work on writing
May 30, 2007 by James
Writing has always been painful for me. It’s a slow and agonizing process. Then I borrowed a book from the library titled “Writing your dissertation in 15 minutes a day“. What an eye-catching title!
I browsed through it a little bit, I guess the first message the author wanted to deliver was there is no magic wand; writing should be a consistent process. The so-called 15 minutes writing a day helps people form a habit of deliberating on the topic.It also helps to see that writing is not painful just for me. It mentioned many people would rather washed the toilet floor than writing. 
As I keep reading, I found that 15-minute thing is just for getting things started. What he really recommend is 3- 6 pages, around 1000 words free writing a day. Keep this habit of freewriting and make a mess first.
Draft 0 –> 1
Read through the mess and try to find the gem: themes, interesting questions.Draft 1 –> 2
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- work on one chapter at a time.
- leave the introduction and conclusion untill last; leave editing untill last; leave smoothing transition between paragraphs untill later stage.
- make a outline, or try to condense a paragraph into a sentense to have a clearer picture of the flow of arguement and the structure.
- read (silently or loudly) again and again.
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Hi, My name is Wang Xiang. I am also a student of the Faculty of Education of HKU
This is my first semester of MPhil. You are by no means alone in feeling painful about academic writing. In fact, I often think that I may be the one who suffers the most from writing up the thesis:P It’s good to know that maybe there is not a natural writer; or even the talented writer cannot avoid the painful process of writing.
Hi, Wang Xiang:
Nice to actually hear (or see) that I am not alone in this.
I am just curious how did you find my blog?
LP