If revising your dissertation for a book feels harder than you expected, there’s nothing wrong with you or your project. In this episode, I talk about why dissertation writing trains you into very specific habits—and why those habits can linger long after the degree is done. I reflect on the deeper shifts required when moving from dissertation to book, not just in structure or scope, but in how you relate to your authority as a writer and how you imagine the reader on the other side of the page.
I also focus on how to start seeing dissertation mode in your own prose, which is often the hardest part. I walk through a few common signals at the level of voice, citation, and structure and explain why these patterns are so difficult to spot when you’ve been living inside a project for years.
I hope that this episode helps you approach revision with more clarity and less self-blame. Instead, it gives you a practical way to begin shifting from writing to prove yourself toward writing that invites, persuades, and carries an argument forward.
This episode is part of a series on moving from diss-to-book. Here’s the first one, which I reference in this episode:
Five Key Shifts from Dissertation to Book
A caveat before we begin: dissertations are field-specific creatures, and I’m primarily speaking to those of you in the humanities and qualitative social sciences. If you’re coming from a field where dissertations look radically different, some of this may not apply to you.
