I willingly admit that, as a general rule, I “don’t play well with others.” There have been only four occasions in my writing life when I’ve worked with a co-writer and on each of those occasions, it was someone I knew very well. It was my husband.
Back in the day when I was still writing mostly in the area of health and medical nonfiction, I teamed up with my husband who happens to be a physician, to write four books. We slogged through book proposals together, through submissions and contracts with three different publishers as it turned out and finally gave birth to four books. We found our rhythm and it worked. But it doesn’t always…My latest post on Moonlight Press.
There’s little doubt that writing is, in general, a solitary business. That’s why keeping your momentum, as we discussed last week, is so important. No boss is demanding that you complete the work or risk your job. It’s just you. However, there might be times when you ought to consider a collaboration. There may be strength in numbers in some realms, but writing is not always one, although it can be. The idea raises questions though.
- Under what circumstances does writing with a collaborator make sense?
- How do you find a compatible collaborator with the right background and expertise?
- Since it’s clear you can’t use the same writing process you use when working alone, how do you develop a successful collaborative writing process?
We often tend to think that collaborative writing is suited only to nonfiction. Whereas nonfiction does indeed have its fair share of collaborative writing (have you ever…
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Patricia J. Parsons 