Collaborative Writing (on a Book about Collaboration!)

Narelle Lemon and I were introduced by a mutual friend, Helen Kara. Helen was editing a new book series, and wanted to include a book about collaboration, would we write one together? Since we both respect Helen’s judgement, we were willing to pursue the idea. We were both a little nervous about taking on a significant project with a complete stranger, but after meeting we started to develop a working relationship.

We discovered synergy in our styles and in our approaches to collaboration. Along the way, we reflected on our own process as an example of walking the talk about collaborative writing. We worked through time zone differences from Colorado to Melbourne, health issues and distractions that disrupted timelines, and challenging reviews that added more work.

Since Reframing and Rethinking Collaboration in Higher Education and Beyond was published in 2020, Narelle has taken on another huge collaborative effort. She edited a series of books on the theme of self-care for academics. I contributed a chapter to one of them, Creative Expression and Wellbeing in Higher Education.

One of the models Narelle shared has stuck with me: the Circle of Niceness. While this sounds very “touchy-feely,” the fact is, it works. Especially when we are involved in complex, cross-cultural, time-zone-spanning projects, a little bit of niceness goes a long way toward smoothing over the rough spots.

Narelle observes, “My 'circle of niceness' is my tribe. I trust them. We are honest with each other. We give and take. We have admiration for each other. I respect their perspective, and vice versa. We are collegial and show a huge amount of reciprocity and gratitude for one another on many levels. There is a warmth. And there is a genuine mutual respect.”

I asked Narelle to chat about niceness, collaborative writing and editing, in the conversation you can watch here.

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