But, the part of your advice that rang the loudest bells in my brain was the thing about getting tangled in the weeds. Of course! I have been thinking about my process and how I go about building chapters and the whole project, and you are totally right – I am polishing parts that might just get chucked out in revision. And on top of it, it’s extra-hard to let go of sections whose prose I have already gotten just so. Geez! Why??? I’ve been revising a particularly long chapter in the last two weeks and, after letting myself do a once-over for grammar (couldn’t help it) and running up against my color-coded calendar deadline, I ended up just printing what I had, making a new outline, and, barely even reading the individual sentences, just moving parts around, deleting parts that were not relevant, etc. Sometimes I would have a note in the margin saying “add transition here.” Then I would just throw in a transition. Nothing fancy, no metaphors, just “as I was saying above, now I’m going to talk about this other thing that follows.” Thrilling.

So, just wanted to check in and say that your kick in the pants+insight about the details versus the bigger picture and what comes first was much appreciated. As my deadline for completion is in about 3 months, I’m going to leave the writing coaches alone for now. But YT, I totally know about that website, and reading the PhD Poverty stories on there has been both embarrassing and depressing. But yea, she’s definitely on my list for application materials come fall.

It seems weird but it’s being talked about a lot in academia right now–she recently wrote an article for The Chronicle about how everybody’s thesis advisor is failing them or whatever. It seems legit for people in your situation?? Check it out maybe!

I think Andrew’s advice was spot-on.