Either way, time is always the issue.

For us, it appears to come down to a choice between writing simultaneously and having evenings off. And, for now at least, we’re going to keep our evenings.

“Writing together” doesn’t have to mean “sitting in the same room at the same time, engaged in the same activity.” In order to regain a modicum of productivity while our grandkid is on-site a lot, we’ve opted to take turns sneaking off to the Writing Cave. It feels weird because we’re so accustomed to being able to kibbitz instantly whenever a question pops up, and now we have to go track down whoever’s on baby-minding duty, or else save up our kibbitzing for lunchtime or some other moment when we’re both available.

What we remind ourselves is that it was weird not doing our writing in the evening, which we’d been very accustomed to back when Kent was still dayjobbing. We adapted then, and we’ll get adapted this time too.

The one part of the ritual that has often ended up becoming an evening event is the reading aloud of the day’s output. It typically doesn’t take very long, and if it ate into our evening to any meaningful degree that would probably be a good problem to have.

A writing partner is someone who lets you be in two places at once.