Collaboration between creative writing researchers in the academy, and particularly the benefits and potential of HDR writing groups, are topics that have drawn increasing scholarly attention. Batty notes that while ‘creative writing is often seen as an isolated practice, it is also one in which practitioners crave connection and people with whom to share their ideas, for moral support and critical feedback’ (2016: 69). While collaboration is vital to developing new networks and communities, the development and maintenance of collaborative practice is often as complicated as it is productive. This article examines some of the deeper complexities of collaborating on traditional research outputs and considers the ways in which creative writing HDR students in particular can develop a range of strategies to navigate collaborative practice. Through reflecting upon several exemplars of collaborations experienced by the authors – including a HDR writing group – this article contends that collaboration is often more complex than the literature suggests. Rather than being conceptualised as an always generative, ideal model for producing research outputs, collaboration should instead be conceptualised, discussed in scholarship, and approached in ways that are as diverse, paradoxical, and fluid as collaborative endeavours are in practice.