Writing to Waste Ink

The Who, The Why & The Where

Writing to Waste Ink is a collection of poetry and prose written and developed by three writers in a collaborative creative process. The project began as a final year project for the authors, all students at University College Groningen. They were all creative writers and had also studied philosophy, and wanted to investigate alternative ways to understand (and experience) intersubjectivity in the creative process. The project is an attempt to move beyond the academic philosophy essay, to create poetry and prose pieces in group-written clusters or “triplets”, each piece written by one of the authors and the other two pieces as responses. Further collaborative drafts produced a set of writings that could not be considered as sole-authored, but pushed into the realm of the inter-subjective.

The book includes an explanatory essay that features a rationale and a description of the investigation and creative process. Collaborative editing began with 13 sets of draft triplets, each discussed in both creative and philosophical terms including their shared implicit assumptions, agency and the interaction process. This book is the result of that process: A hybrid creative/research product that provides very unique perspectives on freedom, death, coffee, rain and statistics exams.

Endorsement by Ferdinand Lewis, Ph.D

"This book is the product of an experiment by three University College students to glimpse human experience intersubjectively, by moving beyond the familiar research frameworks of individual creative artists or philosophers. These poems and prose pieces are only the tangible part of their collaborative output: Their practical working sessions challenged each of them to re-think what they knew of philosophy and creative writing, to re-position themselves at an unfamiliar, uncomfortable point where multiple imaginations (and rationalities) produce a single, rich interpretation. I congratulate them on this effort and hope they inspire many such collaborations in the future."

Cover design by Roos Walstock
Book design by Marius Merz & Jack Dignam 

Publisher: University of Groningen Press,
Broerstraat 4, 9712 CP Groningen