If you have passed my blog the latest year(s) or so, you might have noticed that the activity has not been so grand. The reason for this inactivity is because of perhaps the largest writing project I have EVER attempted. Some years ago I decided to write a one year master thesis or a magisteruppsats as we say here in Sweden! This post will be a tad longer, so I would recommend to get a beverage of your own choice to accompany you during the reading!
During a course where we looked at the indigenous people’s religion, my interest awakened. Later after my bachelor I attended some second level courses. Since those courses worked out alright I decided to write a thesis. Since I live in Sweden and had read some about the Saami in northern Scandinavia, I thought that would be a great subject for my thesis project. When I saw a documentary film about the Saami view of the bear I knew what I wanted to investigate. In my thesis project I analyse five known bear myths from Sápmi with narrative criticism.
This blog post will have a subjective perspective since I write about my own experiences writing the thesis. The reason why I’m doing this is for my own benefit to sort of put in writing what I’ve learned and also if there are students out there writing an essay of some sort, maybe they can read it and possibly avoid some of my mistakes!
If you would like to read the thesis I would recommend you to use this link:
If you have an interest in bears and myths and the Saami it will be a splendid read for you, if you don’t find that interesting at all, then maybe you can use it as a sleeping pill and consider your trouble sleeping gone permanently!
The saying ignorance is bliss is oh, so, VERY correct! If I had known the amount of work that was needed to finish the thesis, I would probably NOT have endeavoured to begin such a project. This has truly been a learning experience for me, and I now know how not go about writing a thesis project! These are the traps that I fell right into which would be helpful to avoid in the future:
A) It is NOT a good start to work full time and study full time when I am beginning writing my thesis. Even if this particular situation lasted only for a couple of months, it did not help me get a good start.
B) I should not have run off oh so happily, to the library and search for literature on and around the subject BEFORE I knew what I wanted to write about! I found A LOT of nice and interesting books and articles that I read through. BUT they were often in the outskirts of the phenomenon that I ended up investigating. That time reading SHOULD have been spent on my blue couch thinking through what I want to investigate.
C) A theory does NOT land on my lap, no matter how much I hope it will! A theory MUST be searched for, found, read, and tested before it is chosen!
D) Delaying the writing process is NOT a good choice! Something happens when you read about stuff and write about it!
E) Defining the object of study is a good thing to do quite EARLY in the process, and NOT to increase it after the first year or so...!
So, did I not do anything right? Perhaps to the readers of this blog’s astonishment I did!
1) I chose a phenomenon to investigate that I was REALLY and TRULY interested in! If I had not I think I would not have been able to finish it.
2) Perhaps what I did the best was that I did not quit! For quitters do not win, or finish what they have started! One big reason to be able to finish the project was that I constantly tried to be better and taking the critique that I got and re-do it one, two or more times over.
For my next thesis project I will:
a) NOT run off with a silly smile on may face to the library and borrow books!
b) Read a) again, and this time DILIGENTLY!
c) Still on my blue couch locate a phenomenon that I want to investigate.
d) In the found phenomenon CHOOSE a piece to analyse.
e) For the piece to be analysed choose WISELY a theory that will do the trick.
f) When a theory is found, locate essays where the theory is used and see how it works, and if possible “borrow” that essay’s structure!
g) NOW the time has come to leave the blue couch and go to the library and search for books and articles!
h) Start the writing process, perhaps that can be done even earlier!
i) Read, investigate, analyse, read some more, write some more and come to a conclusion et voila a finished thesis project!
Writing a thesis project is a process, and processes are not static, things happen! Everyone that has built an instrument can attest to that. So it is also with a writing project. Therefore it is important to know what I want to investigate, because if I know what my goal is I can plot a course along that line even if I get sidetracked, which I will and many times so!
Speaking or writing about processes, I feel that I must confess that I periodically felt stupid during the writing. I do not know how that could be since I have ALWAYS passed my exams on the first go, and sometimes even got a high grade. And I had taken enough courses up to the thesis, so I have not skipped important ones. It sometimes felt like I tried to do this fundamentally important work (for me) and instead of using the word processor I only had crayons and blank sheets of paper! Perhaps we can charge that to the account of the process. I haven’t really experienced that before, sure the confidence has sometimes wavered, but I always have come through. If those thoughts will appear again I will try and take a step back and make me realize that it is ok and I have come this far and it IS time for a thesis, and I will pull through, eventually.
Lately I have thought of the structure of a thesis as building blocks, or like Legos if you’d like. Where the most important ones are the area of study and the theory and method. The thesis’s question(s) that I ask will depend on the theory I will use. It is important to pose questions that the theory will be able to answer. If I have these blocks in order then the rest will come. It is important that the theory and area of study makes good music together. The time spent on the blue couch locating a good theory is time well spent! When the project is still in the idea phase it might be easier to look at certain theories and view it from other angles. Like Lego bricks, what happens if I use these two bricks? Or change that one into this one, what will the result be? Because when the writing process starts it is more difficult to make large changes, because of the time spent writing. So to sum up, make sure the building blocks fit together snuggly or as good as they possibly can, so they can make good music together!
I will end this post with some tips on the craft of writing:
1) Someone wrote somewhere, I think, that writers come out of readers. During my project I have read many essays and theses. To learn from those who know better than me and also to learn from their mistakes. One of the things that I have gotten the most critique on is the language. I decided against my better judgement, to write my thesis in English. Because as most Swedes do I think I am proficient in the language. But writing a thesis is a whole other ball game, than to read a text or write an email to a friend. Although the writing of a novel is different from writing a thesis, there are authors out there who have written about their craft and perhaps they have something to teach.
2) My supervisor came with this tip, when cutting pieces of the text, paste them into another document. This will make it easier to cut down the text, for is is retrievable. I did this and some pieces have been cut, pasted into another document; just to be found worthy again later and pasted them back into the thesis!
3) When the thesis has a large amount of text, it might be difficult to write new pieces. What I did was that I created a new document, where I wrote the new pieces free of what’s coming before and after, that helped me a lot. When the new piece was ready it was just to copy and paste it and do some finishing touches!
4) When a paragraph needs to be looked at carefully, it is easier to focus on it if there are blank spaces above and below it. This also makes room to move around single words or lines of text.
5) It is well worth finding a writing process that works, not just for the first week or so when inspiration is high, but also for the days, weeks or months when inspiration is low or extinct! I am fortunate enough to be able to sit through hours of writing or reading, but sometimes a break is needed and it is during some of these breaks that break throughs or good ideas have come!
And on that note I will end this blog post, proud, a little tired and oh so very, VERY proud!
Take care!
P.s I might return to write more on this fascinating subject, or not...!
P.s 2 Here are two illustration that I did for the thesis:
