by Julie Glover

When Christina Delay and I became critique partners, we didn’t imagine the deep friendship we’d develop. But even more surprising, and welcome, was becoming coauthors.

Could one of your writing friends become a valued writing partner?

Getting Started

We decided to cowrite a series out of frustration with our individual writing careers not yielding the results we’d anticipated. If we could self-publish a nine-book series within a year or two that made money, we’d have more options for our individual writing careers.

Very soon, we discovered that: (1) we weren’t willing to lower our standards and thus needed more time to produce our best work, and (2) life has a way of intervening. Many of you can relate to having your plans interrupted by a worldwide pandemic as well as personal challenges. C’est la vie!

Even so, we have published five novels together, with four more planned, as well as our most recent release, a nonfiction book for writers titled Together, We Write: An Author's Complete Guide to Cowriting. Throughout this process, we have learned a lot.

First of all, your coauthor should be a friend.

They don’t need to be a close friend, like we are, but you should enjoy spending time with this person, because you’ll spend a lot of time together when you cowrite a book.

Second, you should adore their writing.

You’ll be reading a lot of your coauthor’s words, so you should already enjoy their independent work before becoming partners. I’m regularly in awe of Christina’s viscerals and plot-twist brilliance, and she has often told me that my dialogue is spectacular. (I’m wincing at that characterization, but it is what it is.) That mutual respect has made it much easier to work together.

Third, you should agree that the prefix co means a lot.

You’ll each need to check your I’m right arrogance at the door and let yourself be edited and challenged by your coauthor. Such openness has made us not only better coauthors for our shared books but better authors for our individual novels.

Choosing a Process

Once you find The One—and wrangle them into writing with you—there’s still plenty to figure out. You must discover the how of writing together.

Will you write in the same room? Pass the manuscript back and forth? Divide up points of view? Lean on one of you to write setting and dialogue while the other focuses on internal thoughts and viscerals? Or something else altogether?

Coauthors have many options available. Take stock of your personality preferences, writing strengths and weaknesses, and time constraints to determine how to proceed.

For us, having a story structure was key. Even though I’m not a super-structured writer on my own, that framework helped us to navigate the path forward. We also discussed when we’d each write, with the happy coincidence that Christina wrote best in the mornings and I wrote best in the evenings. You’ll need to decide what software to use, what editing approach you’ll take (Track Changes or something else), deadlines, and all that coauthor jazz.

Navigating Challenges

While cowriting has been an amazing experience we’ve loved, we won’t deny that it comes with some challenges.

For one thing, you’re sharing profits with another author. Your per-book income won’t be as much. That said, you’re also sharing the work of writing, editing, and marketing with someone else. It’s half the work for half the profit, but we believe our profits are exponentially improved with an ally at our side!

Other challenges include working through different perspectives on plot or characterization, finding time to write and edit with one another, and deciding what promotion opportunities to embrace or let pass. But honestly, none of these has come close to insurmountable.

Because we respect one another, we’re committed to resolving any differences and embracing a third way that works well for both of us.

If you’re worried that cowriting will keep you from your solo projects, breathe easy. For us, cowriting doesn’t keep us from doing our own thing. Christina also writes psychological suspense that’s definitely darker than I write, while I pen novels about teen friendship and romance. We enjoy reading one another’s books! But we write in different genres—except when it comes to our shared series.

Loving the Story

What we’ve created with our supernatural suspense series is bigger and better than what we could have done alone. We’ve fallen in love with characters the other writer introduced, plot twists the other devised, and prose that kept us on the edges of our seats. Just the mention of Muse Island (the name of our series) takes Christina and me to a magical place in our minds and hearts—a world we built together.

But that’s not the only story we love. We love our story of writing together. It has deepened our friendship and helped us grow as authors. This journey isn’t always smooth, but it’s the sort of adventure you wouldn’t trade for anything. And we’re excited to tell others about it, knowing that some other authors would really relish the cowriting experience.

If you’re intrigued about cowriting, consider who you might want to take that adventure with! And then pick up our book, Together, We Write; this short read will walk you through everything you need to know to have a successful coauthor experience.

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About Julie

Julie Glover is an award-winning author of young adult and mystery fiction. She has also coauthored five supernatural suspense novels and two short stories in the mythology-based Muse Island series under her pen name Jules Lynn. With her coauthor, Christina Delay, she recently published Together, We Write: An Author's Complete Guide to Cowriting, currently available as an e-book and soon coming out in print.

Julie holds a master’s degree in counseling, has taught conference workshops and online courses, and served as sidekick and sometimes-host for Cruising Writers. A native of Texas, she now lives in Denton with her hottie husband, her loquacious cat, and her large collection of cowgirl boots.

Top image by GaudiLab via Deposit Photos