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.
We talked about mutual respect somewhat in the last chapter, but it’s important enough to merit a chapter of its own. We’ve established that many collaboration contracts take it as a given that you each respect each other’s work. Otherwise, why would you work with this person? This is as true in a tiered partnership as it is in an equal one—if a senior co-writer has no respect for their partner’s work, they certainly should not have selected that person to work on one of their projects.
If you’ve decided to work with your partner, even after considering the questions in the last chapter, there must be a central respect that underpins your collaborative relationship. The question, then, is not whether your respect your partner in principle, but whether you respect them in practice.
It’s all too easy for partners in a collaboration to have theoretical respect for each other but fail to demonstrate that respect in their actions. Below are several ways in which creative partners ought to show respect to each other, and a summary of the things that might go wrong if either partner is failing to respect the other.
Creative Input
This is perhaps the most obvious but also one of the most important; each partner in any collaboration needs to respect the creative input of the other. That means that equal partners both voice their own ideas and continue discussing them until everyone is happy with the conclusion. Partners who dominate the conversation or insist on their own ideas are disrespecting their partner by failing to value their ideas. Partners who withhold their own ideas, rushing instead to agree with the other person, disrespect the collaboration process by withholding their own contributions from the shared space. Both problems will inevitably result in a product that is less than it could have been, and will probably also result in conflict, hurt feelings, and a partnership that doesn’t function as it should.
Respect might look slightly different in a tiered partnership, but it is no less important; one partner may have more power to make their ideas heard and reflected in the final product, but that only means they should be extra careful not to derail the collaboration process by being overbearing. An overbearing senior partner can silence their co-writer’s input, to the detriment of the product and the relationship alike.
To show respect for your partner’s creative input, listen to and value their ideas. In an equal partnership, be sure the book reflects the best of what you both bring to the table, and champion your partner’s ideas as strongly as you do your own. In a tiered partnership, senior partners should value their co-author’s unique contributions, and junior partners should seek to create a product that honors their co-author’s vision.
Process Differences
When one partner demands that their process is the only way they can work—telling the other partner that they must do it that way or not at all—that partner is demonstrating a lack of respect for their partner’s needs. No collaboration is going to proceed exactly like a solo work. Writers who insist that they can only write in One True Way are going to struggle with co-writing, because in a partnership each author needs to adapt somewhat to the needs of their partner, rather than only their own individual needs.
Partners should instead be sensitive to each other’s needs, and prepare to be as flexible as they can be to accommodate other ways of doing things. Sometimes this will mean trying new strategies and tactics, or working in ways that are not perfectly ideal for either of you. That’s okay! Most of the work that gets done in the world happens under less-than-ideal circumstances. Human beings, fortunately, are very capable of adaptation. The success of your partnership will depend not only on your ability to grow and change, but on your willingness to do so.
In some tiered partnerships, the junior partner may be entering into a pre-existing collaborative process; senior partners who frequently collaborate may have a set method by which they work with junior partners, and they may not be open to change. In these cases, the senior partner can show respect for the junior partner by being upfront about those expectations, so the junior partner can effectively evaluate whether they will be able to work within that framework before work begins. Senior partners can also show respect for their collaborators by making exceptions where appropriate and necessary, to the extent that they are able. If the partnership is healthy, junior partners should still be able to request adaptations to the process, even if not all adaptations can be accepted.
Time Commitment
Everyone has a different schedule, different life demands, and different priorities. You may have all the time in the world to devote to writing on your shared project, but your partner may not, and it’s important to be respectful of your partner’s availability and writing speed. A collaboration has to move forward at the speed of the slower partner. If you’re the speed demon in your partnership, you’ll need to adjust your expectations and be patient. If you’re dealing with a large mismatch in writing speeds, it can be beneficial for the speedier partner to have other projects ongoing, so they have something else to occupy them while they wait.
You can also respect your co-writer’s time by showing up on time to meetings, staying on task during planning sessions, and communicating about problems in a timely fashion rather than letting them fester and derail the writing process. Make sure to complete your own work on time. When you meet your mutually agreed-upon deadlines, you show respect for your partner by honoring your commitments. Of course, sometimes things happen and you won’t be able to meet your commitments. In those cases, it shows respect to your partner when you communicate about delays promptly and with clarity.
Life Circumstances
No two people have exactly the same set of challenges and circumstances, and it’s important to have respect for each other’s outside demands and work/life balance. One writer might have the ability to drop everything to meet a deadline, while another might have outside commitments that prevent them from doing so. Some partners may have only one creative project, while others may have many writing projects competing for their attention, each with their own set of demands and deadlines.
Life circumstances aren’t static—they can change either gradually or dramatically at any time during the duration of the partnership. Illness, disability, and bereavement are all circumstances that may, temporarily or permanently, alter a partner’s ability to meet their deadlines and complete projects. I personally have worked with multiple partners through a variety of life-changing health events—in the midst of a personal or family health crisis, it does no one any good for partners to place pressure on each other to be able to work through as if nothing had happened. Partners show respect for each other by remaining flexible and allowing the terms of the writing process to change to fit new and evolving circumstances.
When You’ve Lost Respect
I’ve talked about co-authorship beginning from a place of respect, but it’s possible that you didn’t have a choice in your partner. If you’re coming to writing collaboratively from a corporate setting or some other framework where you’ve been assigned a partner, you may not respect their work, or they may not respect yours. Perhaps neither of you begin with respect for each other. Perhaps you did choose your partner, but things have gone so poorly that you can’t remember why you chose to work with this person in the first place. You certainly wouldn’t choose to work with them knowing what you know now, but you also don’t feel ready to abandon the project.
What then?
In truth, I believe your project is doomed to be a very frustrating experience—and probably produce a less-than-optimal product—unless you can find some mutual respect. You’re not going to be able to listen to each other and find synergy—or even compromise—unless you can come to respect each other’s strengths and value what each of you brings to the table. You may think your assigned partner is a bad writer, or a bad communicator, or a bad project organizer. That might even be true! But unless they are in fact illiterate and unable to form a sentence, they have something to contribute. And even then, they might have some ideas to add that you didn’t think of yourself.
If you find yourself lacking in respect for your partner, I recommend you begin by accepting that you can’t change your partner; you can only change yourself. Continued efforts to get your partner to contribute more or differently or better are going to result in frustration for both of you until you step aside, consider what you could be doing to help the project go better, find respect for your partner whether they return that respect or not, and proceed in an intentional and kind manner.
To begin, make a list of your partner’s strengths. Every writer has them, and chances are as you’ve focused on all the reasons you don’t want to work with this person, you’ve let those weaknesses seem a lot bigger than the things the other person brings to the table. Be honest with yourself, and recognize the things that your partner does well, and what you appreciate about their work. Dig deep if you have to; somewhere down there are the seeds of mutual respect, and you have to nurture them if you want them to grow.
Take your time if you need to, but make a list of as many things you admire about your partner as you can think of. Then, when you’re done, make a list of your own strengths, the things you bring to the table. Resist the urge to frame this as comparative: you can note that you are excellent at organization without having to assert that you are better at organization than your partner. Even if its true, reminding yourself of your own perceived superiority is going to breed resentment, not respect.
Once you have those lists, start with your own weaknesses. Again, be honest about your own failures and habits. This is where you’re going to find humility; it’s easy to be frustrated with your partner about their own failings while turning a blind eye to all the things that make you difficult to work with. We all have weaknesses—things that make us frustrating to deal with sometimes. I certainly have these traits, and you do, too. Taking some time to be honest with yourself will help you to have perspective on your partner’s traits that you find difficult. And, while you’re at it, if you find you’ve had a hard time making a list of things to admire about your partner, you might want to add “critical” or “judgmental” to the list of your own weaknesses.
Chances are after reading that last paragraph, you may be feeling judged by me! In fact, if I were to make a list of my own weaknesses, I would certainly list “critical” among them, so I’m certainly not judging you if that’s something you need to overcome for your partnership to flourish. Having a critical eye is an asset for a writer, but it becomes a problem when it gets aimed at your co-author rather than the work. We’ve all got things we need to work on about ourselves, and we will be a whole lot less frustrated (and more successful!) if we work on and recognize those things instead of focusing fruitlessly on changing the other person.
But does that mean that we need to accept the other person’s behavior wholesale? Absolutely not! Now that you’ve got your three lists, now and only now is it time for the fourth one; list the things that bother you about working with your partner. Go ahead and put down all the things that frustrate you, all the reasons you’re struggling to find respect for them.
Once you have that list, I would encourage you to consider if any of the items on it are truly terrible things to which you should not continue to subject yourself. I would never suggest that all weaknesses are things to be worked around or put up with. If among your partner’s weaknesses, you’ve listed anything that puts you or others in danger, anything that amounts to abuse or harassment, then you should do everything in your power to extricate yourself from that partnership. I think we can still find respect for people who have odious qualities. Every human being is a complex person worthy of a basic level of respect. But some things are deal-breakers in any working relationship, and if you see any of those extreme sorts of behaviors on your list, it’s time to find a path out, however hard that might be.
If you don’t, however, it’s time to put your problems in perspective. You’re not looking at terrible abuses, but you are looking at things that are bothering you, things that are standing in the way of your optimal co-creative process.
Take a good look at that list, and be honest about what’s really bothering you. Is everything on the list of equal weight? Or are there some things that you could safely ignore, as you would hope that your partner would overlook some of your own list of weaknesses? Try to focus on only the top one or two things that are really causing a problem. Then remind yourself that having weaknesses is human—you have a whole list of your own weaknesses to remind you of this, after all!—and that having weaknesses doesn’t make a person unworthy of respect.
Try to find that respect in yourself, and recognize that you’re dealing with a human being with feelings and goals of their own, and that, especially if you’re going to continue to work with each other, you need to get yourself into a place of baseline respect before you can move forward with the project.
Star for yourself those (maximum of) one or two things that are really bothering you about your co-writing relationship. Then go to your own list of weaknesses and star a couple of things that you want to work on, things that are really getting in the way of producing the best project you can, and your own enjoyment and fulfillment in the context of this partnership.
Now that you’ve found both respect and humility it’s time to move on to the second-most important aspect of your partnership.
It’s time to communicate.
