7 How writers write: testimony from authors
7.2 Writers’ perspectives in 1994
7.2.1 Writing together
Most of the contributors have written at some time, or always, as a member of a team. Their accounts of collaborative writing highlight the importance of team-building, as well as divergences in working prac- tice. Writing teams are often put together by publishers and considera- ble ‘getting to know you’ needs to take place before writing can start. A rough rule of thumb is that team-working on supplementary materials is like an affair; team-working on a coursebook is more like a marriage!
‘Getting to know you’ works on different levels, and the human one of shared response to experience is as important as shared methodological presuppositions. Teams who have taught together are common, and have a head start on both levels, although it can be argued that to actu- ally start writing at once and to get to know each other as you write is equally effective.
‘Writing together means what it says: sitting down at a table together.
We meet for a whole evening at a time and are very strict with ourselves – no gossip or chatting, just work. Ideas come to you at any time, and collecting materials you can do on your own, but the actual writing process is something we have to do in the same room.’
‘What we do is each draft a unit (we work in separate rooms), consulting with the other only if there is some knotty problem. Then each reads the other’s unit and criticises: sometimes there is very little to change, sometimes a radical overhaul is necessary. We have never had any ego- problems in this area; it must be awful (and awfully time-consuming) if you do.’
‘There’s no fixed pattern. But the actual writing definitely takes place individually, at a distance. Ideally the team of writers must first meet and agree on an overall approach and methodology. Then they go away to write their own chunks, which could be thematically related or unrelated. Then they meet regularly to comment on each other’s work, and go away to improve their chunks with the benefit of the feedback.
Needless to say, we need good team-players – who are confident, but not arrogant, so that they can react positively to criticisms. When it comes to finalising the manuscript, it takes someone with a bit of authority to edit everything. Here I’m talking about the development of classroom materials for an institution, like the university I’m working at. When it comes to published materials, the authors can write pretty independently. I just finished writing an exam practice book with two colleagues and we hardly met over the book.’
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‘Our textbook team is made up of 13 members, 6 working for lower secondary level and 7 for upper secondary level. The size of the team is rather unusual and lots of people, teachers, inspectors, trainers and ourselves doubted the results of a ‘mob-at-work’.
There are of course, drawbacks: mismatch between individual working styles, individual writing styles, unstandardised units, a longer than usual time for decisions as we must give credit to everyone’s idea in order to reach solutions agreed, if not by all members, but by a large majority. If, however, this formula still works it is because we have found a lot more advantages than downsides: variety of ideas (both ‘triggers’ and ‘template’ type), wider range of information and methodological sources, the benefits of getting together people from different parts of the country, which means different areas of interest, conceptions, ideas, and the certainty that once an idea is accepted, it has to be a good one.
The major decisions about the content of the book, the topics to be covered, the balance of skills, the treatment of vocabulary and grammar, and the culture and civilisation input are taken from the whole team.
Planning, setting up deadlines and seeing that these are met, updating all members and persons related to the project on progress of work and results, organising piloting of the materials, ensuring standardisation, avoiding overlap, reviewing the materials, workshops (organisation, management and reports), and relationships with the publishers are the project coordinator and UK consultants’ job.
The mode of working we’ve agreed on is the following:
• During a first workshop: the group decides on topics, functions, skills focus, treatment of grammar, vocabulary, format of a unit and a lesson.
Then units are allocated to each member.
• Writers go back to their hometown and devise units accordingly.
They send them to the project coordinator for checking. The consultants get them for suggestions as well.
• In about three months the group meets again with the project coordinator and the consultants and common agreement for all lessons is obtained.’
‘I write a first draft which I give to my co-author to comment on and adapt if necessary. If I am stuck for an appropriate activity my co-author often supplies it. Ditto for authentic materials. We work at a distance as we find that this avoids serious disagreements and both of us work better and faster when alone.
The final decision as to approach and content is with me as initiator of the work with a clear overall picture of the methodology, the progression and the ‘soul’ of the book. The responsibility for revising
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the materials is mine, partly for the reasons just outlined and partly because the materials are trialled at the institute where I work.’
‘My only experience of co-authoring was when I wrote part of the Teacher’s Book for an exam course and someone else did the rest. The problem was that I was up against deadlines both for the coursebook and for the Practice Tests Book, with one or two other crises going on at the same time! Living abroad also meant that communications (pre-fax) were dire: I never actually managed to discuss the book with my co-author and in the end it became the product of what editors in the UK chose from both our contributions. A real dog’s breakfast, in other words.’
‘My colleague and I decide on the topic to work on and we get together in the same room and try to find appropriate materials and ideas (in our library). We also bring materials from home and the bookstore, pool it and then ‘disperse’ to get activities prepared. Then we come together again, order our parts, decide together about order and usefulness, and after trying things out we reverse them (each looks at the other’s part). Then our colleagues try the material out and give us feedback.’
‘For us collaborative writing is team work. We discuss a great deal, decide what we will include in our writing in advance, make an outline and then start writing. The written materials, if they are developed separately, are discussed again. We all agree on the language, content and presentation before they are okayed. Revision is done in the same way.
Very often a member of the team becomes a scribe, and writes what others dictate to him or her after elaborate discussions.
The most senior colleague usually has the final say in case we have disagreements.’
‘In general, I find it best to agree on a division of labour that reflects each person’s interests and strengths and agree a deadline. Then drafts are exchanged, comments made and the draft re-worked. Perhaps I have been lucky in my co-authors, but this pattern has worked extremely well for me. It does necessitate openness (the willingness to be frank and the willingness to accept constructive criticism), of course, but the benefits are enormous.’
‘I have had negative experiences in working with co-authors who are virtual strangers and who are representing the country for which the book is intended. This is often a relationship full of stresses and strains which result from approaching the project from totally different angles.
Then changes made to a manuscript are often guided by motives unconnected to pedagogical considerations.’
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‘With EFL materials it is a matter of deciding which types of task or which unit you will take responsibility for. Each of you should produce a draft for the other to read and comment on. (Final decisions rest with whoever keys in the final version!) ‘Co-writing’ is ambiguous in English: ‘co-writing’ proper (like team-teaching) I find difficult;
I suppose what I do is co-authoring.’
‘We have had a few different gos at seeing which approach works best vis-à-vis working in a ‘team’ of two. So far we have tried:
• working together (at home, in long-hand) on the outline of a couple of units at a time. This will include basic structure, a ‘pot’ of ideas, suggestions for texts, but no detail. Then each of us would take a unit and write it, passing it over for comment and/or rewriting afterwards.
• dividing up the book into the first half and the second half. Having macro meetings to discuss syllabus, topics, texts, and then basically getting on with it. Obviously each draft of the unit would be commented on by the co-author.
• one person doing the ‘macro’ sketching out (basically the ‘creative’
bit) and the other one doing the filling in of exercises, detailed artbriefs, wording of Language References and other ‘micros’.
We have not yet found a perfect solution!’
‘Recently two of us have been working on some pilot materials for a publisher. We’ve both got compatible computers so the way it worked was that after lots of preparatory meetings we each started work on a different lesson. Then we would post the disks containing the rough draft to each other, and instead of commenting on it, as we used to do when it was all paper, would simply rewrite the lesson, adding or cutting, quite a lot sometimes, and send it back. In this way we ended up with a unit of lessons which weren’t anyone’s property. Then we sat down together at one computer and got it all in order, standardising layouts and rubrics and so on. It was a really good way to work, and would have been even quicker if we’d had e-mail.’
How to work together is clearly something which occupies materials writers. In the accounts given here we can distinguish pairs who work closely together, pairs who complement each other, and larger teams where management of the writing process becomes as important as the writing itself. As a writing team gets larger, the benefits it receives from diversity can be outweighed by the negative effects of personal and professional disagreements, but this is not necessarily the case and a larger team can draw on deeper reserves of energy and experience.
There is, however, a tension between having as small a writing team as possible and coping with the demands of a large project. This tension
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is sometimes resolved by ‘subcontracting’ elements of the project, typ- ically workbooks and test or resource packs, and also teacher’s books, to other authors working under the direction of the lead authors.