Presenting a work-in-progress poster is an important interim activity in years two and three of the doctorate. It can prevent you from getting bogged down and can adjust your focus in important ways at this key point. It can keep you moving – and make you feel that you are, finally, moving – towards the final ‘clarification’ of the project as a whole.
Regular writers’ group meetings become interim deadlines for short- and medium-term goals. In the groups in which I have been involved, we usually make a plan for a six-month period.
Although each group is different, setting its own objectives and ground rules, a core of practices has emerged in our groups. The meetings last 90 minutes. We meet twice a month and use every meeting as a deadline. How- ever modest we feel our progress is between these meetings, at least there is progress. This structure also helps people to establish the goals and sub-goals over the six-month period. We know that we will be reporting on our progress at the meeting and that acts as an incentive to have something done by then.
It acts, for most writers, like any other deadline. In addition, there is the added incentive that positive feedback will be provided in the short discussion between pairs of writers. There is no public ‘naming and shaming’ of those who have not written what they set out to; there is, instead, small group or pairs discussion. The facilitator can offer guidance on what does, and does not, constitute a sensible writing goal.
There are three types of activity at all group meetings:
1 Taking stock of progress, setting new goals 2 Writing
3 Discussing this writing and getting feedback.
The first involves defining writing tasks and fixing times to do them between one meeting and the next. The second involves ten minutes’ private writing – or writing to show a colleague – in which participants can write about any aspect of the writing process or any part of their thesis. If they bring their outline with them, they can write a section of the thesis there and then. It is important that we do not just meet to talk about writing; we actually do it.
This helps, over the longer term, to make writing much easier to start, much more routine. As writing is followed by discussion, we have an immediate, live and positive response to the writing, something that is missing in the usual process of writing in solitude.
Writers can also give each other feedback on and critiques of work in pro- gress and on drafts of chapters or papers. In order to think through how we might do this best, we read about the process of giving and receiving critiques,
What is the purpose of a writers’ group?
• To support writers
• To create a forum for discussing writing
• To stimulate prioritizing and goal setting for writing
• To prompt discussion of writing plans and drafts
• To write regularly
discuss the processes explicitly and agree how we want to work. There is research to show that giving and receiving feedback is an important dimen- sion of research students’ development, and that, according to students, peer review – not just supervisor review – is important:
It was found that preparing and receiving critiques from professors and peers was perceived to be the most influential element in helping [stu- dents] to understand the process of scholarly writing and in producing a better written product.
(Caffarella and Barnett 2000: 39) This type of process can help students develop a better understanding of the iterative nature of scholarly writing. The iterations that go into a thesis or scholarly paper are disguised from view and are generally unspoken. Hence students’ frustration at being asked for so many revisions, perhaps. In the writers’ group they can see so many other writers – staff and students in our groups – going through the same process of iterations. They can share their irritations. This is one of the key lessons learned in the writers’ group. It is not just that they realize ‘we are all in the same boat’, but that they perceive the realities of the writing process.
Receiving critiques can be just as uncomfortable as giving them. Each requires different skills and these will develop over time. However, a thesis writer’s starting point, when receiving a critique, can be quite negative:
I’m afraid of the feedback and I wonder if the person reading mine would even be interested in the topic.
[I am] very disappointed about my writing.
(Caffarella and Barnett 2000: 45) These students reveal their vulnerability, as they are about to receive critiques.
The emotional dimension of writing is not always a part of discussions with supervisors. Writers may be more ‘needy’ (King 2000: 263) when they are writ- ing than when they are doing anything else. The writers’ group discussions allow time and space for exploring these emotional processes. Such discus- sions can provide helpful rehearsal time for future discussions with super- visors. Students can then prompt their supervisors to provide more direction in the practice of giving and receiving critiques, for example.
For some students, the writers’ group turns out to be the only space for discussion of such processes. If their supervisor directs them to ‘get on with the research and worry about the writing later’, but they are worried about the writing now, then not only is closure deferred for even longer, but the pro- cesses of writing, and all that it involves, may not be learned as thoroughly.
There will simply not be enough time.
It may be simplistic to make a connection between those students who do A WRITERS’ GROUP 149
not know how long their thesis is meant to be and have no conception of how to give and receive critiques, and those supervisors who do not encourage their students to engage fully with writing throughout their doctorate. But it may also be true. Those students who have not been informed or guided, from an early stage, in their writing are those who are most likely to ask questions like
‘Do I have to review the literature?’ and ‘How well do I need to know the external’s work?’, because they genuinely do not know.
Elbow (1973) makes a strong case for writers’ groups – or ‘teacherless classes’ – arguing that they can help writers to see their writing as others see it:
To improve your writing you don’t need advice about what changes to make; you don’t need theories of what is good and bad writing. You need movies of people’s minds while they read your words. But you need this for a sustained period of time – at least two or three months. And you need to get the experience of not just a couple of people but of at least six or seven. And you need to keep getting it from the same people so that they get better at transmitting their experience and you get better at hearing them.
(Elbow 1973: 77) This reinforces the point that giving and receiving of critiques are processes that we would do well to give ourselves time and mechanisms to learn, rather than just hope that they will evolve, for us, or find fault with ourselves when they do not.
Elbow also makes a strong case for showing writing that is incomplete, that we are not yet happy with, to others, though you have to wonder how often writers are comfortable handing over even much revised writing for peer review and how easily they take to giving and receiving critiques; i.e. does it ever really get that comfortable, just because we have revised it ten or twelve times? Or does that ‘comfort’ come with the development of trust and under- standing with the ‘six or seven’ other writers in a group? Elbow’s point is that giving our writing to others, at many stages in the writing process, before it is
‘finished’, is an important step in learning how to write well:
Even if you are very busy, even if you have nothing to write about, and even if you are very blocked, you must write something and try to experi- ence it through their eyes. Of course it may not be good; you may not be satisfied with it. But if you only learn how people perceive and experience words you are satisfied with, you are missing a crucial area of learning. You often learn the most from reactions to the words you loathe. Do you want to learn how to write or protect your feelings?
(Elbow 1973: 77–8) He does not mention the words ‘feedback’ or ‘critique’ here; he seems more
concerned that we see our writing through others’ eyes. This, he has found, is the key learning tool.
Elbow (1973), Murray (2000) and others have developed frameworks for writers’ groups and guidance on how to start them up. Elbow recommends:
• A committed group of people
• Diversity: different kinds of people and writing
• Write about anything, but write
• Make regular time
• With a chair/leader/facilitator
• Taking stock at each meeting, about that meeting.
Here are examples of talking points for your writers’ group:
Initial reactions to the idea of a writers’ group are mixed. Given a little information about it, students are uncertain about, among other things, whether they will get a good enough return on the investment of their time in this way. Here are some responses:
Writing group discussion
How can I get into the writing habit?
• Write about reading, i.e. attach it to another task you already do.
• Prioritize writing.
• Decide on a particular time to write.
• Write at the same time as students.
• List things you need to start. Draw up possible action plan.
• Write for five minutes only.
• Make spaces in the diary.
How can I stay in the writing habit?
• Plan: get a reader and a deadline.
• Form a writing group.
• Get someone who knows about writing and/or research in your field to lead it.
• Network with other writers and researchers: make talking about writing habitual.
• Treat it like a habit.
• Give yourself rewards for writing: food, drink, exercise, other writing.
• Give yourself penalties for not writing: e.g. financial penalty (one group agreed to make a donation to a charity when they missed their writing practice).
• Think in terms of very small increments.
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This range of reactions may be because it is a new idea to most students (and staff). In any case, the student body is diverse; why would they all want the same thing? Implicit in the hesitation of some of the initial responses is the popular, yet stigmatized, misconception that the group is for those who have writing ‘problems’. This is not true; the writers’ group is for those who want to write and to improve their writing as they go along.
It is obviously important to clarify what a writers’ group can and cannot do.
The group may gel as much because of personalities as of shared goals. Having a facilitator who is responsible for group management – staff or student? – may help to make the process work for all involved, particularly if he or she knows something about writing and writers’ groups.
After six or twelve months’ participation in a writers’ group, six postgraduate writers contemplate its impact:
Would you attend a writers’ group?
I probably would attend at least one session to decide on whether or not it was useful. In the programme . . . I would probably like to see more on grammar and related topics.
I would attend a writing group. I would expect a lot of practical writing exer- cises with a great amount of feedback to improve my writing. Also hints on how to develop writing skills I may already have.
Yes. I’d like to hear from other students experiences/strategies for writing.
Is the writers’ group effective, for you?
1 I use the group as a measure of how I am progressing my project. It focuses me on deadlines and is helpful in that respect. It has certainly helped me to produce segments of my current paper ‘to order’ and should help me fulfil my goal of submission by 31 March. The group discussions can be helpful in suggesting ways of focusing the actual writing, ideas for areas for submission.
2 Use of the group: discussion with others: vital! Effective! Very useful even though we’re not doing the same thing, not working in the same area. Talk- ing about real live projects. Deadlines combine meetings well – it works.
Makes deadlines less ‘scary’, more achievable. Achieving my targets prob- ably took 2–3 months.
3 The group provides several vital supports – sheer companionship in what can otherwise be a lonely task (writing); encouragement; but in particular
These reactions show the range of experiences of writers in one group. They are all making their own place in the group and finding their own purpose in its activities. What they all share is that they have found a peer group for writing.
The key to this phase of the doctorate is that you have started to demon- strate, to yourself as much as to your supervisor, that you are on the road to constructing a thesis. You can express your sense of your emerging thesis, you
a regular refocusing, remotivating, and enforced reassessing of progress. It is perhaps a measure of the group’s usefulness that the time for it is snatched from an already over-stretched timetable. The goal-setting is vital – at least until it becomes ‘internalised’! To what extent am I achieving the targets I set? On the whole, surprisingly, the small goals usually are achieved; and it is significant that the last one wasn’t, but it was too ‘big’ to draft the whole outline.
4 The early sessions helped me focus on writing, in particular on the structure of chapters and organising their creation. I have also found it helpful to talk to colleagues and discuss their approaches and problems. It is useful to have the time – the group forces me to put this part of my work on the agenda. I am supposed to spend so much of my time writing for the research, but at the moment the group is the only time during office hours that I get to do this.
5 From my experience the writing group has been a key support activity in my PhD and my life. I use the group to set up my goals in a simple and easy way (schedule) and to plan my activities in advance, set up deadlines and to reach my goals. It is a kind of support that encourages me in my research.
The writing group has also helped me to improve my writing skills; in dis- cussions I address the direction of my research and become more critical. It has helped me to ‘educate’ my mind to structure what I want to write and to be consistent in what I express.
6 From my point of view, the writing group has helped me get into a writing discipline. The experience of sharing with other people in the same process has been highly stimulating. It has also helped me in the process of getting things done. For example: last week I needed to write an abstract for a workshop and I simply couldn’t find any words to write. Then I remembered that in one of the writing group sessions I had written some sort of abstract.
I took this and it helped me to start the abstract and to give it shape.
Regarding the goal-setting process, I have found that my initial goals were too ambitious. The last few weeks I have been reading more than writing.
However, the goals have helped me to do some writing and not focus only on reading, as I used to do.
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can articulate the strengths and weaknesses of your work and you can identify where you have made distinct progress.
The next step is to find ways to write regularly, at times continuously, always with purpose, but still using writing to explore, and perhaps ignore, new direc- tions. Writing has now acquired a number of functions in the thesis process.
However, it is time to start writing chapters, or, at least, pilot chapters.