A version of this post originally appeared on the Education Practice and Policy (EPP) blog. It is reproduced here with their permission.

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Every Wednesday, we run Shut Up and Write on campus at my university. If you aren’t familiar with Shut Up and Write, it is one of those simple but brilliant ideas. We come together in a café on campus–coffee is a necessary pre-condition for writing for some people. After saying hello and settling in, we talk briefly about what we are going to try to write that day. Then…

• One person turns on a 25-minute timer. Everybody writes.
• After 25 minutes we take a 5-minute break. We chat.
• The timer goes on again and we do 25-minutes writing.
• Then we take a 5-minute break.

We rinse and repeat for three hours. Then we celebrate what we’ve written and toddle off to our individual lives. Sometimes we have lunch together.

It is great! Three hours of focused writing time is a blessing. Getting to chat with other researchers from across the university is amazing. It increases productivity and decreases isolation – what’s not to like?

So what’s the problem? Well, after three years of consistent sessions the ‘we’ of our Shut Up and Write group is just five people: three academics, one graduate researcher and one visitor. It works for us – it works really well. But we can’t get beyond five people.

Life on campus

Life on campus has changed since the COVID lockdowns of 2020-2021. That trauma taught people that they could work from home, that they could teach online and learn online. That they don’t really need campus anymore.

That’s a problem. It’s a problem because Australia’s universities are still campus-based universities, at least for staff and graduate students. Even Deakin University, which pioneered tertiary education at a distance in Australia, was built around the idea of staff coming together on campus.

Life on campus, for academics and graduate researchers, is about conversations with colleagues. Those conversations can be about everyday things–meetings to manage the work, conversations about kids and pets and life, what is happening in the world, shared loathing of, well, anything really. Those conversations, those moments of connection, provide a space to talk about something more important and far more interesting – ideas. Talking about ideas is the lifeblood of academic life. Talking through ideas, exploring new concepts, testing possibilities–that’s where things really happen for an academic. That’s what we do this for.

Life online

None of that happens online. Or, to be more precise, it is much harder to make that happen online. In general, most online university interactions have the serendipity squeezed out of them. We generally only engage with each other when we have to. When we do, we log on, talk about The Thing, and log off again. If we know one another well, there might be a bit of chatter at the start and at the end.

We don’t wander down and get a coffee together online. We don’t do lunch together online. We don’t have drinks together after work online. We don’t go to the gym together online. We don’t go for a walk together online.

It’s transactional, not inspirational.

In the before times

Before COVID, we ran Shut Up and Write for ten years or more at a café at RMIT University. The ‘we’ in that case was a core of three or four people who turned up every week and a variety of semi-regular attendees that keeped things interesting. Pretty much every week we would fill the big table (capacity – eight people). Sometimes we would spill out onto surrounding tables. Around us the café was full with people. We were an island of quiet writers in a sea of academics chatting about all the things that academics chat about.

The magic of Shut Up and Write is not just the writing. If you are disciplined, you can write alone. The magic of Shut Up and Write is the gathering of people to write together and to chat together. For many of us, it is easier to focus on our writing when others are writing around us. For many of us, it is lovely to chat with other academics and graduates, knowing that we will be writing again in a few minutes. For many of us, it is lovely to hang out with someone we hung out with last week, and will hang out with next week, to get some writing done together.

What is the answer?

The answer is not to double down on working online. I run Shut Up and Write online. When COVID happened, I moved Friday morning Shut Up and Write online, and have continued ever since. It works, but it is a different beast. We don’t talk about the same things. We don’t talk in the same way.

The answer isn’t to mandate that people come to campus. The answer isn’t to move everyone to hot desking (as my university is doing). The answer isn’t to exert power and control.

The answer is to recognise that we are intellectually curious, that we care about ideas, that we like talking to others about this stuff.

The answer is to recognise what a gift it is to be able to come to connect with people on campus. And to treasure that gift.

“But,” I hear you say, “campus is dead these days. I went to campus and it was empty. Why would I go again.” If only there was a way to ensure that there were people on campus when I went there, people who were doing the same sorts of things that I was doing, talking about the same world that I talk about, valuing conversations about ideas as much as I do.

The answer is to come to Shut Up and Write.

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You can find face-to-face and online sessions on the international Shut up and Write site. These sessions aren’t all run by universities, but they will still provide you with space to get your writing done in a convivial and supportive atmosphere.

If you happen to be local to me, you might consider coming to one of the Shut Up and Write sessions at Deakin University. Get in touch and we can provide you with directions. 

Warrnambool campus

• 1:00 – 4:00 pm every second Tuesday from 24 February 2026.
• Hycel Training Room R1.003.01, Warrnambool campus.
• Hosted by Lucinda Watson and Hayley Keane.

Burwood campus

• 9:30 am – 12:00 noon every Wednesday. 
• Café space, level 1 of Building BC, Burwood Campus.
• Hosted by Rosey Chang and Jonathan O’Donnell.

Online

• 9:00 am – 12:00 pm Australian Eastern Standard Time every Friday. 
• via Zoom (Meeting ID: 890 8462 2392  |  Passcode: 41293805)
• Hosted by Jonathan O’Donnell.