Collaborative Writing
Introduction
Collaborative writing is a great way to find yourself in a writing community and get your work read by people who may be able to help you improve it. The more people you have involved in the process, the better!
Get Feedback
You can get feedback from other writers. You can get feedback from a writing coach. You can even use a writing group if you want to collaborate with other writers on your own writing simultaneously or use your writing community if you prefer one-on-one communication with fellow writers.
Either way, it’s important to have someone (or multiple people) looking out for your best interests and making sure that your writing is as good as it can be before publishing anything.
Make a Plan and Write Together
When you write with a partner, it’s important to have a plan of action. Perhaps you’ve already decided on what topic you will write about and how many paragraphs you’ll have. You can then divide the topics and start brainstorming ideas with your partner. If one person thinks of something great, like “The Great Depression,” that person should write it down in their document so the other person will see it when they look at their document. The next phase of collaborative writing is sharing ideas.
When everyone has had ample time to come up with ideas on their own (and make sure everyone has had enough time), then it’s time for each person to share their thoughts in real-time via Google Docs or another similar app that allows multiple people access at once without needing an internet connection (like Microsoft Word). There are various ways this can be done:
- 1:1 sharing where each team member shares their idea individually;
- Group sharing, where everyone shares their idea simultaneously; or
- Round robin where all members add one sentence about their idea until all sentences are shared, starting from the first member through the last member.”
Practice Your Writing With Others
Collaborative writing has many benefits. It provides a space to practice your writing, which helps improve your craft. You can also get feedback on your work from more than one person, which helps you see what works and what doesn’t in your writing and where there might be some areas of improvement. In addition, collaborative writing allows you to build relationships with other writers that may help advance your career or open up opportunities for future collaborations.
But some challenges come with collaborative writing: sometimes it can be hard to find the right person (or people) to collaborate with; working together through email can be frustrating at times; disagreements about the direction of the project or major changes mid-project can make it difficult for everyone involved; some things should never be shared with anyone else (such as personal details), so privacy becomes an important issue when collaborating on an essay or article; etc…
If these concerns seem daunting, don’t worry—there’s no reason why you shouldn’t try out collaborative work! Anyone who wants to start getting involved in joint projects might consider hiring a Group Writing Coach.
The More the Merrier
The more people you have to write with, the better. The more people you write with, the more ideas you get. And even if your group doesn’t become a bestseller or even a published book (which is highly unlikely), it’s still fun and rewarding to see what everyone came up with and start brainstorming ways to improve it.
Collaborative writing is a great way to find a writing community!
If you’re looking for a writing community, collaborative writing is a great way to go. You can find a partner on Meetup, at conferences, or other social media sites. You might also try looking out for one at local events or on sites designed specifically for this purpose. Some examples of these sites include Duolingo, Quora, and Reddit’s r/writingprompts, which have people posting daily prompts that they’d love feedback on!
Conclusion
As you can see, collaborative writing is a great way to find a writing community. It’s also an excellent opportunity for writers to collaborate on their work and get feedback from others outside their social circle. This can help them improve their work and build confidence in what they do best.
A Group Writing Coach can help you organize your projects within a collaborative setting or organize a collaborative writing project.
Erica Mongé-Greer, Ph. D. is a lifelong academic and published writer. Her areas of expertise are teaching, coaching, and helping people get their writing projects started, through the writing process, and to the finish line. Erica enjoys spending time with her family when she is not teaching, writing academic papers, or coaching.