The Pain of Writing

Writing is painful. Sorry, that tends to be everyone's reality. It is hard work to think through complex ideas and find the best way to present them so that someone else can understand them. I am not going to go into a lot of detail about writing specifics; Walden has an amazing writing center that is very happy to help you! 

A few general things though, first if you find it very hard to write, I recommend this book: 

Saltzman, J. (1993). If You Can Talk, You Can Write. Grand Central Publishing. 

As you can see, it is an older book, so it is available very cheaply on Amazon. It will reduce your anxiety and will help you get something down on paper. I strongly recommend reading your paper aloud; you will catch many errors. If nothing else, read to your dog or cat, they will find you fascinating! You will reduce the number of needed corrections by simply rereading your paper carefully.

Be prepared and open to many revisions. Your committee has much more experience in writing at this level, trust their guidance. At a doctoral level, revisions are simply part of the writing process. Professionals also have to rewrite their papers many times, keep in mind that the final article you see in the journal has little resemblance to where it started. As an example, a recent article that I wrote with colleagues went through 25 revisions (yes, I counted!). 

What should you look for in revisions? Read a sentence aloud and see if you can restate it more clearly. You want to be very precise in your meaning. Let me give you an example from one of my papers that I wrote with some colleagues. Here is the original draft of the first few sentences of the paper:

By 2020, one in six American citizens will be elderly or over 65 years old (U.S. Census, 1993). The number of oldest old individuals over 85 years old will reach 6.6 million in 2020 and is expected to triple by 2050 and reach 18-19 million (Administration on Aging [AoA], 2010). The rapid growth of the elderly and the oldest-old population is a growing concern to the healthcare system, as it must prepare to provide increased support services. 

Here is the final version: 

The 2000 U.S. Census (2001) reported 4.2 million people were over the age of 85 (1.5% of the population), this group has been designated the “the oldest-old” by demographers, and is the most rapidly growing age group.  Currently the cost of health service utilization for the oldest-old averages $22,000 per year compared to $9,000 for individuals 65-74 years old (Krause, 2010). 

What is different? The 2^nd version is much clearer, concise, and more to the point that the first.

One final issue, I think it is very important that you understand the dissertation from the faculty's viewpoint; it may explain much of their feedback to you. Throughout the dissertation process, and even after it is published, your committee's names are attached to it. When the URR (or IRB, etc.) criticizes a student's work, one of the first questions that is asked is "who is the chair?" The student is expected to make errors; the chair's role is to catch as many as possible.

Next time, we will move to Chapter 3, Research Methods.