Collaborating with co-authors on articles, grants, and presentations often seems like a timesaving strategy for busy academics. Yet collaborative relationships often fail because writing partners find their styles and schedules don’t mesh, collaborators disappear or roadblock projects, and managing the back and forth of a collaborative workflow proves to be time consuming. 

In this interactive presentation, participants will be invited to identify specific challenges that affect productive writing collaborations. Next, participants will be taught specific techniques to begin or revise collaborative work with a focus on five key areas: initiating a collaborative project (grant, conference presentation, article, textbook, etc.), dividing up collaborative work, deciding on the collaborative writing process, managing deadlines, and problem solving for collaborative work challenges. Free software tools and templates will be used with participants to assist in these areas. Using this combination…