Scribbling rivalry: Best practices for conflict-free collaborative writing

Scribbling rivalry:

Best practices for conflict-free collaborative writing

BY ANNA S. CHRISTIE

David, a North Carolina psychologist, had misdiagnosed his daughter’s mental illness a few times before he discovered a common yet little-known phobia that she suffered (emetophobia, the fear of vomiting). After some research, he realized that there were not yet any books written to help other clinicians diagnose it, much less treat it. He found my website that offered information for sufferers as well as resources for therapists along with my story of personally having recovered from the phobia. So he took a chance and sent me an email asking if I would collaborate on a book with him. Meanwhile, I had been contemplating a book for years—although I was one of only two clinicians at the time with knowledge and experience of the phobia, I was stuck in the where-do-I-even-begin rut, assuming I could never get published without a PhD. A collaboration was born, and I had a new start.

David seemed like a trustworthy chap, and he had an impressive resume with research and other writing credits (as did I). Nevertheless, my husband is a contract lawyer who believes that “gentlemen’s agreements” are often agreements between one person and a gentleman who turns out to be a fool. We would need a partnership agreement. The legal eagle added that he didn’t know anything about those, but there were people in his firm that did. Having been married to the man for thirty years, I knew what this meant: thousands of dollars. As a compromise, I looked for a partnership agreement template online, then David and I discussed the sections and edited it as best we could. It wasn’t witnessed or notarized, but at least we had something in place before we began.* My husband, tongue-in-cheek, called this exercise “practising law without a licence.”

The partnership agreement helped each of us to feel secure with the other, and it laid out a number of important factors that we may not have thought of, such as:

• Location where the business takes place (as we are in different countries)

• Business expenses being pre-approved by both partners

• Books and records being kept

• What happens in the event of the death of one partner

• Laying out that no partner shall publish any journal, article, study, or report that may impact the business (partnership) without the other’s consent

• What happens with documents if one partner dissolves the partnership

• Agreeing to arbitration vs. litigation of the contract if there are any disputes

As it turned out, we had no disputes. David mentioned that he and his colleague who collaborated on another book used to argue all the time, so perhaps we should just pick a fight to see what happens. I asked, “Do I look good in these pants?” but he said that was cheating.

We set deadlines and held one another accountable for such things as completing chapters on time, writing proposal sections, and, once we began working with the publisher, editing and indexing.

Writing the book took years of parttime research as we each worked our day jobs. I had used the free app Slack with a volunteer board a few years back and so I set it up with various channels relating to research and each part of a proposal that we knew we would have to write, e.g., author bios, social platforms, marketing, comparative titles, etc. We whittled away at filling those in over time. We also used Slack to post scholarly articles for the other to read. In time we split up the remaining research areas and summarized articles for the other to read on Slack. We met a few times over Skype as well.

Deciding upon a table of contents was probably the most difficult part of our task and took the longest time to get right. Even after submitting our proposal and having a publishing company accept it, we kept changing what chapters we would write and what order they should go in.

The great thing about the collaboration was that if one of us became stuck with a veritable writer’s block on a chapter, we found we could trade it for another chapter or something else. For example, I kind of get a kick out of doing citations in the proper format and David hates that. I was originally supposed to write a chapter on a topic I disliked, but I found in admitting that to him that David loved taking it over. I think it worked out evenly. It’s surprising how valuable another person’s general knowledge is. If either of us had written this book solo, it would never have turned out so well, as many facts and important insights would have been missed.

The editing process both before and after we began working with the publisher was greatly enhanced by there being two of us, both of whom were familiar with the subject matter. We picked up on many of the other’s errors and sections that lacked clarity. The share feature on MS Word is brilliant. Not only does it mark up the text in different colours for each of us, it also shows you if the other person is working on a section—reading it, even—and where exactly they are.

David and I intentionally expressed our gratitude to one another often, which is so important in any collaborative process. Perhaps it helped that we were both psychotherapists and in our early sixties with long marriages and grown kids. We had a certain emotional maturity that lends itself well to working together.

If you are at all like me, you’ve been thinking about writing that non-fiction book for a long time and don’t know where to begin. Consider a collaboration. What do you have to offer another person that might entice them to work with you? Just be sure to have a partnership agreement in place.

Anna Christie is a psychotherapist and author of Evoking Change (2008), described by Kirkus Reviews as “A worthwhile resource for those wishing to live healthier lives, emotionally and socially.” She is also the coauthor of Emetophobia: Understanding and Treating Fear of Vomiting in Children and Adults, publishing in 2023.