As I’m writing my PhD thesis, I’m realising how each chapter has a completely different writing pace.
I started with my results chapters. It took me some time to prepare my thesis figures and figures legends, but once they were complete, I was able to quickly write and edit my results sections.
I then moved on to my materials and methods chapter. Because this chapter quite boring and finicky to write, I procrastinated, but once I started writing in earnest, it was complete in a day. Thankfully past-Jayne had written dot points for most of the methods used which was helpful.
The introduction chapter is slow to write because it requires maximum brain power. I need to perform rituals to get myself into the literature review mindset. I spend a lot of time looking for papers, reading, and thinking. Sometimes I need to read ten papers to write one sentence. I’m lucky if I write a whole paragraph in a day.
I haven’t started writing my discussion yet, but I imagine it will be similar to writing the introduction as I will need to position my key findings in the context of the wider literature, but we’ll see how that goes.
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