Collaboration

Transcript

Fidel Montero: I do collaborative writing in different settings. Not to the same extent that I write individually. An example of collaborative writing just took place again this spring where we had to write to our constituents an explanation why we chose to go to a different schedule here at school. So the first draft I wrote, and I shared it with my colleagues, with the other assistant principals and the principal and they went through it they scrutinized the content that we wanted to send out to our community and then I came back and took their suggestions and edited our document and went back again to them and went through the same process until we all felt comfortable with the content that we were going to send out to our constituents.

Collaborative writing can be very challenging because you are taking the ideas of two, three, four, five people and you’re putting them together in one voice. So if you disagree it’s really difficult to come to terms with it, but I believe that collaborative writing is an extension of good communication and good collaboration in any work setting, and so although it can be difficult its also very rewarding because it helps you to communicate.

James Christensen: I like to collaborate with the writer. Or even with other artists. I enjoy collaboration because I like the exchange of ideas. I know some artists like to be locked up in a room by themselves and their work is completely their own. I really like sharing working with other creative minds bouncing off other people’s ideas or throwing things into the circle and somebody else grabs it and runs with it for a while. That’s a wonderful experience. When we’ve done books, I’m always more secure if I have a writer or a super editor to work with. And then if we have a good collaboration, if it works, then they pick up on what you’re trying to say and you go yeah yeah yeah, that’s exactly it and that takes me one step further. And so for me, collaboration is a blessing, and I don’t know that it is for everybody.

I do better when I can just talk and tell stories. And so I like to work with a word crafter who will take the information and then make it sound good. Some of my worst experiences have been where I have given talks and somebody has recorded it, transcribed it and then it looks like I wrote it and it’s awful. I do find it’s much easier for me to edit than it is to write from scratch. And so if I can spew, if I can just talk and get something down or sit at a typewriter and just do stream of consciousness kind of writing, just get out what I’m thinking in no order- without punctuation or spell check or anything—then its much easier to go back the next day, look at it, and say, “that doesn’t work, this should be said this way,” “tweak this with a little better vocabulary,” and that’s ultimately how I work.

Abe Mills: Every once in a while we collaborate when we’re writing the website stuff. Sometimes it starts in the beginning and the collaboration comes in just saying, “What are the points that we want to hit on this email?” and then that way you’re not just shooting in the dark as far as making sure that everybody is going to be happy when you’re done with this. When writing a song, I personally like to collaborate with people because I’m so inexperienced at it, especially compared to the people you look up to as songwriters. And so because of that I try to look to people whose songwriting I really like and whose, their instincts with music and things like that I trust. And so I try to go to them with an idea and maybe kind of a general starting point, maybe a verse and a chorus or whatever, and then I say, “Ok, this is what I want the song to be about. This is what I’ve come up with.” and then we can kind of go back through and a lot of times that works out a lot better for me because I am not afraid to say my song is bad. Hopefully, with collaborating with somebody we can make it better.

It can be easy to really get caught up in something that you created, you think it’s great and then, until it gets out there in front of people then you finally get the feedback. I’d rather get the feedback before it’s on the CD and that’s why I am glad to collaborate with people and show it to people and get their advice as well.

When you are collaborating with someone, you know, it’s great to be able to yield to them, but at the same time, if it’s not working don’t be afraid to just cut it off. You can’t worry about hurting someone’s feelings, and I think they would feel just as good about moving on. Maybe the best thing is to go in with one song at a time and that way you’ve only messed up one song.

Susan Black: Collaboration works well if everyone knows the deadlines and can meet them. Collaboration also works well when everyone agrees on the facts that are being presented. So you would say, history, for the most part, is not an exact science and so how I may interpret one event may not be interpreted the same by my colleague. Collaboration is tough but for the most part, every time I collaborate with someone, I feel like I was beat up but I am better for it because of the kind of energy that is publication oriented to get it out the door. I think that my colleagues have helped me to “dot the i’s” and “cross the t’s” to make sure that what is getting out is acceptable and what we know most about in research.

I have done quite a bit of collaboration with a photographer on our campus, John Telford, and an artist named Liz Lemon Swindle and also with an illustrator named Robert Barret. It’s been an amazing experience. The different between working with artists rather than my colleagues— when my colleagues and I get together, we can debate, put our foot on the ground and say this is a fact and write to that. When I am with the more artsy type of people, they are incredibly creative, they see the way I wish I could write and every time I write with them or for them, I get a more descriptive type of writing than I would with the endnotes, long and supported by this number of sources. And so it has actually been a joy for me. Will I continue to write with the likes of these great artists? I hope so.

Minuses of collaboration? Wow. Illness of the person, not committed so much to this project because other projects have priority—putting it on the backburner. The difficulty is I am typically the final write and sometimes as I look at a manuscript that is now years overdue that is finally back my way, I am reading it like for the first time.

Terry Olson: We had a federal grant that we were writing articles on for about a decade plus, so the two of us that were involved in that grant were the collaborators, our research director was a collaborator. We sort of assigned out roles to one another regarding getting the research getting into print. By each of us taking a portion of the task that was our strength, we produced a multi faceted, multi level product often. I think that was proven by the fact that many, virtually everything that we submitted ultimately was published. In collaborating more recently, it’s been again, if there’s a common cause, a common commitment, a common passion for an idea or an issue or a research project then obviously we have to see it through to the end together. It has been a natural selection, so to speak, as to who is authoring a piece.

Susan Meyer: I have several long term research collaborations at BYU in the plant science dept and in integrative biology.

Geoffrey Germane: Our work involves team work. I have engineers that work with me. Usually there are a couple of us that work on a particular matter, and the two of us perform inspections together. The analysis is done together, typically. Others in our office sometimes get involved because we try to have some quality control where there is sort of a review process. That also includes the writing, too.

The process of collaboration, I think, has improved the product that we have in terms of our writing. It is something that is difficult to accomplish because there are some logistics involved. Without the collaboration, I wouldn’t be able to be as productive as I may be because I have several engineers that work with me and at any given time we may have two or three projects or maybe even more than that progressing simultaneously. We may have two or three reports that are being prepared at the same time that are due within a few days of each other. (7 or 8)