Writers have long gathered together to work. Compared with the alternative — laboring alone, glued to your desk chair and held captive by an app that deletes words if you stop (Write or Die) — writing alongside others is more fun, less painful, and less lonely. On our campus, we took those advantages a step further in a way that has paid unexpected dividends: We created a permanent location for academics to write alone together.
Formal and informal writing groups have been around for years. Perhaps the most popular version lately is Shut Up & Write, a program of free in-person and online writing events that began in 2007. The idea is simple: Show up at a café, introduce yourself, and then, well, shut up and write. It works because it leverages group accountability to help participants form what every writer needs: a regular writing practice.
For academics, the benefits of a writing habit have long been advocated in books like Joan Bolker’s Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day, Paul J. Silvia’s How to Write a Lot, and Joli Jensen’s Write No Matter What. Likewise, plenty of advice essays in these pages have offered varying techniques with the same underlying message: Write regularly on a schedule that works for you.
But knowledge and execution are different. Hence the establishment of faculty-specific writing groups, such as the Academic Writing Club and the National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity’s 14-Day Writing Challenge. Virtual writing groups blossomed when Covid-19 entered all of our lives, and faculty members suddenly found themselves teaching — and trying to write — from home. Last summer, in his essay, “The Virtues of a Daily Virtual Writing Group,” the historian Justin Wolfe relayed how an online writing group composed of an array of academics across disciplines, ranks, and regions “grew into something greater — a real community.”
Wolfe’s experience echoes what happened at our small liberal-arts college. Over the past six years, we have developed a similar bond through a program we’ve called Write Now, Right Now (WNRN). The significant moment for our program, however, came when we got a designated physical home.
The opportunity to write separately but in one place has created a vibrant, visible scholarly community on our campus. It has transformed the lives of many faculty members and even the campus itself. We have especially felt that transformation as we shifted away from virtual and back to in-person interactions. The entire experience has clarified for us the critical nature of physicality to the development of an interdisciplinary professional community.
To be clear, a writing room was not a priority for us — at least not at first. Advice books and programs on faculty work had long convinced us that coordinated and protected writing time would increase output. The only things we thought we needed were laptops, books, pens, and paper. (Oh, and coffee — lots of coffee.) We could simply show up at any prearranged location, put butts in chairs, and write.
In the early years of our program, necessity required us to experiment with location (or lack thereof). In our first semester, our writing group moved nearly every day as room reservations dictated — from a charming, book-lined spot in the library one day to a drab yellow meeting room the next, always with a large thermos of coffee in tow. For a while, we squatted in an underdecorated storage space generously shared by the computer-science department. During the pandemic, we shifted to a Zoom “room,” writing from our homes. Last year, when we returned to the campus and construction projects closed off our former location, we moved in with our college’s teaching center — and competed with students for space.
Now, finally, we are settled into a permanent location dedicated solely to “faculty professional development” — as the new sign on the door declares — and participants can attend in-person or remotely. The space feels cozy yet can host a dozen writers at a time: eight at the central table, two on comfortable reading chairs with foot rests, and two at desks with large monitors and laptop docking stations. The monitors — a recent addition requested by natural and data scientists — have made the space welcoming for faculty members across divisions. Virtual participants are visible on a computer screen in a corner, and can see and communicate with us. Whiteboards line three walls, while a kitchenette area (with a refrigerator, snack-filled cabinets, a Keurig coffee maker, an electric tea kettle, and more) occupies the fourth. A bookcase, lamps, and other decor make the place feel welcoming.
Across 13 semesters, our writing group has learned a lot by trial and error. First, physicality is essential. Second, mere physicality is not enough. Gathering in a comfortable, consistent spot helped us form more-productive writing habits precisely because good habits (and bad ones) are triggered by location (see Charles Duhigg’s work on habit formation). Permanency also made us more accessible and predictable to our colleagues.
So often, seeing is believing. In a 2022 interview, Patricia A. Matthew, an associate professor of English at Montclair State University, talked about the importance of making writing visible and tangible. For her it was carrying a physical copy of her latest manuscript and listing her projects on a whiteboard. For us, the public display of our shared commitment is an aesthetically pleasing space (soft lighting is key!), the aroma of coffee, a notice of posted hours, a whiteboard that lists our current projects, and another whiteboard that celebrates our published and funded work.
A room where people gather, write, and talk about writing makes that work visible. Any administrators, staff members, alumni, and students who were unclear about just what it is that faculty members do with “all their time off” (indeed, who harbor the misguided notion that we all have time off) can now visualize our work when they pass our door. For people accustomed to working in offices, a space associated with writing helps them understand and respect academic writing as work. Even better, they are interested in hearing what we are writing about.
This industrious communal space also allows us to amplify the ubiquitous advice urging us to carve out writing time that is as sacred and untouchable as our teaching and service commitments. A specific place with set times for writing makes it easier to decline other invitations, since we have a place where we have to be and work that needs to get done. It is like an office, only 10 times better.
Heightened visibility has helped our program grow, drawing in colleagues previously unsure about doing their solo writing in a group setting. “Writing has always been a rather solitary activity for me,” a senior philosophy professor told us, “so I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how much I’m enjoying writing in community.” Her experience was not singular.
Even professors who have never set foot in our “office” have nonetheless praised the program and said they found it motivating to know that others at our teaching-focused college were writing, too. Our program has created a stronger sense of intellectual community on the campus because it shows even nonparticipants that other colleagues devote serious time to research, too.
A physical on-campus space has also accomplished something an off-campus or virtual space could not: It has helped make writing and research a larger priority. Space is at a premium on our campus, as is the case across higher education. So it sent a strong signal when our college administration designated a spot for WNRN in a newly renovated building that houses classrooms and faculty offices (any room that fits a seminar table could work), and then further demonstrated its commitment to our work by giving us an annual budget.
Here’s how it works: We are open for writing sessions Monday through Friday during the academic year, and Tuesday through Thursday in the summer. We also organize writing sprints (multiple full-day sessions) every January, May, August, and December for people who have deadlines looming or projects they just want to finish. To make sure someone is in the physical writers’ room and the Zoom room (displayed on a large screen), faculty members take turns “hosting” sessions.
Our definition of “writing” is any task that moves your work forward: drafting, editing, reading, brainstorming, coding, and more. Participants join us as often and for as long as they wish. Our daily writing habits have developed in tandem with certain rituals that reinforce those habits.
- At the start of each scheduled block, we share hellos and goals, brew coffee, and set up our work spaces. Then we turn to our work with our catch phrase, “Happy writing!”
- At the end of each session, we log our writing hours in a notebook, often with accompanying notes about how the session went. Every time anyone submits a funding proposal, conference abstract, or article, receives a “revise and resubmit” notice, or learns of an acceptance, that person proudly writes their accomplishment on our whiteboard to enthusiastic cheers.
- But the most important ritual is simply that we write.
In that space, with our colleagues, writing is actually something that makes us happy. And every day we are reminded that something much more than writing has happened. We have created a community — one that extends far beyond the walls of this room and far beyond writing.
It’s gratifying to see colleagues develop strong writing habits. But it is awe-inspiring to witness what else this gathering space has fostered: higher morale, informal mentoring, better advocacy for faculty needs, more interdisciplinary connections, and beneficial conversations about other aspects of faculty life, such as teaching and service.
At a time when so much feels out of our control, creating a space for regular group writing has been a powerful step toward improving our careers and our college.
Best of all, this can be replicated on any campus, at any time. Gather a few interested colleagues and make the pitch to your administration for a designated writing room. The start-up and maintenance costs are low, but the rewards are high. Even if you are told no (as we were originally), you and your fellow writers can move from café to library to student center as we did, while you log hours and faculty testimonials that you can use to change the administrators’ minds. In the meantime, you will be thrilled with the words you have written and the community you have built.
