The Clockwork Muse: A Practical Guide to Writing Theses, Dissertations, and Books

The author presents a framework for breaking large writing projects down into manageable chunks, along with practical ways to schedule writing without those constant readjustments that can make things tedious.

I had the good fortune of reading this when it first came out. I was in grad school then. Since that time, I return to this book for its critical insights. It always teaches me something new.

Concise with honed down basics on how to get organized and how to maintain and revise the organizational plan all the way to the final draft. In the past I had ordered other books of this nature and found them to be too wordy (they included extraneous materials such as advice on style, and psychological stuff, and were often cluttered with folksy advice on how great writers wrote their works). You can read this book in a few hours but it will take a few days to draw up the plan. Once you do however the writing project will be in manageable units with intelligent targets for each phase of the process. This at least has been my experience.

I didn't find much in this book helpful because (I realized while reading it) I've been, to all intents and purposes, a professional writer for my entire adult life--between freelancing and work responsibilities. So everything in this book I'd already figured out for myself. Fortunately, that made it a very quick read/skim for me. I only highlighted a couple of statements that were potentially useful tweaks on what I already know to do. However, if you're new to writing longer manuscripts and are concerned about how to go about doing it, you may well benefit far more from this book than I did. His diagrams about planning are useful information. There isn't much help here in terms of content--other books have offered more in terms of questions to ask yourself along the way and tips for fine-tuning your topics, etc. This one is solely about the writing schedule, doing drafts, etc.

Not only helpful for organizing a writing project, The Clockwork Muse gives suggested procedures for ordering a writer's life for effective output. Self imposed deadlines and methods to meet them provide structure for the discipline of writing seriously and opportunities to encounter your Muse when you have time to listen and to transfer that communication to the printed page. This book is especially useful for those who have difficulty with the principle that to be a writer one has to write.

I enjoyed reading this book. The author has some good practical advice about allocating time for a big project. I'm embarking on the writing of my dissertation proposal and this has helped me put it all in perspective. I think this book contains useful advice for anyone embarking on a large writing project.

Great great book for my Study time and management to have the best mind to write professionally. It is one of the greatest book I have ever had for my life. I truly recommend it for grad students, professors, teachers, writers, and those who wants to publish their book on time schedule.

This book was recommended to me by my dissertation coach. It is an easy read and provides concrete advice on how to manage the always difficult task of writing. While there are many choices for writing self-help books, this one is certainly among the best.

Having started editing my second novel this was a good book to read, even if I didn't completely follow his detailed suggestions of mapping out a schedule. It inspired me though to get on with it and I have been pushing myself to edit for at least an hour a day with a goal of finishing draft 2 in a month. Anything that gets one going is a good book!

The author did a good job of breaking down his writing process in order to share it with the reader. I believe if we follow this process we can learn to be more productive writers. The process as I understood could be summarised as:- block your weekly activities and schedule time to write- experiment with optimal writing session length- experiment with optimal writing session time (identify productive times and days)- block in 'b' writing times for tasks which are important but not as cognitively demanding as actual writing eg. Bibliography- break down the manuscript into chapters and segments- over estimate page numbers for each segment- underestimate pace for each segment (pages per day)- now create a timetable with concrete deadlines- redraft your thesis several times, but only after completing the whole- don't redraft or reread as you goI liked the way I could connect the advice in this book with others I have read about producing journal articles- but I similarly disliked that this book did not add much new information to what I had already read.I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in becoming a writer, anyone with a writing deadline, or anyone looking to improve their writing productivity.

If you are writing a thesis or book - buy this now!This came highly recommended by my PhD supervisor and I found it immensely useful.

This a book very useful for PhD students and general writers because you can learn to manage your time wisely