Tips for Coauthorship

GUEST BLOG WRITTEN BY Emily Romero

It is often thought that writing is a lonely endeavor, and it certainly is when it needs to be. However, when it does not necessarily need to be, we can learn a lot from writing together.

Learning to blend two (or more) voices, far from being a mere academic exercise, is a useful way to combine expertise and honor the unique contributions of each member on the team.

I am the sort of person who loves making decisions and, thus, working absolutely by myself. Five years ago I would have believed exactly zero of what I have just told you, but maturing as a writer involves a high degree of reflection, which eventually leads to the realization that one author’s knowledge alone can never cover every experience of living in, and forming opinions about, the world.

And so began my first foray into book writing with a coauthor, an experience that has produced five unexpected lessons.

First, listening to the needs of one’s coauthor is essential for a successful project. Which one of you should take the lead on each chapter? Should the leader change from chapter to chapter? Is one of you better suited to some parts of the process due to a skill set or time issue? What if only one of you is available to fly for book-related engagements?

Fitting the priorities of the project to the people working on it rather than setting unrealistic goals only to have to adjust them to meet the demands of real life is key.

By the same token, you'll have to use your creativity when working around the schedules of modern life. For example, my coauthor and I have a weekly meeting that occurs in the late evenings simply because that is the only time either of us can log onto our computers and work undisturbed.

This has been an adjustment for both of us because we are morning people; however, we have found that we accomplish much more when we touch base each week. In this way, the adjustment has been more than worth it.

Third, sometimes you just have to make independent decisions and trust yourself to do so. It may be that only one of you is available for edits, and you have to make a choice that’s in line with your shared vision for the book without consulting your coauthor.

For instance, I can make an edit to the way a paragraph sounds, even if it means changing its voice drastically because my coauthor and I have spoken in advance about how we want the tone of the writing to come across.

We do not need permission from each other if what we are doing honors our shared vision. We also know that the other one can come along later on and reevaluate the decision later; none of the choices made are permanent or binding.

The last two lessons I learned are the simplest yet the most profound: Number 4, planning ahead when coauthoring is twice as critical as it is when writing alone, and, Number 5, taking the time to plan is absolutely worth the extra effort in organization because the duality of perspectives in a coauthored book makes the work more complete, well-rounded, and free of individual bias than it otherwise would be.

With a plan, each author is free to be as creative as possible as they work toward their shared vision for the book, and the authors never have to worry about sending conflicting messages to readers.

At the same time, no one author ever has all of the answers for how to get on, and stay on, a particular path, and so mingling multiple well-thought-out, complementary perspectives might just be the secret sauce that takes your book to the next level.

Coauthoring offers a richness to the writing process that cannot be achieved when writing alone—take it from a former skeptic! Combining multiple voices into a unified symphony of information can be a wonderful way to give readers a nuanced view of one’s field, research, or life experience.

Find a coauthor you trust to undertake this process with you in a mindful, purpose-driven way, and you will have already taken the most important step toward creating a rich, multilayered reading experience.

Emily M. Romero holds an M.A. in applied psychology and creative writing from Regis University in Denver, Colorado, and currently studies educational psychology at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley. Writing has been a part of her life for as long as she can remember, and she experiments with both fiction and nonfiction. Today she is in the process of coauthoring her first book (on creating optimal learning environments) on Waze. She lives in Northglenn, Colorado.