Dissertation Writing

This is great! I am roughly on the same timeline so it’ll be nice to share the joys and struggles.

I am writing grant applications and I have already written my MD Thesis and my PhD Thesis. The best advice I can give is ‘be inspired’! It sounds obvious, but the concept of being inspired goes beyond the basic inspiration of writing something, in the sense of feeling like doing it or even finding the sentences to write.
Being inspired to me means having ideas and thoughts popping spontaneously out of your mind, such that you feel compelled of making a drawing, a diagram, taking note of a word that to you expresses an entire concept.
It’s like putting together the pieces of a puzzle. Initially you know the big picture but you are left with a mess of small pieces and you need to catch the fine details to reconstruct the final picture. First, you try to frame the image looking for those pieces that have a flat end (that’s how I solve puzzles); then you start working on image blocks, and the pieces start appearing under a different perspective. When you eventually are able to finish a block or find the missing piece linking two different blocks, that’s a great deal of satisfaction and a fuel for your motivation to keep working on your puzzle. Eventually, no one will stop you: you are into groove of writing!
I have to say that experience helps a lot, but this doesn’t mean that experienced people are immune to the ‘white page effect’. Actually, after more than a decade writing, I experience that myself.
A simple trick to overcome this issue? Write even single words, even if you think that they don’t make sense together, full sentences are not a must at this stage: keywords count. Then, you will be able to connect the dots creating a meaningful sentence.