How-to books and courses for aspiring authors are generally directed towards the soloist -- the writer who, like Kipling's cat, walks by himself. Even the writing group whose members present their work for mutual constructive criticism is ultimately focused on helping the individual, and the same goes for the writer-editor collaboration (or, as sometimes happens, tug of war). There is not much out there for the aspiring team of writers who wish to avail themselves of the many benefits of co-authorship (while avoiding the equally numerous traps for the unwary).
The three of us recently coauthored a book called Short Cuts: A Guide to Oaths, Ring Tones, Ransom Notes, Famous Last Words, & Other Forms of Minimalist Communication (Oxford University Press: 2010), and not only lived to tell the tale but are still good friends and happy with the finished product, in large part because we agreed on a few basic precepts. Here are the fundamental half dozen, which we recommend to those of you who might be contemplating such a collaboration.
1. Pick a good topic, one you will still enjoy a year later. (This advice applies to solo works too, of course; many a promising Ph.D. has fallen by the wayside having discovered that long-term exposure to, e.g., Smart's cat Jeoffry can be allergenic.) The sheer number and variety of short forms of communication that we could chose to write about (or not), and the fact that the organization of Short Cuts allowed the treatment of the individual forms to be relatively brief, meant that the material retained its zest through to publication.
2. Get along. Having largely ignored this admonition when they were kids, the Humez brothers (Alex and Nick) eventually concluded that playing nice could be a lot more rewarding than squabbling and have gone on to write eight books together. This is not of course to say that you have to be siblings to coauthor a book: Initially a friend of Alex's from the workplace where both were employed as technical writers with similar eclectic interests and sensibilities, the third coauthor (Rob) provided the necessary catalyst to move what had been a long simmering project waiting for just the right seasonings onto the front burner. Shared worldview and sense of humor may not be absolute prerequisites to successfully completing a project, but they certainly make it a lot easier and a lot more enjoyable.
3. Make the most of each person's strengths. What distinguishes collaboration from simply divvying up an amorphous workload indiscriminately is playing to those strengths. Athos may be great at research but have an excruciating time turning it into prose; Porthos may have an unusual talent for taking inchoate notes and banging out a coherent rough draft from them, and Artemis may be a consummate stylist who is just the one to massage the results into a seamless publishable whole. It helps if Artemis has the skills necessary to wield the scissors with diplomatic grace. If he does, you should elect him at the outset to act as the traffic cop, the mediator among all the players--writers, editors, the folks in Marketing, et al.
4. Keep the boundaries clean. Simple enough to see that the optimal passing order in the case above will be Athos to Porthos to Artemis; less obvious is the fact that once material leaves Porthos's desk he shouldn't then be leaning over Artemis's desk kibitzing. The nagging disappointment of seeing one's truly deathless story about the penguin and the Peugeot deleted from the final draft can be much mitigated by building in review break-points where anybody can make the case for a pet alternative.
5. Be flexible. The occasional need to adjust the work load will be inevitable: Athos has a sudden deadline at his day job and is temporarily hors de combat, Porthos fractures his acromion while break dancing and can only type lefty, and so on. Be prepared to take up the slack.
6. Finally, never take a good collaboration for granted: It's worth nurturing, even coddling in spots. The bottom end of the pop music chart is littered with bulletless singles by individual musicians who split from wildly successful bands, thinking they could do just as well or better on their own. But the whole is almost invariably a great deal more than the sum of its parts. More than that, it can also be a great deal more fun to be in a working relationship that features a lot of bouncing of ideas between collaborators, and generally egging each other on, than sitting alone at your desk staring at the blank page and cudgeling your brains trying to think of what to say next.
Alexander Humez, Nicholas Humez, and Rob Flynn are the coauthors of "Short Cuts: A Guide to Oaths, Ring Tones, Ransom Notes, Famous Last Words, & Other Forms of Minimalist Communication," which can be purchased here.