After a two-week break during which I constructed and dismantled scaffolding inside the Glastonbury Festival's Property Lockups (which made a welcome change from doing the same thing to the thesis - though it was no less physically and mentally exhausting), it was back to the grindstone. 

I've worked solidly for the last 8 days, and have managed to redraft, restructure, and rewrite much of the main body of the thesis in this time. That amounts to 91,000 words of second-draft material. 

The introduction/literature review (currently 15,000 words) needs a bit more attention, so I'll look at that in the next 2 days. After that it'll be time to make like a Tory and subject the whole thing to swingeing cuts. 

But those cuts will be made to improve the quality, clarity and cogency of the thesis, not to create the opportunity for those omitted sections to be taken over and run by the private sector, i.e. businesses owned by the sons of my Dad's chums. Having said that, if any sons of my Dad's chums are reading, they are welcome to try to make a cash profit from the excised material. I hear cushions still require stuffing, even during the recession.

Whilst looking for an old file I came across something I wrote pretty much this time a year ago, when I was preparing to stop researching and start writing. I gave a rough version of it as a paper in a PhD workshop in Swansea. I sent a rough version to GRADBritain, who asked me to work it up into a full article but then declined to put it in the magazine. It is reproduced below, and makes for interesting reading (to me at least, having now completed the year that the article looks forward to).

The PhD Pendulum (written around Spring 2009) 

Last month marked the 60^th anniversary of the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Normally I would need little, if any, excuse to crowbar a bit of Orwell into my writing, but actually this here article is all about 'the need for Postgraduate Researchers (PGRs) to practice doublethink in order to successfully complete their thesis' – so there.

Also, mentioning the anniversary of the first appearance of Orwell's magnum opus in print seems apt because this is the month when I will finally begin to write up my thesis. The vision I have of my future is certainly Orwellean enough: I picture a blinking cursor stamping on a blank word document forever…

During a brief pause between migraines I began to think about the reasons why I ventured on my area of research in the first place. So I dug up my original research questions. Conceived twenty five months ago, they shone with a sense of definite purpose.

They were free from the cynicism, the tears, the despair, the pain and the grief that had followed. The methodology was refreshingly crisp: Secondary literature had covered this – but had missed out this – thus, my thesis will explore this.

Alas but for all their childlike optimism, my original research questions would always be intellectually stunted. They had to change. I had to change. The process would make a great film (or, more likely, a rubbish one): THE THESIS.

Recall with me now the cinematic montage of lightbulb moments that illustrate the PGR's growth and development into a higher being: 'Ping' – the new idea inspired by attendance at a research seminar; 'Ping' – the new understanding wrought from better knowledge of the wider issues involved; 'P-p-pernngh' – the drunken conversation about one's field at a conference.

And in the film version of THE THESIS, look now as to the sound of rocking drums and powerchords my research questions re-emerge. They're stronger. Fitter. Leaner. No longer do they merely question and challenge the conclusions of the existing secondary literature, but they critique the entire conceptual framework around which an analysis of my topic should be built. A bit. I hope. Probably not, actually.

Anyway, the point is, a thesis is structured around certain themes which correspond to, or seek to answer a set of research questions. These themes are the bones around which the flesh of our research hangs. But what is, or rather, what form should the process for constructing them take? (This question has come up time and again in discussion with those embarking on their PhD studies)

In part, these research questions must be planned, anticipated from the outset, conceived at the start, thought up in advance. There is so much material that we need guiding principles in order to know what to look for.

But on the other hand, they must also be partly discovered, unearthed, derived from the research, from the evidence. The difficulty, especially early on, comes in reconciling these opposing origins.

As the clock ticked ever on towards my submission date, my mind was drawn towards the movement of a pendulum, and how it was a bit like the momentum of a research project's progress. The pendulum swings in one direction towards the need to 'anticipate' the themes or research questions, while the necessity of 'discovering' them lies at the other end of the arc.

Of course, to start off with, the pendulum needs to go in one direction or the other. We can probably only begin by looking to anticipate the themes, or by relaxing and hoping they would crop up through reading.

The mistake I made was trying to anticipate all my themes and research questions perfectly at the start for too long a time. If you push the pendulum too far in one direction, it becomes increasingly difficult and immobile the longer you try.

You do need to start with some anticipation, but the overall process tends to be more fluid, more dynamic, some would say more chaotic and haphazard. There is some anticipation, then some discovery, then some anticipation, then some more discovery. As the momentum builds, the project's movement and progress becomes self-sustaining, needing only the occasional nudge in either direction, probably from your supervisor, to keep it going.

My wish to anticipate all the reseach questions in advance stemmed from a huge fear of going off in the wrong direction and wasting valuable time. I can forgive myself for this mistake: I had at least realised the importance of making your first plans and research questions as good as you can possibly make them, and of defining your field as well as you possibly can.

Here is where we can benefit from a bit of doublethink. You need to define your field as if you will never need to consider it again, and to prepare, research, draft, and refine your initial plans as if it will be the very framework around which the final thesis will be built, while at the same time knowing that after three years of research and re-evaluation, of the pendulum swinging back and fore, those same initial plans will necessarily be almost embarrassingly inadequate.

The key is to be able to hold these two opposing ideas in your mind simultaneously, and most importantly, being comfortable and content with them both despite the inherent conflict between the two. If you can do this, you may not emerge on the other side having finally learned to love researching the thesis, as Winston Smith learned to love Big Brother, but at least you may be better prepared to deal with that eternally blinking cursor when it arrives.