This is a really useful writing guide. The subtitle is "how to start and finish your thesis, book, or article" -- it is nice to see finish in there, because that's what I need help with! Becker outlines a step-by-step approach to writing, beginning with a new way to look at writing.

Chapter 1 "Freshman English for Graduate Students" posits the idea that graduate students have forgotten how to write. In graduate school, they have learned the conventions of their disciplines and they have learned how to think, but they are not forced to really write until it is time to write a thesis or dissertation. Then they have to relearn how to do it. He emphasizes a mildly chaotic approach to writing that focuses on what you can learn from a first draft -- you learn what you have already decided on, and what you are really writing about.

Subsequent chapters focus on voice, eliminating dead academic jargon, editing, and writing habits. The chapter on using a computer to assist writing is decidedly outdated, but might be useful to the severely computer-phobic. My favorite chapter is chapter 7 "Getting It out the Door" which focuses on how to finish a project rather than forever perfect it.

If I had to choose only two dissertation-writing guides (I could never choose just one), I would choose this one and Joan Bolker's Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day.