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), read my book, In It Together, a guide to writing with a co-writer without losing your mind.
While writing and publishing a book, any writer must make thousands of decisions, from story structure to word choice to publishing path. In a joint project, many of these decisions will need to be made as a team. While communication and mutual respect are fundamental to decision making, I want to take a moment to talk about some of the unique challenges to making decisions as a team.
Many decisions you make will come easily—the best course will be obvious, and you will agree about what to do. Let’s talk about what to do in those other times, when reaching a consensus requires communication and effort.
Care About Your Partner’s Needs
When making decisions in a partnership, it behooves you to care about your partner’s needs and look out for them with the same care that you look out for your self. It’s important to have boundaries, and I’m not advocating that you allow your partner to walk all over you. But respecting both your needs and your co-author’s will make you a more cooperative and kind collaborator, and set you up to treat your partner as a teammate and not as an opponent in the decision making process.
Decision-Making Styles
Like communication styles, decision-making styles can also vary. Some people make fast, instinctual decisions, while others like to take time to weigh all the evidence. Some people make decisions based mostly on how they feel, while others need to logically work out all possible ramifications before they can make a decision. There’s nothing inherently wrong with any decision making style—but if you make decisions differently from your partner, you’re going to need to recognize your differences and exercise patience with each other so that you can both come to conclusions you’re comfortable with.
I tend to trust my own instincts. On most matters, I come to decisions very quickly, and I don’t tend to second guess the decisions I make. This makes me very efficient when I’m working by myself, but it doesn’t make me the best communicator when it comes to making decisions as a team.
When I’m working with other fast decision makers, this is not a problem. Brandon and I can zip through ten huge decisions in a twenty minute phone call, because we both talk and think very quickly and come to fast decisions about what we’d each like to do. Even when we disagree, we tend to each state our cases immediately, and then either agree on what should happen next, or agree to revisit it at a later time after further consideration. That’s a wonderful asset, because I get limited face time with Brandon due to his busy schedule.
But not everyone thinks like I do, and when I’m working with a more methodical decision maker, I’ve had to learn to slow down and give time for my partner to think things through and get comfortable with their own decision before we can hash things out together. This isn’t an inherently better or worse way to make decisions; it’s simply different, and taking the time to accommodate both of our decision making styles allows both of us to fully contribute to the project at hand. Having patience for and awareness of our differences helps to avoid conflict and frustration as we each use our separate processes to get on the same page.
The State of Not Knowing
One of the biggest enemies to effective decision making, in my experience, is discomfort with the state of not knowing. When it comes to difficult decisions, it’s easy to focus on how much we wish the decision was already made. We’re nervous we won’t be able to come to a satisfactory solution. We’re afraid we will never solve these problems and will be unable to move forward. We don’t like being in a state of conflict with our partner (whether real or perceived), and we just want to agree already so the decision can be over. In this state, we fixate on what we want right now, which is to not have to have this conversation anymore.
This is, unfortunately, not a good mindset in which to make decisions. When we’re making decisions, our focus needs to be on brainstorming new solutions and weighing the costs and benefits of each. We need to be immersed all the way in the conversation, not trying to escape it.
Decision Challenges
Regardless of your decision making style, you will find that sometimes you agree and sometimes you disagree, sometimes you have strong feelings on what should be done, and sometimes your feelings are less strong. Especially in equal partnerships, the challenge of making decisions without a heirarchical structure can derail your progress on your collaborative project. Let’s look at some of the situations you’re likely to find yourself in when it comes to making partnership decisions, as well as some of the benefits and challenges of each.
You Have Different Ideas About What to Do
This is the situation everyone is most worried about, but in my experience it’s actually the easiest decision-making challenge to solve. If you both have different ideas about what should be done, that means you both have ideas! That’s wonderful, and something to be celebrated not feared.
The first thing to do is to listen to each other. It’s easy to let your emotions run away with you as you stew on the possibility that you won’t get what you want, but if you really listen to your partner, their perspective may change what you want so that you now want something else! Or it may not, but you don’t know until you’ve really given what your partner wants a fair chance.
As you each take turns making a case for the path you’d like to take, make sure to drill down to why you want the outcome you do. I’ve found that most often when my partner and I disagree about what to do in a given situation, be it a creative or business decision, it’s because we don’t understand the the reasons and logic behind the choices.
Once we understand the reason and logic, we can start looking for solutions that satisfy the why behind both our preferences. We might seem like we’re at an impass if one partner wants one thing and the other wants the opposite, but when we can see the intent behind the preference, we can start to look at decisions not as binaries, but as a nuanced set of possibilities. Keep discussing and brainstorming until one of you genuinely changes their mind based on the new information, or you find a solution that satisfies the why behind both of your preferences.
To find such a solution, you make need to back up until you find values you both share. If you’re making decisions about promotional opportunities, for example, your shared value might be that you both want to find new readers for your work, and you both want to try new promotional approaches as a means to reach those readers. One of you might think trying Amazon ads is a great next step, while the other might be afraid of putting money into ads at the risk of not seeing a return, but if you agree on the core goal, you have a place of agreement from which to base your discussion. Knowing the reason your partner objects—the why behind their opinion—can help you figure out how to mitigate their concerns and come up with a solution that suits both of you. Maybe there’s a different, less expensive marketing opportunity to try first. Maybe you can agree on a limited starting budget so the level of risk is in your partner’s comfort zone. However you compromise, your solution should take into account both of your opinions and the reasons behind them.
Be careful in your discussions that one of you doesn’t simply tire the other one out. The intent should be to make decisions that are best for both of you and the project, not to wait the other person out long enough to “win.” In fact, if one of you “wins,” everybody loses. If you find yourself (or your partner) ready to give in just to be done with the discussion, it’s time to shelve that decision and pull it out another day when you’re both fresh. Often, when your brain is sharp and rested again, new possibilities will occur to you. Your brain is likely to simmer on the problem in the background, and often you’ll both come up with new possibilities and perspectives if you give yourself a break and time to reset.
One Partner has a Strong Opinion; the Other Doesn’t
On the surface this is the easiest situation in which to make decisions. The partner with the strong opinion makes the decision, and you’re done. Right?
Maybe. It’s okay to allow the person who is more invested to make decisions . . . sometimes. But some people have more enthusiastic personalities—maybe they honestly care more deeply about more things, or perhaps they simply express that they care more exuberantly than other people.
I am such a personality type—my expression of my opinion can ere on the side of the dramatic. And I can tell you, if my partner defaults to my preference every time I express my opinion with more gusto than they do, this very quickly becomes a very big problem.
I’d suggest that the person who is more invested can safely make decisions that mostly affect them. At one point, Megan and I heard that TikTok was becoming a good tool for book promotion. Megan volunteered to check it out, and began the process of researching and posting. I offered suggestions, but ultimately I let Megan spearhead the push, because she was the one doing the work. She was the one whose workload was affected by the decisions. My personality is such that I can summon an opinion on virtually any subject at will, but it would have been inappropriate for me to primarily make the decisions when I wasn’t the one who was having to carry out the results of those decisions with my own labor.
In situations where you are both equally affected, if one person genuinely cares a lot more than the other, it’s fine to let that person have their way . . . as long as this happens about an equal amount of the time. If the same person always cares more, then they will overtime exert an undue influence on the project, and the work gets deprived of the more reserved partner’s influence. So go ahead and make decisions this way, but keep an eye on the pattern. If you find one of you much more frequently cares more and therefore gets their way more, you’re adding an imbalance to the partnership and depriving your project of one partner’s input. If that’s the case, you’ll need to stop making so many decisions based on strength of opinion alone.
What do you do then? Forget about how strong an opinion is. Remove that aspect from your conversation entirely. Really focus on the “why” behind your opinions, as you would do in a situation where you disagree, and keep discussing it until you find a solution that suits both your opinions, no matter how strong.
In this situation, it will probably be tempting for the partner with the less strong opinion to undercut the conversation by announcing something to the effect of, “I don’t really care that much anyway,” or “we can just do it your way, I don’t care!” This might be an attempt to avoid conflict, or an honest attempt to let the other person have their way. And if decisions get made that way on occasion, that’s perfectly fine! But if you’ve already identified this as a problem in your partnership, it’s best not to give in to that impulse. If you are the less forceful partner, you need to shift your focus to value your own opinion, even if you perceive yourself to be less invested. Offer your opinion with confidence, without worrying that it isn’t strong enough to be valuable. If you are the partner with the stronger opinion, gently remind your partner that you want to know what they think, even if they don’t perceive it to be a strongly held belief. Reassure them that you want to know because you value their input, and that you don’t require them to pledge fealty to a particular position in order to find it valuable to the project.
You Both Hate All The Options
Sometime, you may find yourself in a position where you both hate all the options, but you still have to make a decision. Maybe it’s become clear you’re going to miss a deadline and you have to figure out what to prioritize and what to let go. Maybe you’ve just discovered a massive plot problem that’s going to involve rewriting thousands of words, or abandoning everything you’ve written and starting over. Maybe your hoped-for publishing opportunity fell through, and now you have to pivot and form a new plan in non-ideal circumstances. I’ve had all these things happen, and it sucks! In publishing, things frequently go wrong and we have to move on to plan B, C, or Z, and it’s perfectly fine not to be happy with your options under those circumstances.
But, even in the face of only bad options, decisions still have to be made, and paths ahead still have to be forged. If you find that you don’t disagree so much as simply dislike the available prospects, I’d suggest you also focus on the why behind your feelings. Why don’t you like this option? Why don’t you like that one? Digging in to why you’re both less than thrilled with the available choices will help you figure out what would make the situation more palatable to both of you—or which of the bad options feel the least bad under the circumstances. Sort through the choices and stay committed to finding a solution that works for both of you—even if you’re passionately arguing for why you don’t want to do things, instead of advocating for things you do want.
No One Cares Either Way
In my experience, the hardest decisions to make as a team are not the ones where you disagree, but the times when no one has a strong opinion at all. I think of these as the “oh, I don’t care, do whatever you want” decisions. That’s a great and fine answer to get from your partner when you know what you want—the promise you are free to do it (so long as it is genuine and not masking deeper feelings), can be a real gift!
But if you also don’t care about the outcome, if you were in fact asking because you don’t care and you only wanted someone to make the decision for you, then having the decision kicked back to you puts you at risk of getting caught in a game of decision-making ping-pong where you both try to get the other person to make the decision.
Unlike with genuine disagreements, you don’t have any opinions to fall back on or drill down to the why. Why don’t you care? Probably because this decision matters very little in the long run, but it nevertheless has to be made, and one (or both) of you has to make it. And the more times you parry the decision back and forth, the more likely it is that one or both of you will become frustrated that something so unimportant is taking up so much time and effort.
The first thing to do in a situation like this is to make sure that you’re both being honest. If one (or both) of you is secretly harboring a deeply-held opinion that you are witholding from the other in an effort to be accommodating, you probably believe you are being helpful and considerate when you are actually being obstructive. Fundamental to decision making is the requirement that everyone must practice good communication—and that means being upfront and honest about your opinions and needs.
If you are both being honest and no one in fact cares about the outcome of this decision at all, then you need to examine if there is anything either of you really doesn’t want to be the outcome of the decision. Go ahead and rule out any options that either of you are truly opposed to. You should be left with only the choices that you’re both truly, one-hundred percent honestly okay with.
After that, you just need to pick something and move on with your lives. It’s fine to assign one person to do this, so long as the same person doesn’t always get stuck making all the decisions no one wants to make, because if that position is unwanted it can quickly build resentment. Flip a coin, if you must, but please, choose and move on before you get into an argument about something that doesn’t really matter.
It’s tempting in this circumstance to tell yourself you’re doing your partner a favor by letting them make the decision, but recognize that if you continue to give your partner no support except to announce that you don’t care, you’re actually shifting the mental burden onto them. Instead, show commitment to your partnership by offering to share in the decision, even if sharing means you dig out your own coin and do the flipping.
If flipping a coin sounds untenable to you, there’s probably some underlying anxiety surrounding this decision that’s affecting one or both of you. If it truly didn’t matter, deciding at random would be a great option! So if that’s the case, try to get to the root of the anxiety that’s paralyzing you, and recognize that it may be about something entirely different. Decision paralysis can be a symptom of a larger problem in your partnership, and if it is, you’ll want to openly and honestly communicate about that rather than convincing yourself it’s all about this inconsequential choice. There is nothing more frustrating or futile than trying to solve the wrong problem, so make sure you’ve correctly identified the conversation you should be having, so you don’t drive both you and your partner insane.
Fall Back on your Contract
When you begin a collaboration, you can’t possibly communicate about every problem that might come up in advance. There are too many variables and surprises inherent in writing and publishing to think of everything that might possibly go wrong. But there are some key things that you’ll want to have already decided before you write a word (or, if you’ve already written words, decided right now, don’t wait!)
I’m talking about your collaboration contract. In the next chapter, we’ll talk about why you (yes, you!) need one, what should be included, and how that will help simplify your communication about the project going forward.
