Writing Together

I have recently been running writing workshops for organisations in Warsaw and the Hague. One thing about these workshops keeps coming back to me - the importance of learning to write together.

Writing is traditionally seen as an isolated, individual activity. The advent of the computer and the laptop - and the rising prominence of the mobile phone as a writing tool - seems to strengthen this perception. We write alone, and then send to readers.

But is this actually how writing plays out in the workplace, where teamwork is so highly prized? Listening to people's stories about writing in the last few weeks, I get the impression that writing at work is less and less an individualised activity and more and more a team effort.

Collaborative writing - planning, drafting and revising texts with others - is becoming a major professional skill, and no more so than in international organisations where many people are writing in English as their second or even third language.

And even though people might continue to write text - emails, letters, reports - physically on their own, they are always socially networked through writing, responding to and using other texts, anticipating readers, consulting with colleagues. In some organisations this also means working with editors and revisers.

I notice it in job adverts. 'Ability to work in a team' is often closely related to 'ability to draft correspondence' or 'ability to write reports'. The notion of a skill ('writing') and a social competence ('communication') merges together.

I do, You do.....
In a recent workshop which involved the drafting of a proposal, I watched how people worked together to compose with colleagues. Much of the interaction involved the negotiation of phrases - trying out and evaluating possible approaches as well discussing the context, resolving differences about purposes and content, and pooling resources to divide up the task ('I'll do this bit, you do that bit'). I call all this the rehearsal of writing.

I also noticed a lot of shifting between languages. For example, two Spanish speakers might use Spanish to rehearse and draft a text in English.

I observed three main types of interaction in writing together.

1. Negotiation Through Talk
A and B talk constantly through the task and literally compose together - sharing ideas, testing out phrases, commenting and reviewing, reaching consensus or producing options for later decision. In some instances, both A and B write the text; in others, one person scribes as both talk.

2. Time Out, Time On
A and B discuss the brief together and work out a general strategy. They then compose the same piece of text separately for about five minutes (for example, the first paragraph) and then confer together on each other's versions. They then either choose one version, or combine the two together.

3. Division of Labour
A and B discuss the brief and work out a structure, for example the sections of a report. They talk to come to an agreement on the content and purposes of the text. They then allocate roles to each other. For example, A writes section 2 and B writes section 3 of a report. Then A and B together write an introduction and summary and edit the whole for coherence.

There must be many more variations.

Observing these interactions makes me think again about the phenomenon of 'writing' and where it's heading. I think about its increasing integration with other social activities, its many destinies blending skill and activity.

I think that writing together will be one of the key professional challenges of the future. Its one which our normal education, with its continuing emphasis on the testing and grading of individual performance, hardly prepares us for.

The picture above shows 18th Century senobi Confucian scholars writing together