actors, the director, the producer and the art
director endlessly swap differing visions of the play’s period and
setting, its visual ‘look and feel’, the characters’ motivations
and the significance of different scenes and plot developments.
The early rehearsals are wracked by personality conflicts and
tensions about who is more important than whom, and what
overall emotional or dramatic style should be achieved. But as
the actual performances get nearer and nearer suddenly the
motivations of actors and director coarsen up in a miraculous
way. The actors worry more about remembering their lines and
not looking a fool on stage, getting through all right rather
than being the star of the whole show. And the director
becomes more accommodating, grateful for any scene or performance
that passes half-way professionally rather than stumbling
into disorder. Finally the curtain opens on a production
that everyone involved knows would benefit hugely from
another four weeks of rehearsal, another stab at this or that.
Except that it would never have got this focused this quickly
without that curtain opening. If we put back the start of the
show, everyone involved would simply adjust their time-scale
to reach much the same condition of preparedness/unpreparedness
four weeks further on, rather than now.
Getting to a first draft of your entire thesis is a very important
milestone in your work. At this point your priority shifts
away from doing more research or adding new bits to your text
mountain and towards finishing things off, having done with
it, putting it behind you, moving on to other topics and other
projects. This is not an easy transition to make. There comes a
point in the life of any book or thesis project where the ‘fear
and loathing’ factor tends to top out on your other enthusiasms
and your original motivation. This is an infallible sign that
enough is enough, and that the time to enter the completion
phase has arrived. Ending is not simple, however. Your first
challenge will usually be to upgrade a patchy draft text into