Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day: A Guide to Starting, Revising, and Finishing Your Doctoral Thesis

This book is just wonderfully empathic. A lot of reading materials for PhD students are full of tough love, but this particular author talks about difficult steps with a lot of grace, positive thinking, and a productive take on finishing things for the sake of regaining independence and charting your own path forward as an almost-doctor. Lots of thoughts on how different people write and what works for them. There's a section on struggles with one's advisor. There's a section on hitting a wall while writing. Lots of ideas on starting and getting into the flow of writing. This book really acknowledges that in order to become a PhD, one must first become a writer, and a writer very much alike to those who write actual books of non-fiction. Once a PhD student accepts this and thinks of their thesis as a piece of creative writing with a heavy dose of supporting citations and existing science, things begin to look clearer and more manageable. Also, this review was written by my partner, whose PhD dissertation I survived, and who turned her dissertation proposal into a finished dissertation in exactly 5 weeks, falling onto this book whenever things got tough. She wishes she had gotten a copy 5 years sooner.

First time ever writing a review in Amazon. I love this book. I cannot AGREE more on some of the points, such as treating yourself well after writing continuously for a while, etc. The writing is smooth (i.e., like the author is talking to your directly). Examples fit to real life situations. I get out of several (indeed, more than several) pieces of advice for writing my prospectus (this book is good for that as well). Although the author is not an engineer, but as an engineer I agree with most of the opinions that she suggest (recommend for engineer who is pursing a PhD degree). This book will become one of my favorite book in my graduate study. :) I hope you will have no regret of spending several hours of reading this book. FYI: I decide to write this review because the author strongly suggest to keep writing everyday, even at least 10-15 minutes. And she suggests a "messy writing" approach, that is I am experimenting here. :)

Good, common sense approach to working through the dissertation process, from selection of topic and advisor to transforming the dissertation into a potential book. The emphatic call to "just write" and the zero draft were good reminders that the process is more about getting the ideas out and revised than writing the perfect document - especially the first time through. I picked up some good tips and reminders. Good, if getting dated.

Super hint book and helped my wife complete her Doctoral Thesis.

This is the kind of book you should check out from the library, not buy. It’s a quick read with good advice, but you can finish it in an hour or two.

Joan Bolker is a clinical psychologist who specializes in helping writers get over their problems. Also she has worked in the Harvard Writing Lab, so she has a great deal of experience with writers of dissertations. This experience really shines in this book. She approached the problem of writing from a psychological angle. She covers some common problems faced by graduate students and gives practical advice for overcoming these obstacles. The key to writing is to write while you are thinking, or even before. If you attempt to write after thinking, you will block out a lot of ideas before they have a chance to mature. The important thing is to get your thoughts out onto paper, then after you collect lots of ideas, go back over what you wrote and pick out the pearls. If you edit yourself while you're writing, you tend to be overly critical and the negativity blocks the flow of the writing process. Actually, I think this book would be great not only for dissertation writers, but for writers of any kind. If you're facing a wall in your writing, this book could help you out a lot.

This book is an excellent resource. The author has written this book in a very motivational, easy to understand, and yet scholarly manner. The approach taken is easy to implement and very practical. I began to implement the techniques and methods immediately upon reading the first few chapters and have been able to maintain the discipline on a consistent basis. This book also meshes very well with my school's doctoral approach to dissertation development, so there is no conflict between what the author says and how I am asked to implement my dissertation. I would recommend this book to everyone who is a doctoral student and writing a dissertation.

This small book really helped me to get my dissertation done and I frequently recommend it to aspiring candidates and others with big writing tasks in front of them. She really speaks to the heart and gets you going with motivation, clarity about your goals, and logic. The advice about choosing emotionally supportive advisers is priceless and, while I had already made that choice, getting it validated helped me so much. There are tons of gems in this slim volume. Get it, you won't be sorry. (PS: I now teach writing myself.)