Purpose: Recently, practitioner literature in English education has taken up the issue of writing-related shame in classrooms, calling for teachers to help students develop resilience. One possible approach for nurturing shame resilience around writing is dialogic collaging: students make and dialogically engage with collages and with colleagues to explore the self-as-writer and to connect with others around writing struggles and joys. The purpose of this paper is to share and critically reflect on this pedagogical approach. Design/methodology/approach: To share, interpret and consider the limitations and implications of the dialogic collaging pedagogy in service of writing-related shame resilience, the authors offer a multi-voiced narrative about one classroom instantiation of college, from the perspective of a university writing teacher and a student of writing. Findings: On the interpretation, this story unfolds three central themes as follows--dialogic collaging can help students to develop a more realistic and situated sense of self-as-writer. That is, students can come to appreciate how "becoming a writer" is a process they -- and others around them -- are already in, rather than an unreachable achievement at which they will inevitably fail. The stance of playfulness nurtured through the dialogic collage process can provide a helpful distance between self and writing. These processes may -- under certain conditions -- support shame resilience. Research limitations/implications: The conclusion reflects on whether more explicit attention to shame could be fruitful and on the dynamics of teacher vulnerability in writing classrooms. Practical implications: The authors hope to inspire writing teachers -- particularly in secondary, post-secondary and adult education -- to engage with dialogic collaging as part of their pedagogical repertoires. Originality/value: Dialogic collaging is a pedagogical approach not previously discussed in the literature on secondary and post-secondary writing instruction, offering one promising way to address writing-related shame. It can make visible and build solidarity around how others are also in the midst of a process of becoming -- as writers and/or with writing. This appreciation can help nurture a more realistic, playful and shame-resilient stance toward self-as-writer.