We wrote this post for  YzhaBella’s Bookshelf where it was first posted on June 25, 2011…

Wednesday night is trash night. It’s also spaghetti night. The two are related.

We’ve been writing partners for more than a decade now, longer even than we’ve been married, and along the way — like most writers — we’ve had to fight for every spare minute to work on creative projects.

Currently we both have significant day jobs – Kathleen works in communications at a medical university, Clark in communications for a national financial services company – and it seems the days are never long enough to write new material, much less focus on marketing. So we split the household chores; on Wed Clark tackles trash and recycling, while Kathleen cooks (sort of, hence, spaghetti).

Throughout the years, family, friends and fans often ask a variation of one basic question: how (or why!) do two relatively sane people write together successfully and stay married?

Writing together has its challenges for sure, but it is rewarding on several levels. In fact, writing might actually be one of the reasons we’re still together, still happy and still working on the next project.

We’ve learned a few things along the way and with a nod to spaghetti westerns on spaghetti Wednesday, here’s the good, the bad and the ugly of writing together:

The good (there’s a lot):

You can get a first draft done much faster when you split the work. It took us about 5 months to crank out a solid first draft of Blood and Whiskey, the sequel to The Cowboy and the Vampire. In comparison, it takes each of us about a year to produce solo drafts of similar size.

Two people, two distinct world views, one jam-packed product. In The Cowboy and the Vampire, Clark tapped into his whole “love of the west” vibe — he grew up on a ranch in Montana —to bring the cowboy characters to life while Kathleen brought gritty urban realism (she was born and raised in DC) and her knowledge about the philosophy of religious beliefs into our re-imagined vampires.

You never run out of things to talk about. Ever. Even when we’re not writing, we’re working on character and plot development or goofy marketing ideas. And when we’re not focused on the actual projects ahead of us, we’re honing our skills by making up stories about people around when we’re eating at a restaurant or sharing insights about the great books we’re currently reading. Also, it’s great pillow talk and sometimes a good starting point for researching love scenes. Completely coincidentally, we write a LOT of love scenes.

It brings us even closer together. Writing is a very personal and intimate act, and doing it together brings deeper insights about your partner, and yourself, that others might not be lucky enough to develop.

The bad (the flip side of the good):

Getting edits can be hard on the ego, especially when the person you love and cherish rips apart a page you’ve agonized over for an hour. Hopefully, the process of resolving that brings you even closer together. Usually it doesn’t, but the pain passes.

Collapsing two world views into one cohesive whole, even though the end result is strong and dynamic, is challenging. We joke that between the two of, we make one good writer but the truth is we’re pretty good individually. Figuring out a way to smooth together two egos into on draft requires a lot of negotiation which is ultimately good for the relationship.

You never get to take a break. Ever. That’s kind of a good thing, because you get so much done, but writing with a partner is like running a relay race. There’s always someone running up behind you and sticking the baton in your hand. On those days you’d really just as soon stay in bed and watch old movies, a loving prod to get busy can be a real buzz kill.

The ugly:

The fights. Oh the fights. We fight about the stupidest things, from whether an em dash is too phallic to whether the name of a minor character conveys the right depth of nobility. We’ve fought to the point we had to go to different rooms. We fought so much we went to bed angry, slept fitfully and woke up cranky. But we fight because we’re passionate about writing, and we never lose sight of that; ultimately, the work benefits from that passion even if our feelings are occasionally bruised.

Angry, vindictive writing. Sometimes we leave little literary landmines for the other to discover during the editing process. Like “I’m sorry I think the world revolves around me,” he said, finally picking up all the shoes he leaves scattered around the living room. Sure, it’s petty probably not very healthy, but it is cathartic. And some of them are funny enough they make it into the final version.

Writing together is not for the faint of heart, but after so many years of relying on each other for inspiration, motivation, support and laughter — and fights — we can’t imagine any other possibility.продвижение сайта