Being and Developing Writers

Becoming a writer and providing supervisory support in that journey is complex and multifaceted. It is a relational process involving novice writers, their supervisor(s), and the tricky relationships between these key individuals. Often, others also enter this space—institutional and external sources of support, families and social and learning networks inform and transform the relational influences impacting the writing experience. Clearly, learning to write as a credentialised doctoral research scholar is so much more than simply the acquisition of skills. We see writing as a process of identity formation involving struggles with authority, self-representation and the personal—most especially we recognise the powerful emotional forces at play as doctoral students test out the possibilities for new, authentic writerly selves (Ivaniĉ, 1998) that honour personal, disciplinary and supervisory expectations and norms.