Elementary Writing

Literature is always collaborative! Whole human Literature is process of serial collaboration defined by borrowing, synthesis and appropriation that flows from the manipulation of existing knowledge and can be widely asynchronous.

Very little of us know that most of the greatest works of literature, across time, across culture, and across language, are explicitly attributed to groups and have been revealed to be the product of collaborations.

Collaborative Writing Models and Definitions

Do you see the book ?

By Wikippedia, the term collaborative writing refers to projects where written works are created by multiple people together (collaboratively) rather than individually. Some projects are overseen by an editor or editorial team, but many grow without any of this top-down oversight.

Collaborative writing is a slippery concept. It is clear that collaborative writing refers to writing in groups but there are as many ways to write in groups as there are possible combinations of individuals. Where does “a little help” and editorial assistance end and collaboration begin? There are no definitive answers.

In discussing collaborative writing in today’s literary world where the dominant paradigm is a single author theory, many models describe collaborations in several different conceptualizations:

• Group of individual authors working in an micro-economy model.
• Group of writers occupying the role and space of a single corporate or collective individuality.
• Complex organizational entities and aggregations of individuals.

For a limited but piratical working definition of collaboration, one can turn to technologists who define collaboration in more mechanical terms. In an article on the technology and processes of collaborative writing, David Farkas offers four possible definitions useful in approaching collaboration through an analysis of processes. For his purposes, collaboration is:

• Two or more people jointly composing the complete text of a document;
• Two or more people contributing components to a document;
• One or more person modifying, by editing and/or reviewing, the document of one or more persons;
• One person working interactively with one or more person and drafting a document based on the ideas of the person or persons.

Collaborative Literature – the broad concept

Collaborative writing tends only to imply synchronous and fully consensual group work. The concept of Collaborative Literature, on the other hand, is more than just the act of putting pen to paper.

While almost synonymous with writing collaborative literature implies connections between, and unity among, different written works over time and between authors in a way that “writing” does not. While not always defensible, these connective acts are always literary. Literature is always collaborative!

Main Benefits and Advantages of Collaborative Writing

• Interchange of ideas – collaborative writing could, in ways that can be tested empirically, produce better work and teach people quantitatively more than in situations where the same individuals write alone. Each aspect of the writing process—including invention, writing, and editing—are inherently social acts that benefit from and thrive in a collaborative environment ([Lefevre1987]).
• Flexibility and freedom – As computer technology appears poised to redefine literary production again, the technology itself is no longer “hardware” like printing presses and movable type but computer source code. As such, our ability to manipulate the terms on which we can communicate and collaborate, as long as we have access to source code, is instantaneously and almost infinitely flexible. We can add a line here, subtract a line here, change a line here and we create a different system and a different environment to shape and control the creation, distribution, or manipulation of literature.
• Fostering of discussion and debate – open collaborator’ eyes to how their work compares to that of their peers, giving them a better sense of their own strengths and weaknesses as writers and thinkers.
• Encourage authors to consider their audience – an important aspect of learning to write effectively and yet a component missing in many traditional approaches.
• By having students write essays and fiction in groups, students produced better work than when they worked alone. Collaborative writings’ effectiveness in the classroom has been repeatedly confirmed in what has become a large collaborative writing and collaborative learning discourse ([Gebhardt1980] [Bruffee1981] [Gebhardt1981]).

Skepticism about Literature Collaboration

In an article written for science-fiction authors on How to Collaborate without Getting Your Head Shaved, Keith Laumer, an author and collaborator, ends his short piece with the advice, “if you possibly can, write it yourself. Collaborations, like marriages, should only be undertaken if any alternative is unthinkable”.

In an article for Writer, Leonard Felder points out that not only should potential collaborators first agree to a division of royalties and payments, but that they must have “a written agreement on . . . the way your names will be listed on the book’s cover”.

It can be difficult to assess each collaborators contribution to the final product, making assigning attributes problematic.

Planning the assignment and meeting with collaborators to discuss their progress or settle problems can be time-consuming. Likewise incorporating interim deadlines into the project, such as requiring writers to submit drafts or outlines, is essential to warding off potential problems.

Collaborative Writing in Practice

In a true collaborative environment, each contributor has an almost equal ability to add, edit, and remove text. It is easier to do if the group has a specific end goal in mind, and harder if a goal is absent or vague.

Collaborative Writing Approach and Strategy

Successful collaboration occurs when each participant is able to make a unique contribution toward achieving a common vision or goal statement. Supporting this common goal are objectives that have been generated by each of the participants.

• Understanding the assignment.
• Defining the major components of the project.
• Agreement on the writing objectives, matters of style, including documentation.
• Delegating the tasks among group members. Each member, however, shares responsibility for the whole product.
• Setting up schedules for updates and revising drafts.
• Double checking all information from sources to be sure all source material is cited and cited correctly.
• Integrating the components of the project so that it reads like a coherent whole.
• Anticipating Troubles.
• Useing Technology.
• Crediting to all members of the group who participate.

Possible Collaborative Roles

It is important for each participant to “feel” as though he or she has a significant contribution to make to the achievement of goals. It is also important that each participant be held accountable for contributing to the writing project.

• Leader – comfortable with assuming responsibility, members of the group respect her/his opinions
• Encourager – responds positively to contributions of group members and encourages less dominant members to express their views.
• Harmonizer – tries to keep conflicts in check and focuses disagreements on the subject of the task at hand. Moves conflict away from the personality perspective and toward the objectives.
• Compromiser – willingly adapts or removes his or her suggestions in order to resolve a stalemate.
• Facilitator – adept at helping keep meetings focused and work-in-process produced in a timely fashion.
• Listener - carefully listens to each member’s opinions and values their opinions.

Collaborative Writing – the present state

Collaborative Writing: An Annotated Bibliography list hundreds of articles establishing the prevalence of collaborative writing in corporate, industrial and academic reviewing, storyboarding, translation, usability testing and the production conference papers, documentation, policies and procedures, proposals, and technical reports as well as more traditional forms of literature like novels, plays and poems ([Speck1999]).

This bibliography reflects an explosion of academic literature around collaborative writing over the past three decades; it covers nearly 1,000 sources written during the seventies, eighties, and nineties. In turn, this discourse reflects the growing popularization of explicitly collaborative writing. It reflects a shift in attention toward collaboration rather than a change in the prevalence of collaborative writing itself.

Collaborative Writing Tools and Technology

Collaborative writing tools are those technologies that facilitate the editing and reviewing of a text document by multiple individuals either in real-time or asynchronously.

Collaborative writing tools can vary a great deal and can range from the simplicity of wiki system to more advanced systems. Basic features include the typical formatting and editing facilities of a standard word processor with the addition of live chat, live markup and annotation, co-editing, version tracking and more.

Google itself has recently entered this field with its Google Docs, a fully-web based collaborative writing tool formerly known as Writely. Documents generated with such tools are always accessible to all the editors and can be easily downloaded and exported in standard word processing file formats.

Make Literature Online website and projects are the brightest example of Collaborative Literature and Collaborative Writing practice and great indicator of the direction in which the whole concept of online collaboration is heading to.

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