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| Author: Joan Bolker
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
Buy New: $11.53
You Save: $5.42 (32%)
Rating:  63 reviews
Sales Rank: 5770
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 184
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.5 x 0.6
ISBN: 080504891X
Dewey Decimal Number: 808.066378
EAN: 9780805048919
Publication Date: August 15, 1998
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
 Stressed Doctorate Student July 8, 2002
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
Anything that can make you laugh in a time of extreme stress is worth it. This book has helped me get focused, and actually work on my dissertation. The dissertation is the worst part of the degree. The author has helped me see the fun in the process of completing my doctorate. I don't feel extreme stress anymore. Just follow the steps and you will be writting in no time. Enjoy yourself.
 Don't fall for the hype January 14, 2004
11 out of 47 found this review helpful
If you are a Ph.D. student looking into the face of writing your dissertation and you think this book is going to help, think again, and again, and again... The only thing you can do to help you write your dissertation is writing the stupid thing. No cute tricks, no magic formulas. The only good thing about this book is that it's not priced like an obscure graduate text that you may never use again but is required for such-and-such class. My major professor told me when I began writing that he had never seen anyone write a dissertation in less than a year. It took me a year, almost to the day, to write mine. Of course, that included several rewrites, etc. If you think 15 minutes a day (or 30 minutes, or 2 hours, or 12 hours) is gonna get you through in a "reasonable" amount of time, or without once thinking this was the worst mistake you could have ever made (believe me, if you don't doubt it at some point you're not doing something worthwhile) then go ahead and buy this book. Trust me, you're better off buying some good beer.
Writing One Day at a Time February 8, 2004
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
I am in the middle of writing my masters and this book was perfect for overcoming my writers block. I can't thank the author enough for helping me through this anxiety. My favorite quote is from her daughter about focusing on "Writing One Day at a Time." This book seems to be the reverse of alcohols annonymous (where you are trying to give up an addition to drinking alcohol), instead this book seems to be about learning how to become addicted to writing every day. Many kudos to the author for a well written book!
A Great Resource August 1, 2004
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
Joan Bolker is a clinical psychologist who specializes in helping writers get over their problems. Also she has worked in the Harvard Writing Lab, so she has a great deal of experience with writers of dissertations. This experience really shines in this book. She approached the problem of writing from a psychological angle. She covers some common problems faced by graduate students and gives practical advice for overcoming these obstacles. The key to writing is to write while you are thinking, or even before. If you attempt to write after thinking, you will block out a lot of ideas before they have a chance to mature. The important thing is to get your thoughts out onto paper, then after you collect lots of ideas, go back over what you wrote and pick out the pearls. If you edit yourself while you're writing, you tend to be overly critical and the negativity blocks the flow of the writing process. Actually, I think this book would be great not only for dissertation writers, but for writers of any kind. If you're facing a wall in your writing, this book could help you out a lot.
Great Advice for Tackling a Major Writing Project August 30, 2004
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
First, Bolker must be commended for the catchy title. Which graduate student wouldn't stop to examine a book with the heading Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day? Yet, the subtitle is really what this book is about - "starting, revising, and finishing" the writing of your dissertation or thesis.
Although not a systematic book about this process, this text offers some very useful information about not only the practice of writing, but also other pertinent issues faced by graduate students such as topic, advisor, and committee selection. Bolker goes a step beyond most other books on the subject of the dissertation process by devoting a full chapter to a discussion of dealing with interruptions. This is valuable information that all graduate students can use.
This is one of the few books that I read while working on my dissertation that I didn't feel was a waste of my time or money. I used many of the techniques that Bolker describes and suggest them to my graduate student clients who are in the process of writing their theses and dissertations. I highly recommend that this book be used in conjunction with one that presents a more methodical approach to the dissertation.
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