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Nurses write to share their ideas, knowledge, research, and contribute to the field of nursing science. Ultimately, nurses write to improve patient and population health care and outcomes. While writing can be enjoyable for some, others experience it as stressful or hard. Often writing becomes challenging because of the pressure felt to publish in order to achieve promotion, tenure, and grant funding. Also, a major challenge in academia and nursing is the balance of multiple roles—teacher, researcher, clinician, committee member, advisor—that often co-opt writing time. Often writing is the easiest thing to push aside when other tasks and activities take precedence and have clear deadlines. Writing is also hard because it requires time, focus, prioritization, practice, and organization. There are well-documented strategies to develop skills to support the habit of writing and increase productivity.1, 2 The purpose of this article is to provide a practical guide to starting and sustaining a writing accountability group (WAG), a strategy to increase writing productivity and meet writing goals. Many writing supports, tools, and resources focus on the skills and structure of writing. However, having knowledge of how to write does not always translate to actual writing. A WAG fills a specific niche to support the development of productive and sustained writing practice and habits.2-4 A WAG is a peer-to-peer writing group that meets regularly and is helpful in habit formation related to writing organization and scheduling. A WAG provides peer support, accountability, and a venue to share resources and tips for increasing writing productivity. It is all about behavior change. I was first introduced to WAGs as a member of a junior faculty mentoring group3 and I have participated in WAGs consistently for over a decade. Following, you will find a step-by-step guide to starting and sustaining a peer-led WAG based on my experience and the literature. A champion is a person who has personal commitment to the WAG and contributes and advocates for the success of the WAG.5 Having a champion is an important ingredient for success. Therefore, identify either an individual or team who will support the organization and conduct of the WAG. This does not require significant time but does require some organization and commitment to assure success. The role of the champion(s) includes recruiting members, assuring meetings are scheduled, setting up shared documents, and leading the weekly WAG sessions. Before recruiting members, the champion(s) should identify a structure to the WAG. Some key structural elements to consider are the length of the WAG session and meeting time and place. The length of your WAG should provide enough time for group members to develop and achieve specific goals. Often the length of a WAG corresponds with the academic calendar. For instance, if your university is on a 15-week term, then a 15-week WAG session might be in order. Regardless of your decision, it is important to have a beginning and end for your WAG. The beginning allows members to set new goals, recalibrate, and start anew and the end of the session allows for a review of overall goals and assessment of accomplishments. Typically, a WAG meets weekly for 1–1.5 h. In my opinion, the minimum amount of time for a session is 1 h, giving ample time for group check in and communal writing (see Step 5). Variations in meeting time and schedule exist. For example, Chai et al.6 and Fleming et al.7 report on the success of monthly mentoring writing groups to track project completion, motivate, and offer accountability. No time will be perfect for everyone and you may opt to pick the time once you have recruited interested members (see Step 3). My current WAG meets weekly on Friday mornings. In our institution, Fridays tend to be a day with fewer meetings and activities. A WAG can be conducted in-person or virtually. Advantages of in-person groups are that members can get out of their offices, clinical sites, and so on and have a space for writing time that is uninterrupted. Also, members can connect in a meaningful way and support one another in ways that are sometimes challenging in the virtual environment. Advantages of virtual groups are their accessibility and convenience for participation. If meeting in-person, find a convenient location where participants can come together with laptops to participate in the WAG. Small conference rooms or private rooms in a café can be great venues. If your group will meet virtually, identify the virtual conference software you will use and assure that all members have access to the technology. The composition of a WAG is important; therefore, recruit individuals who will be the right fit for your group. A good size group is between five and eight participants. More than eight participants can be challenging to just get through the weekly goal check-in. The WAG could be made up of a mix of junior and senior, just junior, or just senior faculty and nurses. The key is that this is a peer-to-peer group, and the goal is to provide a safe and supportive space for all members. Therefore, be mindful about integrating members who have supervisory responsibilities over members. When recruiting, assure that members understand the goals and structure of the WAG and their commitment to participating in the WAG. A brief presentation in a faculty or staff meeting can be an easy way to present the idea of a WAG followed by an email invitation. Member responsibilities may include (a) commitment to attend weekly writing group sessions, (b) commitment to scheduled and regular writing, (c) openness to critiquing personal writing habits and trying new ways to improve writing productivity, (d) willingness to share successes and failures, and (e) interest in supporting and motivating colleagues. Before the first session, distribute a goal tracking sheet to members (see Figure 1 for snapshot of a tracking sheet). Using a shared drive (Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, etc.) is useful as goals can be added and synced across members. Because this is a productivity group, including weekly metrics for writing time and goal attainment are quite useful. First, tracking writing time (in hours and sessions) encourages members to schedule their time in their calendar and develop realistic and feasible goals for the week based on their schedules. Second, tracking metrics help group members begin to identify and evaluate the strengths and barriers to their writing routines. Description and example of WAG Tracking Sheet Before the first session of the WAG, members should prepare goals or ideas for the group to discuss. Encourage members to identify SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-based. Writing goals should be individualized and it is useful for members to consider their personal barriers to writing productivity. Goals can take on a number of forms—they can relate to writing habits (e.g., decreasing distractions, scheduling time in your calendar, finding the right place to write) and specific writing projects. Individuals determine their goals based on an assessment of what they want to accomplish and the writing habits they want to hone. In addition, a lot goes into writing that is not just fingers to the keyboard. In our WAG, we view writing broadly and may include thinking time, reviewing literature, data analysis, grant writing, figure and table development, as well as writing a manuscript. The important thing is that it is about the individual—it should be a goal that is specific to individuals and their own writing processes. A WAG typically starts with an individual check-in of the weekly goals (that's the accountability part!) followed by communal writing.2-4 My current WAG meets for 1.5 h with this general structure: For the first group session, each member presents their SMART goals for the entire session and their weekly writing goal for the following week. For the weekly goal, members are encouraged to identify a writing goal (productivity and/or content) and a time goal. During check-in, we screen-share the goal tracking document so members can follow along. It is important to note that the discussion during check-in is around accountability and writing goals, not about the content of what members are writing. In the following WAG sessions, members report on their accomplishments of the weekly goal they set the previous week. Creating a safe and supportive space for members to share their successes and challenges is important. In this way, members begin to learn more about their writing behaviors and habits and build new skills for success. To that end, during check-in, members of the WAG are encouraged to discuss, ask questions, and provide feedback regarding elements of the goals, challenges that the member may experience, and share tips and strategies related to writing productivity. Indeed, our group often shares useful writing productivity tips and tricks and when a member is experiencing challenges, we do some problem-solving to address the barriers. A critical piece to an accountability group is to assure members do not feel discouraged. One key aspect is setting achievable goals. For example, if a member planned to write for 6 h the previous week but only completed 1 h, the group should celebrate the success (sometimes that 1 h was achieved because of the accountability to the group), then problem-solve what the barriers were. It could be that only 1 h of writing was realistic in their calendar. This will help the member refine weekly goals moving forward. After all members have had the opportunity to discuss accomplishments and goals, it's time for communal writing. For in-person groups, members bring their laptops (and coffee, tea, or water) and sit together in companionable silence to write. For virtual groups, stay on camera and get to writing! At the end of the time, pause and congratulate each other for a successful writing session. Sometimes if it is a busy week, this might be the only time a member has to write, which is a great benefit to the writer! To be sure, WAGs are not for everyone. However, in my experience, they have been an important source of community and support to keep me writing. In fact, there are times when I only meet 25% of my weekly goal, but the fact that I was in the WAG and having to report my writing accomplishments helped me get that 25% in and motivated me to assess my week and continue writing. I'm a firm believer in something is better than nothing! See Table 1 for testimonials of WAG involvement from my colleagues. WAGs can be an amazing approach for busy colleagues to come together for shared time to commune about the writing process, support each other, and celebrate writing successes. WAGs wouldn't be great without amazing colleagues. I would like to acknowledge the wonderful WAG members at Ohio State University College of Nursing (Drs. Anderson, Fortney, Gillespie, Harrison, Herbell, Nist, Pickler, Tate, and Thrane) and past WAG members at Rush University College of Nursing (specifically, Drs. Cygan and Bejster for sharing their WAG stories) and my original WAG at the Rush University Research Mentoring Program (Drs. Foucher, Lundberg, Rasmussen, Shafiro, and Skarupski). Susan M. Breitenstein, PhD, RN is an Associate Professor at the Ohio State University College of Nursing. She is an Associate Editor of the journal, Global Implementation Research and Applications, and serves on the Editorial Advisory Council for the Journal of School Nursing.
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