In the Beginning
Begin by gathering one or two colleagues and brainstorm topics of interest until you find one that all of you would enjoy writing about for publication. Once you have determined your topic, look at the Call for Manuscripts on several different education journals that you think might be appropriate for your topic. Great places, for example, to publish ideas related to literacy are this journal, The Missouri Reader, The Reading Teacher, or Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy. Determine the journal that best fits your topic. Once these decisions are made as a group, choose one person to be the lead author. This person will shepherd the manuscript through the submission process. If the group continues to write together, take turns being lead author. The lead author serves as the main motivator of the group. By asking for drafts, emailing the group to set up face-to-face or online meetings, the lead author keeps the flow of writing moving forward.
An effective way we have found to get started with the writing is for each of us to do a one-page freewrite on the topic. Each freewrite is submitted electronically to the lead author, who merges all the freewrites, creating the first draft. Then the lead author arranges a time for the group to meet again. For our collaborative writing process, we
gather around a
computer with
the lead author
at the keyboard
and the rest of
us at his or her
elbows. One
person reads
this draft aloud
while we all
edit and make
revisions to-
gether as the document is read. This version becomes the second draft. At the end of this and every following session, we talk about what direction we need to go from there, and then each of us decides what we want to write next using a process Hurst, Wilson, and Cramer (2002) termed “self-initiated assignments” (p. 24). In these “assignments,” each member of the group decides what
he or she will contri-
bute in the next
step. We have
found this to be
extremely im-
portant to our
collaborative
writing pro-
cess because
we each remain
in control of our
own learning. We are
each working on our own
goals and the group goals simultaneously.
By the time we get to about our third draft, we notice our individual voices are no longer discernible. Our voices have blended creating what Hurst et al. (2002) called the “fourth voice” (p. 26) when three authors’ voices have melded into a new group voice. We repeat the process of writing and rewriting until the group feels the manuscript is ready for submission; and finally, the lead author submits the manuscript.
It is exciting to learn when a manuscript has been accepted for publication. Often a journal editor will request the manuscript be revised and resubmitted; in fact, it is rare that a manuscript is accepted without at least minor revisions. When this happens, convene the group again, make all changes suggested and resubmit it. If a manuscript is not accepted, still make all of the reviewer suggestions, and then find another journal to submit it to. Keep doing this until you find a journal that is appropriate for your manuscript.
In Sum
Many professionals realize the value of collaborative writing. For example, in the medical field, nurses are encouraged to write collaboratively for publication. In the journal, Nurse Education, Ness, Duffy, McCallum, and Price (2014) describe their experiences with collaborative writing and make the following recommendations:
"We are each working on our own goals and the group goals simultaneously."
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