Early in the pandemic, when we all went home to work and teach, I started looking for ways to ward off the gloom of isolation. The idea I settled on was simple: Ground myself in routine by organizing an online writing group that would meet on Zoom for two hours each weekday.
And it worked. In spades.
About a dozen of us have met virtually five days a week — without fail — for more than two years. But something even more remarkable has emerged from this experience. What I initially thought of as our “little Zoom group” grew into something greater — a real community that has expanded our horizons and keeps us coming back. Here’s how our sessions work:
- The Social Distance Writing Group starts each morning at 7 a.m.
- After a few minutes of chitchat, we break into small groups for 10 minutes to set goals, discuss problems, and learn about one another’s work.
- Back together as a large group, we turn off our cameras and mute our mics, but stay online and write for 50 minutes.
- I let everyone know when time is up, and we do another small-group meeting and writing session.
I had tried before to develop a daily writing practice, but could never get it to stick. In his brilliant little book, How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing, Paul J. Silvia champions the ritual of a daily writing habit. As he argues, the secret to writing a lot is “writing a lot.” That might sound like a tautology, but it’s actually a call to arms for fitful binge writers, a group I’d belonged to since college.
Research on writing — and the practices of prolific writers — shows that daily writing is more generative than waiting for bursts of inspiration. Fine, you say, but “I can’t find the time to write.” Silvia is ready for you. He calls this a “specious barrier,” one of those absurd rationalizations we all use to keep ourselves from writing.
Instead of finding time, Silvia explains, you have to make time. Schedule writing time, and treat it as inviolable. If someone wants to meet with you during your writing time, say you already have a meeting, and schedule for a different time. You wouldn’t walk out of class halfway through to attend a committee meeting. You wouldn’t skip an appointment with your provost because someone asked if you could grab a cup of coffee. You should instinctively defend your writing time in the same way. Building a daily habit of scheduled writing sharpens that protective instinct.
Easy, right? Maybe for some people, but old habits die hard. And new habits take time and repetition.
The easiest first step, argues David Allen, in his popular productivity guide, Getting Things Done, is to lean into whatever psychological tricks move you in the right direction. For me, “the trick” has always been having an obligation to others. I seem more than willing to disappoint myself, but when someone else expects me to show up, I am there.
So I knew that if I wanted to develop a new habit of regular daily writing, having a group would make it easier. But it’s one thing to schedule your own time and another altogether to coordinate a group of people, all with their own busy calendars. Daunted by the prospect, I had always hesitated to even try.
The pandemic changed all that. My morning schedule suddenly became more flexible, and I could now roll out of bed, make coffee, and write. With my kids doing online schooling, the daily prep of breakfast and lunch, school clothes, and deodorant could wait.
It dawned on me that, if I could more easily block out two hours first thing in the morning, maybe others could, too.
In late March 2020, as employers and governments began to issue stay-at-home orders, I posted an open call on Facebook: “Academic friends: Since so many of us are stuck at home and hoping to get something done AND could use a little schedule discipline, I’m setting up a virtual writing group that will run MTWTF, 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. CST, via Zoom.” About a dozen people showed up at that first meeting. Since then, between departures and arrivals, our daily average has held steady at a dozen.
Faculty members at my home institution make up a third of the group, but the rest are academic friends, and their friends, from across the country. We are historians, sociologists, anthropologists, literary and film scholars, and ecologists. Our work spans the globe and covers periods since the 18th century. We range from junior scholars to emeritus professors.
Our diversity has been part of the group’s charm and its success. We have come to know one another. We’ve also come to understand some of the challenges faced at different stages of the academic career, in different fields, and in different household configurations. Every day, we swap ideas and learn to see through different eyes. We share scholarly and pedagogic practices that have helped us, and offer support in times of uncertainty. We lay out our goals and check in on our struggles.
It surprised all of us how much the group has become a beacon lighting even our darkest days. After all, most of us knew fewer than a handful of the others before our start. But it turns out that — while writing is certainly our raison d’être and how we spend 100 out of every 120 minutes together — the glue that holds us together is the two 10-minute blocks that we devote to constantly shifting small-group configurations of three to four people.
Our longevity and consistency stem from the spirit with which a bunch of relative strangers came into this group and from the ways we treat one another. We are what Silvia would call a “write-together” group, a model he waggishly equates to the toddler practice of “parallel play.” He suggests ritualizing social breaks to temper the risk that the group will collapse into “chatty gossip,” and to frame our sociability as something to be managed rather than cultivated. In fact, it is those 20 minutes of small-group “cooperative play” that make all the difference.
The friendships and intellectual community that we’ve forged have proved particularly important for group members who teach at small, resource-poor institutions or in hostile work environments. We cheer one another’s victories, intellectual discoveries, and personal achievements. We brainstorm about teaching and writing, ideas and arguments, and, of course, campus politics. We share citations and links, novels and TV shows, recipes and travel recommendations. We do not guilt one another about being away or unable to attend regularly.
That said, our group’s mantra comes from the novelist Jodi Picoult: “You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.”
And out of bad pages have emerged thousands of good pages. Members have published or submitted seven books, dozens of articles and book chapters, several court briefs and community reports, and countless op-eds. They have secured book contracts, drafted chapters, written winning grant applications, and designed new courses.
As inspiring as that sounds, some skeptics might be thinking: Two hours on Zoom? Really?
I hear you. Like a lot of faculty members, I found Zoom-based teaching to be draining and often disappointing. I was glad we had an alternative to canceling classes, but the technology was alienating. Our Social Distance Writing Group, however, has changed my mind about the value of Zoom.
The technology does not make or break the group experience. Rather, it is the intention you bring to the space that makes all the difference. For most students, a class is both finite and transactional: a semester, a body of knowledge, and a grade. To push students beyond that requires trust, communication, and sharing. The in-person experience is crucial when students are resistant. You can move about the room, read the subtle cues of body language and social interaction, and use them to foster engagement. Not so easy to do on a flat screen filled with little boxes.
For our Social Distance Writing Group, however, our time together isn’t something to be “gotten through” — it is fuel for our practice. What’s more, the virtual aspect of our sessions has helped institutionalize the group because attendance requires so little effort. In-person meetings can have a built-in inertia that’s hard to overcome. How many of us have skipped a gathering after thinking, “I’d love to join, but it’s too hot to walk across campus to meet at the library.” Or, “I won’t make it back to my classroom in time.” Or, “the materials I need are here in my office.” Virtual meetings eliminate most of those excuses.
The proof came when we returned to something like a regular work-life schedule, with kids back in school and college courses taught in person or hybrid. Many members of our group couldn’t entirely stick to the writing schedule we’d developed. Early hours still worked best for us, but we made adjustments. We expanded our meetings to three hours, from 7 to 10 a.m. That gave folks like me the ability to get two hours of work in, even if I started at 8 a.m., after shuttling children to school. As it turned out, I also taught a morning class on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which reduced my attendance to just three days a week. Despite that, our group’s culture and practices had become so entrenched that someone else picked up the tasks of managing the small breakout groups and monitoring the timer.
If you want to set up your own virtual writing group, summer may be the ideal time. That’s when faculty schedules are at their most flexible and it’s easiest to practice the habit of showing up. You cannot force a community into existence, but you can create the environment in which one can thrive. Just be welcoming, generous, honest, and curious. The rest will follow.
