Writing for Publication: Transitions and Tools that Support Scholars’ Success - Mary Renck Jalongo, Olivia N. Saracho 2016

Dealing with Irresponsible Co-authors
From Novice to Expert
Writing as Professional Development

While it frequently is assumed that writing with someone else is a time-saving strategy that is not necessarily the case. For example, a widely published scholar can more efficiently write a book proposal independently than coach a novice in how to do this, yet they often will do this out of a commitment to mentoring the next group of scholars. While writing with one or more other scholars does not necessarily make the task easier, it should yield a better finished product than what one author could generate alone. This cannot happen if a co-author fails to deliver. As one published author explained, “I’ve had trouble with collaborators. Actually, I had someone break a contract on a book…And it totally changed my workload in relation to that project, so it was… my worst experience with publication” (Jalongo, 2013b, p. 75). In another case, a writing team had to renegotiate their roles when one person failed to produce anything:

So, one of the things I’ve done in the past was I have searched my soul on ’Were we clear in terms of our different responsibilities, did everybody agree on them, who was writing what, when, whatever?’ So that was the first thing that I had to do there. The second thing was to talk to other people on the writing team. I told them I was really concerned about the fourth person on our team: what were we going to do about it? she wasn’t writing anything, and we were moving toward a deadline. So the three of us came up with a couple of things…that did not work…we wanted to give her the opportunity to lead but, in the end, the three of us agreed to talk to her, and move her to the last author because she did not pull her weight. (Jalongo, 2013b, p. 75)