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human
Surviving a volatile coauthor

TL;DR: My coauthor thinks I am trying to force her off of a paper, and nothing I say/do at this point will convince her otherwise.  About 50% of our meetings are coauthor telling me what a bad coworker and bad collaborator I am, and me trying to pacify her.  How am I supposed to finish an assigned paper like this?  


Long post, sorry.  This post is half vent, half call for suggestions.  I am in an academic STEM wet lab.  I was assigned to write a review along with a coauthor, who is a few years my senior.  As such, she was assigned the role of lead author.  To make a very long story short, coauthor has accused me early and often of trying to take over the project and force her out.  These accusations started almost immediately after the first meeting with the PI.  Before that meeting, I wrote out a rough outline of several possible sections/topics that we could cover in the review, along with the affiliated references.  

As it turns out in our later meetings, coauthor RESENTED the fact that I had made an outline at all.  She brought it up multiple times as evidence that I was trying to just do things without her, despite the fact that I had placed it on a shared file that she was authorized to edit.  She even said things like "well you just went and wrote the whole thing already" and  "maybe we can't work together.  that's disappointing, I was hoping to prove that we could".  I was so confused.  I thought we were butting heads a little bit, and she thought that we were in an nearly un-resolvable conflict.  During one meeting, she told me "you write YOUR section, and I write MY section, do not dare do anything on my section.  Not everyone writes from an outline."  Of course, it's very hard for me to write "my part" and stay away from "her part" when she refuses to use an outline...

Things deteriorated.  In one meeting, she exploded at me and berated me for wasting her time, for having too much free time myself, for being a tyrant, and for manipulating her to not be involved in the work process.  Things got better for a while, and then she chewed me out, in  front of several people, for a trivial reason.  This was a blessing, because for once I got someone to take me aside and say "Don't worry, everyone knows that you aren't doing anything wrong" which was very helpful to convince me that I am NOT some manipulative bastard that coauthor viciously insists I am.  It also helps that someone else who worked with her on a similar project told me "yeah... we've all been there before with her." The level of antagonism is starting to become comical.  Recently, she sent me an email with snarky criticism of my writing style. Honestly, my first thoughts when I saw that email were "OK, that you might be right, let's see what changes you made to fix it".  She had made some minor word and phrasing changes.  The email she wrote criticizing me was longer and more extensive than the actual edits she made.

I don't know how much longer I can keep working like this.  I don't think anything I can say at this point will change her narrative of how I have been plotting to take over this paper from her since day one. About half of our meetings are just a string of accusations.  I also have no idea if she is feeding this narrative to my PI, and if I need to take defensive action to protect my reputation, or at least warn him that she pulls this shit sometimes.  From a distance, it looks like total author amateur hour, and I am not happy to have that be the first thing my PI sees me try to produce.  I know I am not perfect, and perhaps could have done certain things differently, but I really think this situation is past the point of reasonable behavior.

Edited for length, and to make some details intentionally vague.
gpt
Keep the emails. Keep your head down, follow the lead of the lead author, and get the paper out. 

Once it is over, bring in some of the emails and the draft attached and ask your PI how you could write better. It is imperative that you bring this to your PI as a learning moment for you but also allows the PI to know how the lead author treated you. 

As a new scientist, you need honest feedback on your writing as it is the most important thing we do. Your coauthor is not able to give you that lesson so find someone who will.