(Supporting) Writing Qualitatively: Errantry of Embodied Relational Writing

Abstract

We write collectively and collaboratively to make more visible writing qualitatively and supporting writing qualitatively, both of which we approach as the process of embodied relational writing, to ourselves and to Others. We even consider that writing qualitatively always has an invisible prefix of supporting before it since the practice is not possible without multiple supports. From our different positionalities as a Black doctoral candidate, a white writing center director, and an Asian faculty, we write a collective autoethnography as an inquiry to examine what we do, how we do it, and what it produces when we are supporting (and) writing qualitatively in our private, teaching-oriented, regional, predominantly white institutional context where doctoral programs offer only one qualitative research course. What our writing reveals is that supporting writing qualitatively is possible only when we live/work together—stay long enough—in that in-between space of you know that I will not understand and you pray for me to understand. In this space, we get entangled with each other’s multiple relationships with our selves, Others, and errantries, which, in turn, changes each of us, our relation, and this writing.