The best dissertation

Aha experience: The best dissertation is a completed dissertation, not a perfect one, and definitley not an unfinished one.

My release: I abandon perfectionism. I give myself permission to be imperfect. You can't tell from a completed thesis how many years it took to write or how many chapter drafts were rejected. Each academic has their own writing story. Where planning and organisation are absent, perseverance wins. Right now I'm being evaluated on how many chapters I can produce.

Progress: I've just finished the third draft of my literature review chapter. It's 23 pages long. That's 11,350 words, a bit over 10,000 but not bad. I got rid of the 'ing' words like 'establishing' and replaced them with concepts words like 'establishment.' I found it's better to write 'that indicates' rather than 'this shows'. 'Show' is too colloquial. I did an edit/word find in my draft and discovered I used the word 'can' 53 times. Never use 'can' in a thesis.

Next task: ...but I can use can't...I can't submit my chapter draft to my supervisor till I fix up my bibliography. The 'cite while you write' function doesn't work in my Word program. I'll get around it. It's a bit tedious but such a relief to have the chapter finished.

Tomorrow's day job: Make a few changes to my Methodology chapter and submit that too. All I have to do is update the references to the last 5 years. Nothing before the year 2000. I've got the books. I've re-read them. It won't take me long to finish that chapter.

Current state: I'm smiling. I can get back to reading some trashy detective and historical fiction novels in the evenings with my hot chocolate instead of wading through concepts and theories. Life is good.