Stephen’s Thesis Development and Writing Tips

• Finding a research topic

• Staying on track with your thesis and research

• Strategy for writing a thesis: don't write A THESIS

• Tips for doing a thorough literature search

• Tips for writing a literature review

• List of conferences and journals

• Thesis organization

• Tips if you are writing a thesis about a highly interactive system you design

• Giving a draft to your advisor
  
  
• You have not finished some research project until...

and for when you are done...

• Career planning

Helpful resources:

• Mayfield Electronic Handbook of Technical & Scientific Writing (link MIT access only)
• Strunk and White's The Elements of Style

Advice from others: 

• Good Writing by Marc Raibert
• Excellent advice for students considering a Ph.D. in computer science (but most advice applies to other areas of engineering as well): http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf
• A great compilation of tips on technical writing: http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/etc/writing-style.html
• Learn how to network : http://www.acm.org/crossroads/xrds4-4/network.html (updated version)
• Read some very good overview and motivational advice: "Everything I wanted to know about C.S. graduate school at the beginning but didn't learn until later". This is written for the Ph.D. student but applies to others as well. It also contains a nice list of references. 
• Read some more advice on beginning graduate school: "Advice for beginning your Ph.D. career", with practical tips to save you time later. 
• Learn about the structure of a good thesis proposal: "On Ph.D. thesis proposals"
• Consider some very specific time management tips from a CS professor. 
• Learn what not to do when writing a technical paper and how the review process works by reading some comments on the SIGGRAPH review process: "How to get your SIGGRAPH paper rejected" This article is about a graphics conference, but the gist applies to nearly any conference you might submit to. 
• Consider the difference between a thesis and a dissertation: "Dissertation advice"
• Study a list of words to avoid in your dissertation (and other useful advice): "Bedtime reading for people who do not have time to sleep" 
• How to write an informatics paper

The above are some of my favorites. Other good articles can be found at a GaTech website with Some Advice for Getting Through Graduate School. 

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