We’ve just wrapped up another Thesis Bootcamp and I wanted to write some reflections on how the weekend went.
If you don’t know what the Thesis Bootcamp format is, in my view it’s the most powerful writing intensive around. Nothing is more effective at getting doctoral students to write. Bar none.
It was developed in 2012 and it was designed as a way to help end-stage doctoral students write entire draft chapters in just a few days.
It sounds absurd, but hear me out. By the time you finish reading this you’ll see what I mean.
Over four days, and with lots of planning resources beforehand, students meet for four intensive writing days. These can be in person or online – online is more comfortable and convenient but loses some of the camaraderie when poorly facilitated. Things are led by one or more writing instructors (in our case it’s two). They’re there to motivate, structure the day, and make sure participants aren’t getting distracted.
The goal is that, over four days, participants are pushed to write as much as they can. Typically up to 20,000 words, although the spread on bootcamps we’ve run in the past typically ranges from 10–37k (yes, really).
If you want to see the cohort word counts from three of our previous bootcamps, click here, here and here.
“I’m Skeptical. This Isn’t How I Write”
I get it. I know what you’re thinking. 20k words is great, but it’s all going to be rubbish and need tons of editing.
It won’t be rubbish, but it will need editing, yes. But that’s how writing works.
One of the most exciting – but also toughest – challenges we have on the bootcamps, particularly when we do the prep workshops and exercises in the weeks beforehand, is showing students the power of this generative form of writing.
Too often students write like, well, students rather than academics. Writing like a student means you write and edit concurrently, ending up in the perfect sentence vortex. Words and sentences are crafted as if precious jewellery.
Writing in this way works, eventually. You get there in the end, but because you’ve been working sentence to sentence the writing can easily feel choppy, and it’s easy for the argument to be disjointed or lost entirely.
In other words, it needs editing anyway.
Generative writing takes a different approach. One with lower stakes. It requires you to write. Just write. No distractions, no looking for references, no digging around to find that one paper you read years ago. You just vomit the words onto the page, giving scant regard for quality. You leave placeholders for yourself where you’ll need to follow up, or you can’t remember references, and you just keep the flow going.
In other words, you write first, edit later.
Writing and editing are two different skill sets, and doing them both concurrently adds significant cognitive load. Task switching between them is inefficient, and doesn’t foster creativity.
Writing, though, is an act of thinking – by letting words flow, and quieting the inner editor whilst you do so, you’re getting the jumble of ideas out, and they start to crystallise. A little at first, but enough to give you a firm stance when it comes to editing.
If this seems alien, though, know this: you can’t just sit down and write generatively. You need to prepare and plan it out.
That’s why the Thesis Bootcamp format also involves a Thesis Roadmapping exercise, and a Goal Setting and Preparation workshop in the weeks prior. The Roadmap is there to force you to map out your chapter (or whatever else you’re working on), map what you have already written (if anything), what you don’t yet know, and what you kind of know but haven’t written. It’s that third bucket you focus on during a bootcamp: the half-ideas and loose thinking that’s in your brain, in some kind of rough order, but not on the page yet.
On the writing weekend itself (three full days of writing spread over four calendar days), the focus is on volume, not quality. It’s on treating the writing process as a way of thinking. On letting your guard down, silencing the inner editor, and trusting that when you write then edit you end up with a first, crappy draft done quickly, which is better than what happens when you write and edit, which means you produce only a marginally less crappy draft, but much more slowly.
What’s the benefit of a Thesis Bootcamp?
The biggest benefit of the thesis bootcamp format is being able to take a giant leap in the volume of writing and ideas you have to work with in the editing phase. It’s often the case that participants write more in those four days than they have in the last few months, so even though it’s a draft, it represents a tremendous amount of progress and means, in very real terms, that they’re likely to submit sooner.
But beyond this, the format itself – and breaking down the inner editor – is a skill you have with you for the rest of your writing career. And like everything worthwhile, the more you do it the easier it gets. Once people have a taste of generative writing, and once they see that it makes the entire writing process so much more enjoyable and lower stakes, they firmly incorporate it into their repertoire.
As with everything, moderation is key. Generative writing becomes one tool in a varied writing arsenal. You certainly wouldn’t want to write this way all the time – you’ll end up exhausted. But when you add it into your other weekly and monthly writing rhythms, it can act as a turbocharger when you need to speed up.
What’s the catch?
It’s exhausting, for one. You’ll get to the end of the four day of a Thesis Bootcamp and be completely wiped out. That’s normal – you’ve been engaging your brain pretty much non-stop, and it’ll be dead by the time you’re finished.
And it takes a lot of planning. To make the most out of the format, you really do have to spend half a day, or sometimes more, completing the Roadmap exercise. But it’s worth it, because it allows you to just focus on writing, safe in the knowledge that you have planned what you’re going to tackle beforehand.
You’ll also end up with a lot to do at the editing stage. But it’s easier to edit ideas than write them. Most bootcamps – including ours – include a post-weekend editing workshop, which gives you guidance on how to turn the messy draft into something more usable.
We also run one-to-one consultations with participants so they can drill down a bit more into what they’ve written and get advice on what comes next.
But these drawbacks really are a small price to pay. Writing is tiring however you do it, planning your writing is never a bad idea, and you’ll have to edit anyway.
“I’m not sold. This isn’t for me and this isn’t how I write.”
I get it. Everyone is sceptical going in. It’s to be expected – you’ve probably never written in this way before, and you’ve got so used to the perfect sentence vortex that you can’t see what a huge cognitive load you’re under writing and editing concurrently. Your inner editor is running the show.
But within the first few hours, participants start to get it. And by the end, when they’ve got 20k words under their belt, they’re sold.
Let me come at this a different way. When we run our bootcamps we offer a double-money-back guarantee. If people don’t see the benefits by the time they’re done, we’ll refund twice their money.
No one has ever taken us up on that offer. That goes to show you, right?
Hear from one participant about how they got on during the bootcamp:
Who is it for?
The Thesis Bootcamp format only really works if you’ve got a substantial piece of writing you’re working on. Most often that’s a chapter or a journal article. Or perhaps a book chapter.
But it doesn’t really work if you’re at the early stages of the doctoral journey and you’re still doing the research. You need to be able to commit to a few solid days of writing, largely free of notes and plans. It needs to already be in your head – however jumbled – in order for you to tease it out and put it on the page.
Want to join a Thesis Bootcamp?
If you’re interested in this format, you should check to see whether your university runs them. Some do; most don’t.
But if they don’t, then know that we run them. We do about six throughout the year, and they’re open to students from anywhere in the world and studying any subject.
If you want to find out more and join us on one, you can click this link. Remember, if you don’t think it’s right for you we’ll give you twice your money back. That’s how confident I am in the power of this format.
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