While qualitative researchers include reflexive analyses about their research processes in publications, they are generally less forthcoming about their writing processes. Here we suggest that reflection on the thinking that happens in the writing process itself is a key analytic practice researchers can use to understand and transform the world. We invite readers to examine with us how productivity as a discourse in doctoral education relegates the act of writing to just another task to be completed, one more stage within the hierarchical processes of what we call PhDness. Using multiple texts as reflexive accounts of our writing as inquiry practices, written throughout and after our phenomenological and poststructural dissertation work, respectively, we demonstrate how writing not included in the final dissertation served as a necessary space to think potential action.
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