On Collaboration

Writing, Dogs, Family, and Collaboration

I decided I wanted to be a writer when I was six years old. Or possibly even earlier than that–as soon as I could write words and form sentences. I still have a lot of the writing I did as a five- and six-year-old–silly ramblings, often about dogs. I was quite prolific as a youngster. I was also quite bad at creating character names: Sally Tree and Eva Gooey were two of my early “characters.”

My first “published” piece (in a school newspaper) was a little “story”–probably just a paragraph–that I wrote in first grade. It was about the Welsh terrier puppy that my family had just gotten–Higgins. I distinctly remember one line of the piece, a sentence in which I wrote about how Higgins would throw up whenever we took him for rides in the car (as a six-year-old, I thought this was hilarious). While it was by no means a quality piece of writing, I’m pretty impressed with that no-holds-barred detail my six-year-old self included.

This is what else I remember about that early piece: The school day was over, and we had some free time before the “walker bell”—the bell that dismissed those (like me) who walked to and from school. So, I was writing. My teacher glanced over my shoulder; I felt her eyes on my work. I was a shy kid, but I didn’t try to cover the page. I let her read it. Then she asked me if she could include my piece in the school paper. Not one to balk at the idea of publication (even at that age), I said something to the effect of “heck, yeah!” I was thrilled at the prospect.

I was a perfectionist even then, though, and I remember spending at least an hour that evening REVISING and REWRITING my little paragraph. I wanted it to be as perfect as possible before I gave it to my teacher. I’m sure I had my parents read it, and I probably had my older siblings read it as well. I remember asking questions, looking for feedback, wanting to make sure everything was spelled correctly and all that. Somehow, even at that young age, I understood that writing was a process and that some form of collaboration was necessary in the revision process. I knew I needed feedback from others.

A year or so later, I went through that same sort of writing process on a much longer piece of work, an autobiographical story called “The Day My Dad Broke His Leg.” I’m sure I once again asked for help in regards to spelling and the like, and I probably asked questions to make sure my facts were right. Then, I typed it up on my brothers’ Apple II Plus computer (this was 1984). The final product was a story of between 800 and 900 words, divided into seven “chapters” (each “chapter” was one page). One or the other of my brothers would have helped me print it out on their dot matrix printer. My sister contributed her artistic skills by doing the illustrations for the story. My dad made photocopies of it, which my mom probably distributed to some relatives or close friends. I was the writer—the sole writer—but it was still a collaborative effort. The end result could not have been achieved on my own.

What Collaboration Means

Merriam-Webster defines “collaborate” as a verb meaning “to work jointly with others or together, especially in an intellectual endeavor.” But what does it mean to work “jointly” or “together” with other people? The phrase “working together” sends me back to high school or college to when a teacher would announce that we were going to divide into small groups or that we had to work with a partner. That feeling of heavy dread. First, there’s the anxiety of finding someone to work with (if the choice was ours) or the anxiety of who would be in my group (if the groups were assigned, either randomly or otherwise). Then, there’s the actual assignment or work to be done–how to divide it up, when to get together outside of class, etc. It was a nightmare.

For me, group work has often elicited feelings of stress and panic. Even in college (as an undergraduate), I had several upsetting group work experiences. In fact, in an educational setting, it wasn’t until graduate school that I finally had some regularly positive collaborative experiences, ones that deliberately contributed to my learning of the information. It was as a graduate student that I finally recognized the benefit of group work (collaboration) in an educational setting. By that time, I had spent ten-plus years in retail management, where I had learned a variety of life skills, collaboration being one of them. To succeed as a manager, you have to recognize the qualities and strengths that each team member brings to the organization, and you have to capitalize on those strengths in a way that benefits both the individual employee and the whole team. This kind of collaboration eventually became intuitive for me, but it wasn’t necessarily intuitive at first. Later, when I began teaching, I felt a bit conflicted. Many of my students clearly felt the same stress and discomfort that I had felt when forced to collaborate in a classroom setting; at the same time, though, I also knew the importance of collaboration and wanted them to understand it as an essential life skill.

Collaboration is certainly an essential life skill; it’s also an extremely valuable skill within the process of writing.

You Don’t Have to Write Alone

Many of us write on a daily basis. We write notes to ourselves. We send text messages and emails. We post on social media. Some of us write blogs. In most cases, those are tasks that don’t require much collaboration. (Blogging may be the exception: Many blog posts I’ve read could have been strengthened simply by using a skilled proofreader. People generally blog about what they have knowledge in or are passionate about, so their content is often strong. But poor organization or sloppy punctuation can affect a reader’s perception of the quality of the information.)

But beyond those more informal types of communication, I think that there are only a few skilled people in the world who are able to write extensive/expansive pieces (e.g., academic work, theses/dissertations, personal essays/short stories, book-length manuscripts) completely on their own–without collaborating with anyone else. This idea of collaboration in writing is something that is generally taught early on in school (or if it’s not, it should be!). My own elementary school education had a strong emphasis on writing. My fourth grade teacher had us writing short stories for almost every holiday (e.g., Halloween, Thanksgiving, Easter) and event. In January of 1986, after a unit about space travel and astronauts, we all wrote stories about going into outer space, in anticipation of the upcoming Challenger launch. (That excitement, of course, later turned to shock and despair as we watched the shuttle tragedy unfold on live TV in our elementary school classroom.)

My junior high and high school educational experiences also focused heavily on writing, but now “critique” was introduced (I don’t believe my teachers used that term though). As early as sixth grade, I recall reading classmates’ writings and being asked to give my opinion or provide suggestions for improvement. In high school, there was not only required peer review, but there were also heavily encouraged (and sometimes required) trips to the school writing center, where other students or teachers would offer help. It was a place where we could talk through thesis statements or supporting details with someone. Collaboration.

As an undergraduate, I worked in my college’s writing center, where I offered the same kind of support. Then, a number of years later, as a graduate student, I again worked in my university’s writing center, this time primarily working with other graduate students.

My point here is this: Nobody expects writers to write alone. Nobody expects you to write a book on your own, to write a story on your own, or to write a dissertation on your own. Your educational experiences may be different from mine, but I’ve attended and/or worked at quite a few different schools, and at all of those institutions, there have always been two important points emphasized (in regards to writing): 1) Writing is a process, and 2) Writing is not a solo activity. Parts of it are done alone, of course. A student should never expect to go to a writing center and have a tutor write their paper for them. But it’s not *just* a solitary activity. Even sports/activities like ping-pong or tennis or running–often considered non-team activities–generally use coaches, collaboration, and group practices to help a person improve.

Below are five ways in which collaboration can be helpful in the writing process.

1. Getting started on a writing project

I believe that most everybody has a story inside of them, something they want to tell, something they want to share with others. But how do you start?

One aspect of writing (especially academic writing) that a lot of people have trouble with is narrowing down a topic. This was especially obvious in university writing classes I taught. For example, students would say, “I want to write about violence in video games.” Well, that’s not specific enough. I would ask questions like the following: What qualifies as “violence”? How do you define it? Are you looking at positive or negative effects? Physical effects? Mental effects? What ages are you looking at? Is there a difference between a 12-year-old playing a violent game and a 22-year-old playing a violent game? While a person might have a general idea of what they want to write, it’s often helpful to talk out those early ideas with someone. It can help you focus your idea more clearly.

Creative writing can have similar challenges. Maybe you have a bunch of ideas but are unsure if they belong together (in one story or one novel) or if they are separate stories.

Getting that first draft down–those first words and sentences–can be hard. And once you do that, then what?

2. Getting feedback on content

We’ve all probably asked someone something like, “What do you think of my haircut?” or “How does this [item of clothing] look on me?” Typically, the answer to those questions is going to be positive (regardless of the person’s actual opinion) unless you’re asking a family member or close friend who knows how to be honest with you. But writers–beginning writers, especially–need honest feedback. Not just positive feedback. Not just negative feedback. They need respectful feedback and, most of all, constructive feedback. Providing someone with feedback that’s going to help them improve as a writer takes skill. It’s a matter of acknowledging both the positive and negative aspects of a piece and then giving the writer a clear direction for how to proceed in revision. I have been providing feedback for writers–in both formal and informal settings–for about twenty years (this does not include my own classroom experiences). I’ve learned a lot in this process, both about writing and about providing feedback to writers. I have a lot of experience in writing and teaching writing, and this experience informs my strategies for offering feedback.

3. Getting feedback on organization

Organization of a lengthy manuscript can be an overwhelming task. Ask anyone who’s ever written a memoir. Should you write the events chronologically or in order of importance? Memoir writers often start writing about one particular event and find themselves providing information about several other related events in that same scene. Think about the way your memory works and how your mind (most likely) goes off on little tangents. Even with a clear outline, first drafts can be messy. You (the writer) may feel frustrated and need help from someone else.

In my autobiographical story “The Day My Dad Broke His Leg,” the title is actually a misnomer. The story spans multiple days and multiple months–and is not just about my dad’s skiing accident (which resulted in the broken leg). The piece also covers my grandfather’s death (which occurred a few days after my dad broke his leg), as well as the subsequent funeral and all that entailed. In fact, most of the “chapters” of my story are focused on events related to my grandfather’s funeral. Then, on the very last chapter/page, I return to my dad’s leg, outlining his healing process (how long he stayed home from work after his accident, when he got a “walking cast”, etc.) He broke his leg in February, but the story I wrote “ends” on the day I wrote it, which was August 16, 1984, and I mention that my dad was wearing an air splint on his leg at that time–it was almost healed. As an eight-year-old, I was writing the events as I remembered them; in my mind, my dad’s broken leg will always be connected to my grandfather’s death. I was seven when the events occurred, and those two events were major happenings in my life at that point. And because they occurred so close together, they are intertwined in my mind, but how does one focus the writing for intertwined life events? How does one organize it? My eight-year-old self (the age I was when I wrote the story) didn’t organize anything. I wrote it chronologically, essentially chronicling the events. I obviously would organize the story differently were I to write it now. But the organization would depend on what I wanted my readers to get from it, as well as who those readers were (who my intended audience would be). And as I do for most of my writing, I would get feedback from others. Their feedback would help me focus and organize the story. This kind of collaboration is extremely useful–and often essential.

4. Getting help with grammar and/or punctuation

I would hazard a guess and say that a lot of writers aren’t experts in punctuation. They know the other stuff–their content, their craft, their word choices, etc. They know the basics of how to write, and their ideas may flow out well and clearly, and they may not worry about pesky things such as commas or semicolons. If they’re well-established writers, they may think, “Hey, I’ll just have my editor fix that.” Most of us, though, are in charge of our own grammar and punctuation. And it can be hard. I’ve taught grammar and I’ve studied it extensively on my own, but I still have to check things once in a while. I still usually have to look up the difference between “lay” versus “lie.” And hyphen rules? The Chicago Manual of Style has a comprehensive guide to hyphenation, but I don’t have it all memorized. For people who have not studied grammar and punctuation to the extent that I have, they may not wish to learn it to the extent that I have. And that’s understandable! In those cases, it’s often wise to collaborate with someone who has a strong grammar background.

5. Checking that the manuscript is free of errors

Proofreading is the very last step in the writing process. You’ve done all your revisions. Your content is set; your organization is set. You’re ready to submit (to a thesis adviser, to a journal, to a publisher, to a contest, to a website, etc.). There’s a meme I’ve seen where someone is saying that they always do their best proofreading right after they’ve sent something. I think this is true for a lot of people. We’re in a hurry, or we’re simply tired of writing or tired of looking at the document. And it’s also very hard to proofread your own work. When you know what you’re trying to say, that’s what you tend to see on the page–and not always what’s actually written. Maybe you’ve written “your welcome” without thinking. (It should be “you’re welcome,” by the way.) Or you start to write “thank you” and “thanks” at the same time and write “thanks you,” and hit send. Depending on who is going to read your document/how important it is, it’s a good idea to consider hiring a professional proofreader–to collaborate with someone who is trained to find such errors.

Collaboration in writing comes in many forms and can be used in a variety of ways. For more information regarding my services (consulting, editing, or proofreading), please contact me.