This post is part of a series about writing with a co-author. To read all my advice about the full process of collaborative writing (including stories and bonus chapters not found here on the blog), order my book, In It Together, a guide to writing with a co-writer without losing your mind.
When looking to form a specialized team, it’s wise to be careful about who you invite to contribute. Any co-writer will bring unique strengths and weaknesses to the table, but you won’t enjoy collaborating with literally everyone. Choosing a co-writer who doesn’t work well with you is bound to end in drama, hurt feelings and a whole lot of disappointment.
So what should you look for in a partner? Here are several benchmarks to consider. I’ll list them first, and then elaborate on each.
Do I respect this person? Do they respect me?
How do we communicate? Can I see myself bringing problems to this person and having a productive conversation that works toward solutions? How does this person respond in situations where we disagree?
Can this person take feedback on their work? How will I feel when they offer criticism of mine?
Does this person finish what they start? Do I trust them to stay committed for the duration of the project, however long that might be? Do I believe we are equally committed to working through challenges, roadblocks, and partnership struggles to see the project through?
How does this person’s experience level compare to mine? How will that affect the way we work together?
What are my goals for this project? Do they align with this person’s goals, both for this project and their writing in general?
How will I feel if this partnership doesn’t work out?
Let’s talk through each of these and how they might affect your decision to work with (or not work with!) your prospective partner.
Mutual Respect
I’m going to cover mutual respect in depth in chapter six, but I’ll say a few words about it here. Mutual respect is so important that many co-writing contracts begin with some variation of “whereas both parties respect the work of the other.” It’s not a contractual obligation that you respect each other so much as a contractual presupposition. A prerequisite. An assumption.
There’s good reason for that. If you don’t respect the work of your co-author, how are you going to feel about their contributions to your shared work? If they don’t respect your work, how are they going to respond to yours?
Any co-writing relationship is built on the basic assumption that you both have strengths to offer and that those strengths are invaluable to the partnership. We also all have weaknesses, and finding humility and the ability to admit when we’re wrong will be instrumental in any collaborative endeavor.
Communication
There are thousands of decisions that go into writing and marketing a novel, and when you’re working with a partner, you’ll need to communicate about all of them. Even if you divide the responsibilities, you’ll still need to communicate about what that division of labor will be, and about your individual progress as you work.
For that reason, it’s worth looking at how you communicate. In your existing relationship, do you feel comfortable bringing problems to this person? How do you witness them treating others when they experience conflict? A good rule of thumb is that people will treat you the way you see them treat others; if your co-writer has a habit of gossiping to you about problems they have with other people but never seems to address those problems with the people directly involved, that’s a huge red flag, and should give you pause about entering into a business relationship.
Likewise, think about how you’ve witnessed this person handle disagreements with others. Some people are direct communicators; they’ll tell you exactly what they think, no matter what it is. Other people are indirect communicators; they’ll try to gently suggest a problem without stating it outright. Both can cause communication problems: direct communicators tend to step on toes and hurt feelings, while indirect communicators may mask issues, never fully admitting there’s a problem until it becomes enormous and difficult to solve.
Based on what you know of this person, how do you feel about their ability to handle disagreements as they come up? How do you feel about their communication style? Do you have confidence that you will be able to foster an environment where everyone can be heard? If the answer is no, you will want think twice about partnering with that person.
Writing and publishing can be stressful, so it’s very likely that you and your partner are going to see both the best and the worst of each other. There have been moments in all of my partnerships where I’ve had to deal with my partners’ worst traits, and they have certainly all had to deal with mine. Think about what you know about your prospective partner’s worst behavior, and ask yourself if you can handle working with that. Be honest! Even if someone is the world’s best partner ninety-five percent of the time, if you’re unable to handle working with them the other five percent, the partnership isn’t going to function.
Feedback
Likewise, how does this person take feedback? When you give them suggestions about their work, are they defensive or receptive? We’ve talked about how you’ll need to leave your ego at the door—do you think this person is capable of setting their ego aside to listen to your input?
The truth is, not all writers are equally good at taking feedback. We can’t control our emotional response to it, but we can control how we express that emotional response to others. Your partner doesn’t need to love being told that their work needs, well, more work, but if you can’t imagine them taking it well and being receptive to necessary changes, you are likely to run into problems sooner rather than later.
Commitment
Here’s a hard truth: more people begin to write books than finish them. If you want to finish a co-authored book, you need a partner with good work habits. Have they ever finished a book-length project before? Do they stick with projects all the way through, or do they wander when the shine wears off? Do they endure through challenges, or do they give up on projects as soon as the going gets hard?
One of the benefits of collaboration is social pressure—some people stick with projects much better when they know someone is counting on them, so their ability to finish solo projects may not be entirely indicative of their ability to commit to a collaboration. But it’s still something to consider, as you don’t want to invest your heart and soul in a book only to have your partner wander away when the first act is done. In fact, this is the most common problem I hear about when I’m approached for collaboration advice at events: my partner was really excited in the beginning, but now they’ve wandered away. Do some thinking about your partner’s track record (and your own!) before you begin, so you can prepare yourself for what to expect.
Comparative Experience
If you wait to find someone who has your exact same level of experience, you may be waiting for a long time. Even in an equal partnership, experience levels may vary, and this can be a good thing! Partners with less experience can receive significant mentorship while still holding an equal stake in the project—but it’s still worth considering if your prospective partner has enough experience.
Personally, I won’t collaborate on a novel with a partner who has never finished one on their own. I’ve written over fifty books, and most of my co-authors have not. That’s fine, but I want to know that they have the basic skills required to finish a novel; I want to spend my time developing this book, not teaching my partner how to write a book in the first place.
Likewise, if you are the less experienced partner, you might want to consider if you have enough experience to feel confident collaborating. Don’t underestimate your own ability to contribute, but also make sure you feel comfortable in your own skills before you begin working with a partner.
If you’ve never finished a book and your partner is similarly inexperienced, that could be fine! You’ll learn together. But I recommend taking a minute to consider your relative experience and how that might change what you expect out of the partnership.
Goals and Ambition
It’s also good to compare your individual career goals. A driven partner who is looking to make a career as an author can absolutely engage in a fun project with a writer who isn’t interested in anything more than a good time, but it’s important to be aware of that going in, so everyone can adjust their expectations.
What are your hopes for the project, and how do they compare to your partner’s? Do you want to publish, and if so, how? Will you seek representation? Do you want to submit the project to publishers? (More on this in chapter eighteen.) Are you hoping to continue working together, creating a series or brand that will sustain your career?
None of these things are required—there’s nothing wrong with writing books for fun! But you want to be on the same page when it comes to future plans. And if one of you sees this project as a lifetime endeavor while the other just wants to write one book for fun and move on to the next thing, you might want to consider whether this partnership is going to meet either of your needs in the long run.
What if it doesn’t work out?
Finally, consider how you will feel if the partnership doesn’t work out. This is especially important when it comes to equal partnerships between friends. Writing books with friends can be a wonderful experience. But when work issues begin to bleed into the friendship, it can also cause stress and hurt feelings.
Even the best suited partnerships sometimes fall apart. Even the most experienced writers sometimes have collaborations that don’t work out. Thinking through the potential consequences of failure ahead of time will help you decide if it’s a risk you’re willing to take, and make some plans for how you might handle the worst if it happened.
If your partner bailed on the project, would you be able to separate your feelings about the work from your personal feelings toward them? How would you feel if your partner (however legitimate their reason) dropped out of the project, and you had to abandon the book halfway through? How would you feel about never getting to finish this book?
Nobody’s Perfect
Obviously, we would all love to work with a partner who always shows an ideal level of respect, communicates clearly and kindly at all times, has complementary experience and ambition to our own, loves to have their work critiqued, is overjoyed at new suggestions, is perfectly committed, and sees every task through to the end. This person, unfortunately, doesn’t exist. Or if they do, I certainly have never worked with them—and I’m not providing that to my co-writers, either!
So it’s not really a question of whether your partner embodies all these traits like a paragon of collaboration. They are going to have flaws. You are going to experience mismatches. You and your partner are both going to be better at some skills than others—and sometimes you may both suck at the same things! The question is, can you live with the differences? Can you work with your partner’s foibles and feel safe and happy while doing so?
If not, it doesn’t mean your prospective partner is a terrible person. It’s not a judgment of their moral fiber. It just means you’re not well suited to make a partnership work, and that’s okay.
There are no ideal partners. There are things about me that are obnoxious to deal with, and I’ve discussed projects with partners who ultimately decided that working with me wasn’t for them. This may happen to you, or you may be the one deciding that this particular collaboration isn’t a good fit. That’s okay. Everyone can still be friends (and if you can’t, you’re definitely better off not working together!)
But what if you’re already in a partnership . . . and it’s not going well? You don’t want to walk away from the project, but there are things that bother you, and you’re not sure how to handle them.
Over the next several chapters we’ll talk about using some of the principles we’ve discussed here to make bad situations better, and good partnerships great. It’s okay if you and your partner aren’t perfect—or even good—at communication or respect or taking feedback—the good news is, you can change, you can learn, and you can grow.
