Dissertation and publishing

A supplement to yesterday's entry on publishing advice: Tim Burke adds some more good stuff here, focused specifically on dissertation writers -- at a stage before most of the suggestions given in the previous post. A little excerpt:

5. Do not be a perfectionist with your dissertation. Write the sucker and
damn the torpedoes. Just make sure it’s good enough for your committee. If you
*can* write it in such a way that it will require little work to make into a
publishable book, do it. For example, make the opening and inevitable
“literature review” as modular as possible and plan to just rip the entire thing
out of the book manuscript. If you embed your review of the relevant scholarship
inside your analysis, that may be more artful for the dissertation, but it’s
more of a pain in the context of the manuscript, unless it’s really artful and
worth keeping even in the book.

6. Submit your dissertation as quickly as you
can for publication. Don’t screw around. Unless it really is a serious mess, or
a hideous, soul-destroying bore, you might as well seek a publisher quickly.
Because if you spend five years revising and revising until it is absolutely
perfect, and then submit it, I promise you that the peer reviewers are going to
demand changes anyway. It could be utter perfection–you could be Jonathan Spence
or Ferdnand Braudel–and peer reviewers are still going to ask for revisions. So
don’t spend too long writing and don’t spend too long revising.