hi, am wondering whether any of you has had experience writing up about 40,000 words of a thesis in two months? Be it MPhil experience or PhD thesis writing up experience. Did you manage in two months or would you allocate more time?

j.

If it's just writing up then I think it's perfectly possible. If you have other things to do (final data analysis?) then you might be a bit pushed for time depending on how much you need to do. Don't underestimate how long it takes to do the final format and print of your thesis (I know, in theory you should just be able to click print and leave it to it but in practice...!). If you can, print each finished chapter (and do the required number of photocopies) as you go along, it's very motivating to see your thesis grow each week! Good luck!

My gut feeling is to say you would need much more time. What discipline are you in? When you say 'writing up', are you just trying to get some text 'there' that you can polish and develop later? Or do you intend to produce more or less finished writing? I find it quite easy to churn out text in short periods, but getting something at a stage where I would be happy to submit is a different story - takes much longer.

thanks Ann and Writing up. am thinking of writing something that is like a final draft - which i will update as i go along. so after each year - am to write a report of what i have been doing, which i will update in the end.

I have read around most of the areas (am in humanities), so i just need to write for most part of it, although there is a bit of reading to be done for one chapter. it may be wise to allocate more time - 4 months perhaps - or is that over the top?

j.

Hi, from what you have said I think it would be possible to do it in 2 months as you are not finishing off any fieldwork etc, as long as you keep in mind that it doesn't have to be perfect and you will have the opportunity to come back to it later. If you work 5 days per week it would mean you are writing about 1000 words a day (5000 words per week x8 weeks = finished!). I find that quite a large number of words to sustain (I remember in my first year deciding I was going to write 1000 words a day and finish in 100 days! Obviously I didn't keep that up, but it is easy to exceed 1000 words a day when a deadline is approaching) So really you need to decide from what you know about your own working practices if you think you can produce that much text in that period or whether you want to give yourself a bit more time. Good luck!

An average of 1000 words a day is a realistic target. Accept that some days will be more productive than other so if you write 1700 words one day, don't stress if you only manage 300 the next, you'll still be on track!

It would also depend on how fast your supervisor is at reading/correcting the chapters you hand in.

thanks guys. you're all so supportive! i'll try the a thousand words a day thing. :).

I've heard the 1,000 words a day rule as well

How does the 1 000 a day thing work? When I was writing the introduction, I'd read through three papers for 45 min - and end up writing two sentences. Writing the material and methods part is loads easier, so 1 000 would't seem much foe one day .....

They say you can write 1,000 decent words in one day (just writing)

Still took me 2 months to write up a 15,000 word dissertation though!