Day 2 Goals:

2 (and I mean 2!) Fieldwork entries
15 min Focused Free Writing on Patient Arrivals

Good luck everyone - see you tonight!!!

Hi guys can I join the A club? I don't have the afore mentioned text book (JB?) but think this is a really great idea, and has helped me no end today. I jotted down my three aims on a post-it note on my desk and kept thinking I have to finish this as I need to write it up on here! So it really does work and helps to keep my concentration.

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Today's Aim's:
1. Read a paper I have written and make changes on the draft, so it can be submitted for peer review to supervisors and contributors.
2. Finish slides for a journal club on Thursday, where I have chosen the paper. Also to write some notes in word on the slides.
3. Brainstorm some ideas for writing a zero-draft of my introduction.
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I managed to finish reading through the paper and have typed up all the changes, including producing a new graph.
Have finished all but 3 slides of the presentation and finished most of the notes. I will finish this on the train home (approx. 1 hour).
Didn't get time to brainstorm unfortunatly, but tomorrow is a new day and 2/3 isn't bad considering that I have the concentration levels of a 2 year old!!

Yes - all are welcome to join! The only requirement is that we all encourage each other to be honest, accountable and keep at it!

WELCOME! :)

Thanks Lara! for your empathy and insight of my situation. I actually persuaded myself to print out the writing and scanned thought it. It is a very rough zero draft, but at least I think I have almost included what I would like to say in this chapter.

Lara, I think the highlighting method would be very useful next time as I realized that I actually mentally highlighted the important points this time round just reading through it. But highlighting those sentences would probably have helped me to visualize the links between those ideas much better.

With also the suggestion of my husband, I also re-built the structure for the chapter based on those key lines, so now I can see my statement and argument in a skeleton view. Then, I filled in the skeleton with some flesh from the zero draft. But at the moment, it looks like distorted field-watcher, ugly!

My eyelids are closing down slowly. will come back tomorrow and work bits by bits.

as

Lara quoted
"try writing repeatedly in 5 or 10 mins spurts of freewriting,and answer the qs: "what am i REALLY trying to say in this (paragrah) arguement/chapter/section?" and write it in plain simple even coversational language. doesn't have to be eloquent at this stage. it's always easier to IMPROVE on something.

Will continue to work this way and report back soon... now bed

Hey Silly Billy! lovely to have you join the A team hehe

the JB book we're all referring to is

"writing your dissertation in 15 minutes a day - a guide to starting, revising and finishing your doctoral thesis" by Joan Bolker. I came across it from a blog that I read. you can read the blog, which resonated with me, that I always used to say to myself, "right i am going to WRITE ALL DAY LONG" and never managed it ! most of the time, i would just keep procrastinating.
using the concepts in the book, helped me to overcome my fear of writing and writers/thinking block.

and it's nice to see that this Acountability thread is helping!

wow SillyBilly, those were some heavy duty aims you got there! well done, 2 out 3 is excellent! well done you
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Anthropologa
you started, and that is the MAIN thing. so good on ya! remember what JB says
"everyday is more important than how much time you spend, or how many pages you produce or the quality"..

even if you just do 15minutes of work on your thesis, it's infinitely better than nothing.

good luck with your aims today, see you tonight for the update and confession time!
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zylynn, you are very welcome I am glad to hear that you managed to sift through your zero draft, well done! that is a fantastic!

okay great see you tommorow then!
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Oh my goodness! Today is crazy. Its only 2:18 PM in Argentina, but all the time I had this AM is just disappearing! I have three of my research participants in my apt - trying to use my email, chatting, etc. Its great for my research, but I just CAN'T get my work done! Expect a late, late, late night approach!

Just came back from a break, I had dinner, so I thought I would confess with what I have done so far:

still working on aim number 1. i am on the last section of the results section though.

the last section, is abit complicated - but am reading my zero draft, and 1st draft - which is full of conversational writings, which is actually helping me 2nd time around! i can see in the writing, i am having conversations with myself lol.
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so far the chapter is now at = 3437 words.

which means today i have done= 1345 words of 2nd draft quality, from my 1st draft/zero draft/and my published paper.

okay i must complete the results section in the next 2 hours. deadline 8.30pm.

(there was this one section, that is really tricky, that i have labelled as (pending/incomplete for now).. it will take AGES, and disrupt my flow...

so i have put it in grey saying pending. it is better to spend these 2 weeks and get most of my chapters of my thesis completed in 2nd draft format, and one tiny section incomplete. than focus all my time and energy on one little section.

i am also making table of contents of the chapter as i go along, just because i like updating the table of contents and seeing it grow, haha i am sad like that

okay break over. back to work!

Anthropologa, oh dear, sounds like a madhouse in your apt. yah i think it's going to be a late night for me too! i got loads to do.

see you tonight for confession time.

Silly billy, i know what you mean, that you want to get stuff done, so you can report something at the end of the day lol.

zylynn, don't worry about it looking ugly, an ugly draft is infintely better than a draft that is blank.
always easy to improve on something. it will come together slowly. you're just making 'mud pies' at the moment, you can build the nice sculptured sand castles later on

WOW guys you are doing so so well!
Well I'll log in my aims a bit late in the day cos I have only just had a chance to sit down.
I know 'write first'
Today I am going to be:
1. freewriting like a madman my conference paper to make sure I know what Im wanting to include and asking myself the questions I need to.
2.Do some freewriting on my second chapter to get a better idea how its going to fit into my thesis argument.
I'm thinking 5 pages before Im moving!!

Keep up the good work

Dawn xxxx

hey Dawn

that sounds great what your aiming to do this evening. i'll be joining you. it's past my 8.30pm deadline, and i still havent finished the last section of my results section, but i am progressing slowly and actually understanding it now, but keep rewriting it and moving it around. the pains of doing a 2nd draft. but once it's done, its done.

okay new deadline, 10pm. once i've done it, i can take a break.