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

“Fifteen minutes!” you say. “That’s too good to be true!” Okay, author Joan Bolker admits she gave her book the title Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Dayto get the reader’s attention. And she admits that it’s unlikely you’ll actually finish a dissertation at that speed. As she tells her clients, however, a mere 15 minutes is much better than no writing at all when they’re stuck. As a clinical psychologist who cofounded the Harvard Writing Center, Bolker has helped hundreds of writers complete their dissertations. She offers suggestions on how to create a writing addiction so that you feel incomplete if you don’t write every day and stresses the need to set reasonable goals and deadlines for yourself to keep from getting discouraged. She also offers strategies for dealing with both internal and external distractions and for fending off writer’s block. Even more important is the advice on some of the more awkward issues related to dissertation writing, such as how to choose your adviser carefully. (For example, when faced with the tradeoff between a famous advisor who is inaccessible and a less famous advisor who is willing to make time for you, Bolker advises, “If choosing a politically advantageous, famous advisor makes it unlikely that you’ll complete your degree, it’s clearly not worth it.”) The book even includes a helpful appendix for advisers that could become the basis for an honest discussion of what student and adviser can expect from each other. Throughout this excellent book, Bolker acts as a therapist, cheerleader, and drill sergeant, all rolled into one.

While some of the book’s advice is of interest only to dissertation writers, much of the information–on battling writer’s block, for instance–is valuable to anybody engaged in writing. Rather than being filled with rules defining how to become a great writer, Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day is about finding the process by which you can be the most productive–it’s a set of exercises that you can use to find out more about you and the way you write. Along the way, you’ll do a bit of writing. And that’s what matters, especially when you experience writer’s block–as Bolker says, “Write anything, because writing is writing.” With its helpful advice and supportive tone, Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day should be required reading for anyone considering writing a dissertation. –C.B. Delaney