Your dissertation may be the longest piece of writing you have ever done, but there are ways to approach it that will help to make it less overwhelming.
Write up as you go along.It is much easier to keep track of how your ideas develop and writing helps clarify your thinking. It also saves having to churn out 1000s of words at the end.
You don't have to start with the introduction– start at the chapter that seems the easiest to write – this could be the literature review or methodology, for example. Alternatively you may prefer to write the introduction first, so you can get your ideas straight. Decide what will suit your ways of working best - then do it.
Think of each chapter as an essay in itself– it should have a clear introduction and conclusion. Use the conclusion to link back to the overall research question.
Think of the main argument of your dissertation as a river, and each chapter is a tributary feeding into this. The individual chapters will contain their own arguments, and go their own way, but they all contribute to the main flow.
Write a chapter, read it and do a redraft - then move on. This stops you from getting bogged down in one chapter.
Write your references properlyand in full from the beginning. Consider using a reference management tool such as EndNote or Mendeley to store the details of the materials you will want to use and to add them to your text.
Keep your word count in mind– be ruthless and don't write anything that isn't relevant. It's often easier to add information, than have to cut down a long chapter that you've slaved over for hours.
Save your work!Remember to save your work frequently tosomewhere you can access it easily. It's a good idea to at least save a copy to a cloud-based service like Google Docs or Dropbox so that you can access it from any computer - if you only save to your own PC, laptop or tablet, you could lose everything if you lose or break your device.
