Co-Laboring in the Garden

What can any of us say, with confidence, we’ve done completely on our own? 

In the creation narrative at the beginning of Genesis, after sending Adam to work and take care of the Garden of Eden, God notes that “it is not good” for him to be alone. And so, He creates Eve, a co-laborer to cultivate the garden with Adam (Genesis 2:18 NIV). While this passage is often cited with reference to marriage, its meaning extends far beyond that one type of human community to encompass every image-bearer. It is not good for us to be alone. We were, all of us, created to co-labor together. Co-laboring—on an athletic team, among coworkers, among members of a family, and, yes, among coauthors of award-winning books—requires us to acknowledge our dependence on each other. 

When we set out to write a book together with our third coauthor, Rachel B. Griffis, we all had a lot of writing experience, but we had only ever written alone. And while writing alone was never “not good,” it was a challenge for us to grasp the blessings co-writing made possible. The divide-and-conquer strategy we began with was very much that of three writers used to writing alone. Our book has six chapters; each of us was the primary drafter of two of them. Once the initial chapters were drafted, however, the true challenge of coauthorship began. We shared our drafted chapters with another coauthor, who took over to edit or expand. We gave each other permission to fully revise our writing—in other words, we weren’t merely commenting on each others’ work or making suggestions; we were expanding, adding sources and examples, restructuring whole paragraphs, and changing the wording of sentences. And the same is true of this blog post (this parenthetical is brought to you by me [Julie], as I edit and restructure Rachel’s words!). 

Though this process was hardly one we were used to, we realized quickly that not only is writing one third of a book a far less daunting task than writing an entire book, but also that our strengths complemented each other and enriched the whole. The book is full of anecdotes from our teaching and reading experiences, for example; our co-laboring efforts gave us more to draw from, and sharing those experiences with each other bore fruit not just in the book itself but in our own classrooms. I (Julie), for example, use Rachel Griffis’s Commonplace Book assignment (in chapter 6) regularly in my world literature classes now; I (Rachel) have pared down several of my reading assignments so that my students and I can “chew on the text” (Julie’s phrase from chapter 1).

Co-laboring also helped us all cultivate the virtue of humility. Speaking from my (Rachel’s) personal experience, turning my writing over to another author, even one I liked and trusted, was a profoundly humbling experience. Each time I received one of “my” drafts back from a coauthor, I had to stage a wrestling match with my ego. I’d read over the changed draft and think, “but didn’t she like it the way I wrote it?” or, “wasn’t that clear already?” or even, “why are all my semicolons gone?” After the first emotional reaction, however, I always came to realize that my coauthors’ editing made my draft better. My coauthors added references to sources I didn’t even know existed; they made the vocabulary more precise; and they created a unified voice where each of our personal writing quirks merged. Although trusting my writing to my coauthors was always hard and sometimes a little scary, they never betrayed that trust.

And often, that trust required letting things go. Even today, as I (Julie) skim over our completed book, I still remember disagreements we had over content, and there are still a few areas of the book that I am not in full agreement with. I’m sure my coauthors could say the same. But I was outvoted when we discussed each of those spots, and you know what? It was for the best that my desire to make the points I wanted to make was weeded out and replanted with a better desire to trust my coauthors. As Rachel said above, they never betrayed that trust.

And we didn’t just write together. We also met regularly via Zoom to talk through our work. We asked each other questions, complimented each others’ work, and tackled bigger changes. One of the most sweeping changes we had to make early in the process was to our intended audience. We’d originally thought the book would be ideal for other Christian professors, but our publisher asked us to broaden the audience to include layreaders; targeting only readers like ourselves would unduly limit our reach. We were hesitant—mostly, looking back, because making that change would demand a lot of revision!—but we’re glad we did it, and having three coauthors did a lot to make the work more manageable.

We also killed many darlings over the course of the project: when an example or phrase didn’t resonate with all three of us, we had to re-phrase or edit until it was something all of us could agree on that kept our vocabulary consistent. I (Rachel) particularly remember having to work on the term “curiosity,” which we use early in the book as a vice (its countering virtue is “studiousness”) and, consequently, I had to edit it out of some later chapters where we used the term positively. I (Julie) remember the conscious effort we made to remove all warlike language from the book (“combatting” ideas, facing “opponents,” “battling” vices, etc.) because it didn’t fit our overall ethos. 

Throughout this process of co-laboring, then, we each made sacrifices for the good of the overall project; however, we all agree that the completed book is stronger than the sum of its parts. In other words, our co-laboring bore fruit that was (to stretch a metaphor) stronger, brighter, and more flavorful than any one of us could have produced on her own. In many ways, this process has enhanced our understanding of what it means to be in community, both as academics and as Christians. In her discussion of Christian scholarship in Joining the Mission (Eerdmans, 2011), Susan VanZanten describes scholarship as living out God’s image: “In discovering more about the creation and conceiving new ways to organize, explain, and employ that creation, we act in the image of the Triune God” (139). When we think of our intellectual work as an act that imitates God, who by His very nature acts in community, we see that considering ourselves as individuals in isolation runs counter not only to the example of the Genesis narrative but also to the example of God Himself, whose image we share.

VanZanten also calls scholarly work “tending the garden” (139), a metaphor that resonates with the present discussion of co-laboring and coauthoring. As I (Julie) was doomscolling social media a few nights ago (don’t we all?), a video came across my feed of a backyard gardener talking about planting the “three sisters”: three crops that indigenous American agriculturalists co-cultivated because they mutually benefited each other. Corn stalks provide a natural trellis for climbing beans, the beans replenish the nitrogen in the soil that the corn depletes, and squash provides natural mulch and keeps weeds from taking root. Like these three companion crops, we, too, grew together as writers and supported each other over the course of this project. In doing so, we deepened our understanding of what it means to cultivate God’s garden, both as individuals and as image-bearers of a relational God, deeply embedded in community. 

References:

Susan Van Zanten, Joining the Mission: A Guide for (Mainly) New College Faculty (Eerdmans, 2011).