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Writing relationships: Collaboration in a faculty writing group

Our faculty writing group began in 2009 and over the past three years it has grown into a successfully publishing community of practice. When we’ve presented papers on the writing group at conferences, we’ve found that the first question asked tends to be: How did you get the writing group to work? It’s a deceptively simple question but the answer taps into many issues surrounding the difficulty of faculty writing and publishing in academic contexts. For many academics, the challenge of navigating the competitive discourse demands of conducting research and publishing journal articles while at the same time navigating teaching and administrative loads often leads to anxiety and stress. The purpose of this paper is to explore why members of this group continue to participate and why we have been able to successfully write and publish individually and as a group. This study used ‘the self as data’, a qualitative methodology. The data collected consisted of weekly written reflections, additional written narratives by each group member, and recordings of meeting discussions. We analysed the data qualitatively using Merriam’s (2009) constant comparison method to generate themes. Results indicate that members attended the group because they were looking for a place to 1) get support for research and writing; and 2) to cope with negotiating academic cultures. We argue that the ethos of ‘no-competition’ and ‘relationships-first’ were crucial in fostering collaboration and productivity despite diverse individual differences. We offer this analysis of our experiences, not only in terms of practicalities but also as an alternative way of working in the academy.