Ellie Mackin is a third year PhD student in Classics at King’s College London, and is working through Wendy Belcher’s ‘Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks’ while attempting to finish her thesis.

I have long since accepted that my thesis won’t be perfect – that I just have to get it to good enough to pass (with minor corrections). Why cannot I do the same with this article?  I am starting to feel like it will never actually be finished. This week – the penultimate week of the programme – I can finally see how far my article has progressed, but it doesn’t seem quite good enough.  Thankfully, Belcher opened this week’s reading talking about just this issue, and she comes to basically the same conclusion that I have about my thesis: there needs to be some kind of problem for the examiner/peer reviewers to latch onto in their report – not to try and cover up any glaring mistakes (which at this stage, should have been sorted out anyway) but simply because they have to write something on their reports, and you don’t want to make them go digging for something to pick on.

The tasks for this week were pretty straightforward. Spend one day working on finalising the argument – reading back over week 3 and following the advice. The next is spent getting the literature review sorted out – we covered that in week 5. Then going over the Introduction – week 8. Getting the structure and sorting out the evidence come next – that’s from weeks 6 and 7. Finally, getting the conclusion together – week 8 again. So this week gives you a chance really to look over every aspect of the article in quick succession, and to gain a more general overview of the article as a whole. I started – as Belcher suggests – by actually printing out a copy of my article and marking it up (although, she suggests this under finalising the argument, I found it helpful to keep that hard copy to refer to during the rest of the week.)

I was initially a little bit scared at the concept of printing out this article and looking over it. I have done so much work, I thought, what if I find some really big, glaring errors or mistakes (oh no, I’m still doubling!). What if the article doesn’t actually make sense, or if I have to re-write whole sections! I think I’ve said before that I wish I had kept a copy of my article before I had started – the original product, as it were – so that I could do a bit of compare and contrast along the way (if you haven’t yet started Belcher’s programme and you are going to, this is my one big piece of advice!). More than any other week I think it would have been nice to go back and read my original article this week. I think it would have put some of my fear to rest, being able to actually see how far I have come.

And, even from my memories of that early piece, it’s a long, long way. So, after getting over my initial apprehension, I knuckled down and tackled this week’s tasks, half expecting a large amount of work still to do. Belcher even comments that going over each of these points might take more than a week. It didn’t (this bring on another set of anxieties though, of the ‘have I done enough?’ kind).

I had a few things to fix up in most of the categories – my literature review didn’t need any work because I have been fairly vigilant to keep on top of it during the whole process. My most troubling day was the last day – conclusion – which I have never been particularly confident with (I’m also currently tackling my thesis conclusion and having the same kinds of problems!).

But at the end of the week, there it was – in all it’s (highly edited, revised, rewritten, rethought, reworded) glory: my article ready to be sent next week.

And, I am excited.  And, I’ll admit, more than a little bit anxious!