Strictly Academic: ideas on freewriting vs planning! Conference for the week

It’s Friday and my thoughts turn backwards to reflect on the thesis-related writing and thinking I have done during the week. Years of collecting articles, references, pictures and scouring archives…I have an awful lot of information and bits and pieces of drafts! Here I wanted to share my approach to writing: I have experimented with different ways of beginning, planning, structuring, reviewing and ending. I have to say: between the two options of freewriting/creating a zero draft and planning extensively before beginning, I have found PLANNING PLANNING PLANNING the way to go – I love the fact that I don’t have to face the spectre of serious restructuring at the end. I should add that I have found freewriting very valuable at various points however.

While I have already done different drafts of part of the thesis, I am finding this article about John Carlis’s concept of a one-draft disseration very helpful – keeping the contributions you hope to make through the thesis in mind is a great idea, and having a storyboard and paragraph topic sentences as the author suggests, work well for me. I also like the idea of avoiding ‘false progress’  - and then having to ditch reams of words because they don’t quite fit together or work easily into your overall argument…

Advertisement