Musings on Singular Texts/Plural Authors

Lunsford and Ede's Singular texts, plural authors is their rigourous investigation into what they see is really the norm in most writing-that collaboration-rather than single authorship is what happens in most types of writing. What was interesting for me is their cases of writing that we don't normally think of as "writing." In other words, it seems that a lot of us largely hild to the romantic notion of writing. That it is an angst-ridden solitary venture. Writing is what literate people do in the course of their lives, and what this book illustrates is that collaboration is the norm in the normal everyday acts of writing. Important work is done in this type of writing. One of the cases that is highlighted (pp.32-35) is the work of chemist George Irving, who as a person whop works on government-funded projects, has important writing to do. I thought it was interesting (on p. 32) that he looked upon his role of team leader as "a master of ceremonies." It was his job to keep the show rolling. Even in this prosaic writing, the authors of the study show that people like Irving take pride in creativity " Irving reported a strong interest in language and communication (p. 35)." This shows that pride in using language well doesn't just extrend to creative wriers. But yet, these writiers, are very pragmatic about what they do. Dick Miller is a writer and the head of a sanitary district. His collaborative efforts are all very focused and pragmatic, " Miller and his staff write a variety of documents: reprts for their gverning board, letters, memos, speeches-whatever is necessary to get the job done and to maintain good realtions with the public (p.36.)" These collaborators are very purposeful communicators. To pick up on Mary's question-I reiterate what I said last week-I am aware that communities of creative writers "collaboarate" in the workshop environm,ent and yet retain single authorship. By the by-I don't write for Judy, I write for my own research agenda. This whole idea of collaboration brought to the fore a question-I acknowledge the importance of collaborative riting-and yet, I am a writer of very solitary habits-is there a way to reconcile this?