Do you ever just want to bang your head in frustration when attempting collaborative writing?
I couldn’t sleep, having stayed up past my magical hour of 3am, so I betook myself to the computer to get some work done. Having put it off for a few days, I decided to get started on making revisions to a paper I’m working on with a former student. Essentially, we’re reworking the thesis into a submittable manuscript.
And herein lies my head-banging. There are some good ideas here, obviously, hence the attempt to turn this into some publishable. But I feel like I’m pulling FS through molasses to get anything. I make comments; FS responds to my comments. I suggest revisions; FS attempts the revisions. But there’s little actual writing coming from FS – other than the original thesis, which was a heck of a lot of writing.
I think my frustration is twofold. One, I’m having to work harder than I wanted to on this manuscript. With so many writing projects on my hands right now, I was hoping for something fairly straightforward and this isn’t turning out to be the case. Two, I’m realizing that FS has reached the limits of ability. I say that not to be cruel or condescending; FS truly is trying but the bewilderment over what I’m asking FS to do is slowing dawning on me. I’m expecting the student to write as my equal and that’s just not fair.
Perhaps going back to bed at 6am and starting afresh later today will give me some perspective.
Oh crumbs …this is such a familiar situation to me at the moment. It’s so frustrating!!!! I just want to get on with something else and my co-authored paper is taking up far too much time than it ought to be.
Isn’t that always the way with collaborative works? Although, I have to wonder if it’s also an easy scapegoat, since I likely drag my feet even more on individual projects.
Oh, I so recognise this, I’ve one such student too, except this student still needs to finish and need two papers for this, so this will be a struggle. In your case, since this is a former student and since they reached their ability, could you just rewrite the paper youself, as you think fit and then submit with “you and student” in this author order, rather that student and you? The student still gets the publication and while you might need to put in more work, the writing process would also be faster and less aggravating on both sides, I imagine.
This is a possibility, Pika, especially since I’m doing so much rewriting that it’s practically original writing. I sent the paper back with some very clear directives, which may help FS; structure is a good thing when tasks are difficult. I’m curious to see what I get back next week.