Joint Writing Quotes

Our rule was that we [with Kate DiCamillo] would write everything together, literally every word.

Although Bill Finger literally typed the scripts in the early days, he wrote the scripts from ideas that we mutually collaborated on. Many of the unique concepts and story twists also came from my own fertile imagination.

It was a unique experience in several ways, because I don't think Sam [Fuller] had ever collaborated with another writer over his whole career.

So we [with Kate DiCamillo] would act them out, we would toss ideas back and forth, we would laugh, we would argue. Sometimes it went really well, sometimes it was such a pain in the ass. Our other rule was that we wouldn't work on it at all when we weren't in the other's presence. It was really hard not to do that. We'd start going on email back and forth, 'What do you think about this, what do you think about that?' But, no, no, no, it had to be live. So we forced ourselves not to look at it except during those two-hour stretches when we were actually with each other.

As for collaboration - I have done a lot, 26 books, and found publishers increasingly resistive to them. It's not that the books are bad; editors won't even read them.

I don't really write all that well with others.

Collaboration on a book is the ultimate unnatural act.

I find it somewhat difficult to write with other people, although it has happened occasionally.