Shut up and Write! Weekly writing with coffee and colleagues

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"Shut up and Write", cafe meet ups, Writing groups, writing together

Welcome to our series on writing events. This initiative followed a call for contributions from readers on their practices and experiences as facilitators and participants in writing groups. The result is a fabulous series of posts starting from today. Over coming weeks we feature guest posts from many people and places covering all manner of social writing events including virtual and physical get-togethers, boot camps, writing retreats, writing groups, and café events.

We hope you enjoy the stories we’ve collected so that the love of writing in the company of others will continue to be enriched. For the yet-to-be-converted, maybe you will be inspired to try some of the approaches, tips and suggestions? We begin with a delightful exchange about a cafe writing group from Pam Mort.

Pam has worked in the Learning Centre at UNSW (the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia) for over 20 years.  She works in collaboration with academic staff to develop students’ academic literacy and communication skills, develops independent learning resources in the disciplines of engineering and science and co-facilitates a variety of doctoral writing events. Here she describes their café writing event ‘Shut up and Write’.

‘Shut up and Write’ has been running for over two years. The weekly one-hour meeting is advertised in The Learning Centre’s website, on a café noticeboard and during on-campus workshops on thesis writing. I regularly attend and run the meeting, collect contact details of new writers, and maintain an email list for sharing links to resources and upcoming events related to thesis writing.

Writing in the company of others; ‘Shut up and write!’, AcWriMo, boot camps, writing retreats and other fun activities.

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AcWriMo, writing fun, Writing groups, writing retreat

By Claire Aitchison

I am watching the curious look inquisitively at this small group of people sitting outside in the sun tapping away at their keyboards. It’s hard to tell those who are intentionally part of our new ‘Shut up and write!’ from those who just happened, accidently, to lob here today. There’s the usual café sounds: orders being given and names being called out, cutlery clattering, cups meeting saucers and spoons. Some people look askance, others quickly soften their voices and look away – as if they have walked in on someone in prayer.

It’s 9.15am and people continue to join us. We are now eight definites and four fringe-dwellers: perhaps the outliers are hedging their bets; not sure enough yet to sit with us.

At the break we talk. Everyone is a doctoral student and immediately there’s an exchange about thesis topics, stage of candidature, software programs, the recent Boot Camp and other group writing opportunities on campus. Everyone wants to make writing normal business. Everyone needs to build writing into their lives so they can get their PhD done.

Then we settle down again to write. Together. In silence. It’s magic.

We have written before about group writing for doctoral scholars and academics including online writing groups, retreats and so on.  In this blog I aim to give an overview of the group writing opportunities that I’m aware of – and to invite readers to tell us about others.

WRITING MARATHONS are productivity-focussed events that usually involve measuring output (eg word counts) against time. Some examples include:

AcWriMo is perhaps the most widely known and popular. Started in 2011 by Charlotte Frost, AcWriMo is an annual online month-long ‘write-a-thon’ fashioned after the successful NaNoWriMo  (National Novel Writing Month). Writers participate via the host – PhD2Published; they determine their own writing goals and are supported by tonnes of social media including dedicated posts, twitter feeds and participant exchanges. You can read here about Cally’s experience with a more localised AcWriMo.

Boot camps work on a similar principle, except that those that I know of bring people together in the same physical space; they are mostly facilitated and very often centrally provisioned by University Grad schools or Writing Centres. Like AcrWriMo, participants set personal writing targets which they aim to meet in a set period of time, such as 2 or 3 days. This blog on the Thesis Whisperer gives a great account of how a Boot Camp works.

OTHER SOCIAL WRITING 

‘Shut up and write!’ is a mini writing sprint, rather than a marathon, that usually runs over an hour on a regular basis (eg weekly) in a convivial place. This kind of writing event is popular with doctoral scholars and academics because it’s a relaxed arrangement without hard rules or long term commitment. Participants simply turn up and get on with their writing, in the company of others, for two lots of 25 minute bursts with a five minute break in the middle.

‘Meetup’ writing groups. ‘Meetup’ is a global social networking phenomenon and recently, when invited by a friend to accompany her, I discovered yet another vibrant social writing avenue. Her group meets weekly at a pub in central Sydney where participants write, eat and drink together for 2 hours under the ‘cone of silence’. Thereafter, people mix and socialise as they see fit. I was amazed to discover that these writers included professionals of all kinds, scriptwriters, bloggers – and doctoral students.

Writing retreats are another kind of extended writing together opportunity favoured by doctoral scholars and academics alike. Whether they are highly structured (as described by Rowena Murray) or more organic (see Barbara Grant’s Guide), there’s growing evidence of the value of being able to retreat from the everyday demands and routines of academic life, to spaces entirely dedicated to writing. Susan has written about the pros and cons of writing retreats.

Writing buddies and intimate circles of productivity Finally I’d like to include a plug for the common, but undervalued, practice of hiding oneself away with a colleague/s to write. I’ve been lucky enough to have spent weekends away with doctoral scholars in which we have shared writing, cooking, walking and talking. Pat Thomson’s recent blogs on working with her co-author Barbara Kamler describes the joy (and productivity) of this kind of companionship.

But back at the University of New South Wales’ ‘Shut up and write!’ I overhear a passer-by say (I’m not kidding, I promise!): ‘This is really good. I saw the Research Office advertising … I want to do it – but I don’t have time’.

But that’s the point, isn’t it? – ‘Shut up and write!’ and these other group writing activities are booming because they work especially for those who don’t have time. The popularity of writing in groups is evident everywhere – so if you haven’t already; get yourself into some kind of group writing activity and you will reap the rewards.

And we’d love to know about your own group writing adventures.

Other references:

Aitchison, C., & Guerin, C. (Eds.). (2014). Writing Groups for Doctoral Education and Beyond: Innovations in Practice and Theory. London: Routledge. http://www.tandf.net/books/details/9780415834742/

Grant, B. . (2008). Academic writing retreats: a facilitator’s guide. Sydney: Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australia (HERDSA).

Grant, B., & Knowles, S. (2000). Flights of imagination: Academic women be(com)ing writers. International Journal for Academic Development, 5(1), 6 – 9

Grant, B. M. (2006). Writing in the company of other women: exceeding the boundaries. Studies in Higher Education, 31(4), 483-495. DOI: 10.1080/03075070600800624 http://www.leadershipscolaire.uottawa.ca/documents/Grantonwritingretreats.pdf