1st Edition
Writing Well and Being Well for Your PhD and Beyond How to Cultivate a Strong and Sustainable Writing Practice for Life
Prioritizing wellbeing alongside academic development, this book provides practical advice to help students write well, and be well, during their PhD and throughout their career.
In this unique book, Katherine Firth offers expert guidance on developing a writing practice and avoiding burnout, providing strategies and insights for developing a sustainable writing career beyond the PhD thesis. The book covers every stage of the academic writing process, from planning and researching, through getting words on the page, to the often unexpectedly time-consuming editing and polishing. Readers are reminded that writing a thesis is hard work, but it needn’t be damaging work. Each chapter includes a toolbox of strategies and techniques, such as meditations, writing exercises and tips to maintain physical wellbeing, that will help doctoral candidates start writing and keep writing, without sacrificing their health, wellbeing or relationships.
Relevant at any stage of the writing process, this book will help doctoral students and early career researchers to produce great words that people want to read, examiners want to pass and editors want to publish.
Introduction 1. Reading and thinking: Also part of the writing process 2. Planning: Getting to where you want to go 3. Writing: Getting the words onto the page 4. Recharging: Using rest to help you write 5. Editing: Getting your thesis into shape 6. Polishing: Making your thesis shine 7. Rewriting: Addressing feedback from yourself and others 8. Conclusion: Writing well is not the opposite of being well
Biography
Katherine Firth has been developing research writers for more than 15 years and is currently Head of Lisa Bellear House, the University of Melbourne. A co-founder of the award-winning Thesis Bootcamp program, she maintains a writing blog, Research Degree Insiders. She is co-author of the books How to Fix your Academic Writing Trouble (2018), Your PhD Survival Guide (2020) and Level Up your Essays (2021).
"As series editor I could not wish for a more perfect book that is the first authored adventure to complement the edited volumes in the series. This book is your best friend. It gives permission for you to reset and reconnect to calming and soothing ways to explore your writing. It’s personal, relatable, oozing with strategies for your wellbeing and self-care and helps you re-think your writing. It simply is a gift."
Narelle Lemon, Professor of Education, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
"This is the best book on writing up research I have ever read, I understand why some writing approaches can’t work for me, and like Katherine recommends, I won’t feel guilty (anymore) about being non-linear and picking flowers along intriguing byways □□ Because I do seem to get there in the end."
Danielle Terceiro, PhD student publishing articles about picture books and graphic novels for a PhD by publication.
"This book will be a vital guide for postgraduate researchers, irrespective of their subject dis□cipline, mode of study or where they are at in their writing project. Academic staff who are responsible for the facilitation of workshops or for providing writing spaces aimed at doctoral researchers will also benefit from this text, as they can implement the exercises contained within. Researchers investigating the wellbeing of doctoral researchers will also find this book appealing due to the signposting of further sources that are presented within “notes” boxes after the different sections of the book.
Aysha Mazhar, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Keele University, UK.
