Collaboration can lead to amazing synergy, the end product being greater than the sum of its parts. You and your writing partner cover each other’s weaknesses and inspire each other to great heights. When it works, it is a thing of beauty.

The downside is something that could be called synergistic procrastination. Every writer has experienced the work session where nothing gets done: blame writer’s block, or video games, or phone calls, the weather, YouTube. Perhaps you have every intention of banging out a couple thousand words, right after you check email, and then it’s suddenly quitting time. Or you just need to do a little research, but get distracted by the whole wide internet. Unfortunately, when you have a co-author, the potential exists to feed into each other’s procrastination. It might start off as a necessary conversation about a plot point, but it snowballs out of control.

Something that we grapple with from time to time is a sort of anti-competetiveness. If he’s not going to work tonight, then neither am I! If she can get a hot beverage, then I can too! I haven’t heard any typing from the other side of the room for awhile, I had better stop being productive and look over to see what the problem is! It’s a very juvenile mindset, and luckily we don’t succumb to it too often. When we do, the work session is usually shot. We try to go have fun and not brood about it, and try again the next day.

tl;dr – a longwinded explanation for why today’s Collaboration Post is going up so late.