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“Writing is a solitary occupation,” except when embarking on a co-authored project. Organizing one person’s ideas is difficult enough, but when there are multiple contributors, how does the writing process change to account for stylistic differences, yet still maintain coherence or logical unity? To explore this question, Ruth Moore shares her experiences co-authoring University Success Writing, Advanced Level with Charl Norloff in this interview format.

Welsh:  How did co-authoring influence the writing process for the University Success series?

Moore:  The writing process didn’t necessarily change, but it often took more time than we expected because it was important for us to have a collaborative partnership.  At the beginning of the University Success project, Charl and I had long discussions about Pearson’s content plan and our perspectives on what the publisher had presented in the Scope and Sequence. We brainstormed ideas about what students should know about the skills in each unit, researched and discussed specific content, and considered types of practice activities that would be useful to students.  Sometimes these sessions took hours because we had to make sure we were both clear about how we would organize and present our ideas in the textbook.  For each unit, we had our own sections, or skills, to focus on.  We wrote, edited and revised our own work before sharing with each other. After finishing different sections within a unit, we edited each other’s work. This often resulted in long, late-night conversations about content, organization, style, or word-choice. We knew it was important for our work to have coherence and one voice, so each draft underwent multiple revisions.

Welsh:  How did you divide the tasks?

Moore:  We had several planning sessions in which we discussed our own interests and strengths.  For example, Charl had previously written several textbooks and had a lot of expertise on teaching grammar.  So, she wrote all the grammar sections, but I gave her feedback on the content and exercises, and then assisted with editing.  I was interested in writing the vocabulary sections since the IEC had recently done a Lunch & Learn workshop on Keith Folse’s Vocabulary Myths: Applying Second Language Research to Classroom Teaching (2004).  I was excited to include and apply some of the ideas we discussed in our workshop. Similarly, Charl gave feedback on the content, organization, and activities.  Finally, in dividing the tasks, we wanted to make sure that the workload was equitable, so we both wrote content for every unit.

Welsh:  How was overall textual coherence maintained with two authors?

Moore:  We were able to maintain textual coherence with guidance from the publisher and through close collaboration with each other. Pearson gave us an author brief which presented guidelines for vocabulary, syntactic, and some stylistic choices.  Also, because we both wrote content for each unit and frequently reviewed each other’s work, we were able to notice inconsistencies with word choice and style, and addressed these quickly. We read and re-read each text too many times to count.  In fact, by the end of the project, we often couldn’t remember who wrote what, so I think we were fairly successful with that!

Welsh:  How did differences in tone and style affect the writing?

Moore:  Our content usually controlled our style.  In writing a textbook, it’s important to always keep the student audience in mind as this will determine word choice, point of view, sentence structure, register, and tone. We really had to think about what and how we were communicating. I often read Charl’s writing and studied how she expressed her ideas. In addition, our developmental editor was quite good at making improvements to our writing; I know we both paid close attention to her comments and suggestions.  She also helped ensure we had a consistent tone and style throughout the project.  I remember Charl saying, “You become a better writer if you are paying attention to your editor.”  I agree.

Welsh:  How did you effectively criticize or propose changes to your co-authors’ work?

Moore:  Charl and I have worked together for many years and have respect for and trust in each other. We had the same vision in mind:  to write a quality textbook that would be useful to both students and teachers. At the beginning of the project, we had several conversations to discuss how we wanted our work critiqued. We both agreed that honest and frequent feedback was important.  Humor was very helpful too! To make edits, we used the editing tools in Microsoft Word, especially the comments tool which we used to ask questions and make suggestions for improving the content.  We seriously considered each other’s feedback; sometimes we would meet in person or chat by phone if we thought something was important enough to talk through.  However, while we regularly gave each other feedback, we didn’t necessarily agree with all the recommendations.  In those cases, we kept our original work and deferred to our editor to see what her preferences were.

Welsh:  What were some advantages to co-authoring?

Moore:  For a project of this scope, the advantages far outweigh any disadvantages. There were many times when the project felt overwhelming.  Having a co-author relieved the stress of meeting deadlines, creating original content, or adapting to last-minute changes and updates from the publisher.  Having somebody who could relate to the frustrations that go hand-in-hand with a large project that involves many, many people was significant.  On the days when I felt like we weren’t making real progress and I needed encouragement, Charl would remind me to “just breathe.”  Her knowledge of the publishing world was helpful in managing my expectations, and I really appreciated her wisdom.

Finally, in a sense, an interview is like co-authoring as well.  Because our ideas needed to be coherent in the article, the interviewer and interviewee have worked together to focus the questions on specific aspects that Moore could effectively elaborate on to illustrate the difficulties and strengths of co-authoring.