Why Join a Writing Group?

Here we are, the second week of the semester, and already you feel like your brain has 287 browser tabs open. You have an assignment due Friday. You need to go buy more kitty litter (like, yesterday). Your PI gave you a super unreasonable research deadline. Your kid brought home hand-foot-and-mouth disease from daycare. You have a student who is really needy during office hours – every office hour. Your dissertation committee needs the draft by the end of next week. The pandemic is still going on. What can you let go to create time and mental space for all of these pressing needs? 

As grad students, we usually let go of our personal writing time first. When deadlines come creeping or when the grading becomes too much, we immediately let go of the very thing that we came to graduate school to do: write. And it’s understandable why. Your professor who wants that 20-source literature review isn’t going to change his deadline because you’re tweaking an article. Your undergraduate student who’s having a meltdown about her term paper isn’t going to shorten her visit to office hours because you have to complete a dissertation chapter. So how to we protect our time to write?

The best advice I have received from a professor was this: Pay yourself first. She borrowed it from all of the finance gurus who tell you that the best way to save is to actually save your money first – put it in a savings account before bills, before rent, before those cute shoes on your Amazon wish list. The same works with graduate school. At the end of the day, you are here to research and write first and foremost. The assistantships and everything else are important, but they are not the main thing. And yet, the main thing is what always takes the biggest hit when life gets crazy. So you’ve got to pay yourself first. I would suggest that you do that through joining a writing group.

What is a writing group? A writing group is a group of 4-6 people who meet on a regular basis for extended writing time and accountability. You’re not reading each other’s work or editing it. You’re just writing together. It could be in-person or virtual, within your discipline or cross-disciplinary. The main thing is that you commit to regular meetings and not let yourself or the other members slack off.

What would a typical session look like? Here at Baylor, the Graduate School helps facilitate Writing Groups once a semester, in addition to a required writing group for the Summer Dissertation Fellows. For these groups, we recommend committing to a consistent weekly day and time (e.g., Mondays from 9-11:30am), and that the time block be a significant chunk of time, between 2-3 hours. For the first 15 minutes, the members of the group share their writing goals for that day’s session or even the week as a whole, and how they plan to reach those goals. Then they write for two hours (if it’s a virtual group, they do this over Zoom or Teams, muted but with their camera on for accountability). Then for the last 15 minutes, they regroup and debrief, discussing goals met or unmet, victories and frustrations. These groups can end up being sources of real support and community during the dry spells and storms of graduate school.

Though the Fall 2021 Writing Groups have already been formed, there’s nothing stopping you from starting your own. Reach out to four or five friends (though make it clear this isn’t a social thing!). Post a sign-up in the GRC break room. Email the other students in your department, lab group, or class. Or, you can keep an eye out for sign-ups for the Spring 2022 Writing Groups coming out later this semester. Either way, I hope you’ll pay yourself first this semester when it comes to your research and writing. You deserve really good, regular writing time. Don’t let the ever-present chaos of graduate student life tell you otherwise.