Don’t Get Too Comfortable

At the writing conference we just attended, someone presented on the topic of cowriting. It was a married couple who write SF together, but it wasn’t us. Honest. Their excellent presentation was itself a collaborative enterprise, sort of a tag-team slideshow.

One’s comfort zone, specifically leaving it, came up in the context of how having a writing partner differs from writing solo. They mentioned having originally listed it as a drawback then moving it over to the plus column instead.

We agree all around. Let’s take the positive side of things first: new challenges are good for us. About a thousand more homilies could go in here, and we all know them by heart. The difficulty is taking them to heart, and willfully stepping over the line that defines that zone of cozy security. That’s the beauty of what a writing partner gives you, someone who’s invested in your success but who nevertheless sometimes nudges you out into scarytown. Ideally that’s symmetrical, with your partner’s comfort boundaries getting smudged just as much as your own.

The basis for discomfort over entering a cowriting partnership is trust, and trust comes in different flavors. It’s entirely possible to respect someone’s integrity and honesty but still not like how it feels when they want to look at your work in progress. That’s a perfectly human reaction to a new partner, and you have to practice with each other for a bit to get over that first hill. (And maybe another couple of hills.) When it’s working, you’re both more concerned with the quality of the work than with your individual contributions.

Now, for the negative: you might be uncomfortable with the person for fundamental, personal reasons. You might be incompatible, and the amount of effort it would take to overcome that isn’t worth it. You could be the fastest of friends and still not be compatible as cowriters. The dreaded artistic differences. You might, on the other hand, find that working with a particular person makes friendship impossible. Maybe the art is flowing, but it’s at too high a personal cost. How high is too high? That’s for you to say.

Writing with a partner will necessitate going outside your comfort zone sometimes. But a good partner will never shove, just nudge.