Comments on: New Faculty Writing Groups

By: Natalie Houston

Natalie Houston — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:51:00 +0000

Sometimes I actually think it's more helpful to form a group with people not in your own department or at your own institution. Especially for junior faculty, it can feel freeing not to have to wonder how your performance in writing group will be taken into account outside of the group.

In the "halcyon days of academic blogging," I was part of an internet based writing group that was not one in which we shared drafts, but rather we checked in with each other at regular intervals (2x/week) about our writing goals for the week and then how we did in meeting them. It was helpful in creating a sense of commitment to your intentions as well as constructive support (if you thought you would write 75 pages in a week, someone could gently suggest that you form a more reasonable goal). Maybe that's what Jason is remembering?

And nowadays there are additional technologies that would enhance an internet-based writing community. (Maybe I'll write a post about this next week, as I think I have more to say than should go in a comment box.)

By: Jason B. Jones

Jason B. Jones — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:12:07 +0000

Yes! Depending on your location, you can partner with people at other institutions. (Granted, this is much easier some places than others.)

But there's also the internet. I think, but can't quite remember, that some of the ProfHacker writers participated in a writing group with some other bloggy academics back in the halcyon days of academic blogging . . . maybe one of them can speak to it. (Or anyone else with direct experience, for that matter . . . )

By: Jill Whitfill

Jill Whitfill — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 21:44:09 +0000

Is it possible to form a writing group across different campuses? Where I am, not a great deal of emphasis (actually, no emphasis) is placed upon scholarly pursuits. I am interested in writing a paper or two and a writing group would be great, but it isn’t possible here.

By: George H. Williams

George H. Williams — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 12:41:29 +0000

This is a great post, Billie. And although you don't say so explicitly, new faculty writing groups are a valuable form of mentoring: not every mentor is someone senior to us, after all, and we can learn a lot from peers.

To answer your questions:

I've had very good experiences with writing groups. In graduate school I had a "dissertation partner" (yes, we made up that term): both of us were writing about religion and culture in the eighteenth-century Anglo-American world and so we met regularly not just to review each others' drafts but also to talk about what we were thinking. It helped alleviate the isolation that writing often brings.

In tenure-track job #1, the junior faculty in English formed a group to read each other's work with the aim of getting stuff out there in circulation to be considered for publication. I enjoyed (and benefited from) reading the work of others, but when people read my work they tended to say they thought it was interesting but didn't see what was important about it. That took me awhile to process: frontload the claims about significance...

In tenure-track job #2 (where the teaching load is twice as heavy, making writing productivity more of a challenge), one of our recent hires started up a "Works in Progress" group last year, and it's been helpful though I must admit to not providing others with enough feedback (because I tend to get swamped in my own busy-ness after about 4 or 5 weeks of a new semester).

The value of writing groups, in my opinion, is that they create a low-stakes environment featuring a deadline that you're expected to meet. The "low-stakes" part is key because for people prone to anxiety (ahem), writing only for a deadline where something really, really important is on the line can be paralyzing.

It's crucial (again, in my opinion) to leave behind the graduate school habit of showing how smart you are as a reader by pointing out all the problems in someone else's writing. That's not especially helpful. Instead, readers should focus on describing the specific changes the writer should make before sending the piece in question out for consideration by a journal or publisher. However, not everyone finds criticism-heavy responses as frustrating as I do. I get overwhelmed if there are 2 dozen things thrown into the mix by a half-dozen different readers.

As far as advice for anyone who needs to be productive in their writing...

Write every day, even if you don't feel like writing, even if it's only for a short amount of time, and even if you think that what you write is terrible. I'm not up on the latest empirical research regarding this, but the last time I checked, studies of faculty habits and productivity outcomes showed that regular, steady writing sessions involving modest progress were much more effective that irregular "binges" requiring great leaps forward in a short amount of time. Check out, for example, research by Robert Boice or use Writing Your Dissertation in 15 Minutes a Day, by Joan Bolker, as a "how-to" guide to jumpstarting your writing.

Remember that your primary goal should be to produce something that's good, not something that's perfect. And don't be as afraid as I always am about submitting your stuff to journals in your field.