Hey Honey,
The other day, when I asked if you might eventually be too busy with your other big ideas to write with me, you responded: "I will always want to write books with you."
That made me super happy, because I feel the same way. But since it's actually very unusual for couples to write novels together, a lot of people ask how we got started, and how we knew co-writing a novel together would work. So that's what I'd like to write about today.
First, I want to say that we absolutely did NOT know that co-writing a novel would work. In fact, I very much expected it to fail. But we've always enjoyed discussing big ideas, like starting nonprofits and businesses, and when we started playing around with the idea of writing a novel together, at first it just seemed like another fun dream.
It started over the holiday break back in 2019, when you had two weeks off work from your new job. The kids were only 4 and 1, and we hadn't slept through the night in over a year, which gave us that sleep-deprived feeling of being slightly drunk all the time. Our babysitter watched the kids a few times per week so we had some unplanned, unstructured time, and went to coffee shops and started brainstorming.
I recall starting with the seed of an idea: what would it be like if x happened? (This became the big twist we structured Buzzworthy around, so I can’t say what it is without spoiling the book for readers!) Then you had a whole bunch of hilarious ideas for how we could make x happen, and together we honed in on a plot we both loved. I had written a novel on my own before and learned a lot about craft and structure; I had also recently read Save The Cat Writes a Novel, which we used as a blueprint for mapping out the plot of our story. The more we planned, the more we loved our story. So after a few weeks we thought, what the heck, why not try writing it and see what happens?
I anticipated two major problems: 1) I was worried the voices of our writing would not match, and 2) I was worried you would lose interest at some point.
So it was a great surprise to me when we started writing, and the voices just... worked. Buzzworthy does have multiple points of view, but we both wrote a lot of the main character, Jo (the history professor), and the secondary POV character, Hugh (the kidnapped reality TV bachelor). We definitely had to do a lot of editing, a bit for voice but more for things like consistency in details (I had a character wearing sneakers, while you had her wearing sandals, etc.)
Now, I want to share a very important point: novels are not the first creative endeavor we've tried together. We are both accomplished musicians and songwriters, but somehow never quite managed to compose songs together, despite many attempts. Don't even get me started on the disasters of us trying partner dancing. But we already knew that we enjoyed working together, because we did that once before for about two years, when we were both on staff at Library For All.
We've had to change our writing approach a few times over the years. When the pandemic hit and all childcare disappeared completely, we had to start writing at home after the kids went to bed. We'd schedule it in advance, about once a week or so, but sometimes one of us would pass out sleeping before we even started. But when we did manage to get it together, writing was always fun and energizing, kind of like band practice or exercising. It helped that our novel is an escapist, hilarious story that mostly takes place on a fictional Asian island nation — somewhere we very much would have liked to be when we were stuck at home with two young kids in Seattle during a pandemic (readers may note that there are zero kids in our book).
Also, to my great surprise, you never lost interest in our book. We hit some hard points, for sure, and had to do some rewriting, but I do recall that at some points it was you pushing us to keep going. I will always be grateful for that.
Things have shifted again, and now we live in a small town, and you work full-time while I'm half parenting, half writing. So for our second book, I'm doing more of the drafting on my own. But we still aim to write together once per week. We're almost halfway through, and it's turning out to be just as fun and hilarious and escapist as our first novel.
Anyway, I just wanted to share a bit about how we got started, because we get asked this often. I’ve already written a more in-depth post about our co-writing process, for those who are curious to see a sample of our writing and how it works. So far, I've heard of just a few other author couples who write novels together, and I'd be very curious to talk to them someday about their processes!
Love,
Nicole