Many advocates of collaborative writing place too little emphasis on the emotional benefits of feedback to the writer by restricting group feedback to relatively late points in the writing process. Collaboration is as appropriate during the early stages of writing as it is after the completion of a draft. Students can receive feedback from sympathetic allies while they are generating ideas, while they are jotting down notes about possible theses, while they are running up against dead ends in research, and while they are developing a rhetorical stance. This broadening of the range of problems upon which collaborative writing works is important because it helps reduce students' isolation, gives them moral support, and provides them with wider or different points of view throughout the writing process, from prewriting through final editing. In short, teachers should apply collaborative writing strategies to finding a promising topic, generating details on the topic, and locating the intended audience for a paper. (RL)