Writing Well and Being Well for Your PhD and Beyond

Prioritizing wellbeing alongside academic development, this book provides practical advice to help students write well, and be well, during their PhD and throughout their career. In this unique book, Katherine Firth offers expert guidance on developing a writing practice and avoiding burnout, providing strategies and insights for developing a sustainable writing career beyond the PhD thesis. The book covers every stage of the academic writing process, from planning and researching, through getting words on the page, to the often unexpectedly time-consuming editing and polishing. Readers are reminded that writing a thesis is hard work, but it needn’t be damaging work. Each chapter includes a toolbox of strategies and techniques, such as meditations, writing exercises and tips to maintain physical wellbeing, that will help doctoral candidates start writing and keep writing, without sacrificing their health, wellbeing or relationships. Relevant at any stage of the writing process, this book will help doctoral students and early career researchers to produce great words that people want to read, examiners want to pass and editors want to publish.

'As series editor I could not wish for a more perfect book that is the first authored adventure to complement the edited volumes in the series. This book is your best friend. It gives permission for you to reset and reconnect to calming and soothing ways to explore your writing. It’s personal, relatable, oozing with strategies for your wellbeing and self-care and helps you re-think your writing. It simply is a gift.'Narelle Lemon, Professor of Education, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia

Katherine Firth has been developing research writers for more than 15 years and is currently Head of Lisa Bellear House, the University of Melbourne. A co-founder of the award-winning Thesis Bootcamp program, she maintains a writing blog, Research Degree Insiders. She is co-author of the books How to Fix your Academic Writing Trouble (2018), Your PhD Survival Guide (2020) and Level Up your Essays (2021).