Paula Danziger Quotes

The good news, when you write with another, is that you never have an empty page in front of you. The bad news is... you never have an empty page in front of you.

I'd love to collaborate with a writer, but I'm such a control freak, it might be difficult.

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.

I love bouncing my words off of someone else's, and the fact that writing a story with someone else guarantees you'll get something you never, ever would have written on your own.

That first writing session, what Dan Hill calls a creative blind date, is always a real challenge, and you bring that back to your partner when you return to writing with them.

Writing on my own versus co-writing kind of is the exact same thing because we don't sit in the same room when we write. We're always writing alone anyway.

There's a fairy story called the 'The Shoemaker and the Elves' where this old cobbler keeps leaving leather out overnight and wakes up the next day, and there's a new pair of shoes. Co-authoring is a little like that. You send off the manuscript to your partner, and a few days later, you check your email, and hey, there's more book in here!

As science-fiction was what I read in college, it was natural that I should be tempted to write it. So I did, and continued to do so, even while I was co-authoring mysteries with my husband Evan.

A lot of times, people assume that I write all the songs: that I arrange them and I stick Kevin up there as kind of a puppet or something. It's absolutely not that way. In fact, he writes probably 60 percent of the songs, and I write probably 40 percent.

Well, unlike a lot of authors, I will be the one to cop to having a ghostwriter. I've always written with someone else.

How would Jonathan Lethem have obtained such a stellar endorsement for 'The Fortress of Solitude' from Michael Chabon, if not for the years they spent ghostwriting 'MAD' magazine fold-ins together?

If I could get someone like John Grisham or someone like that to sit down and write a book with me, I'd love that.

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

We were 15 minutes into it and nothing was happening; I thought, well, that's not going to work. Then all of a sudden everything clicked. I don't know how long it took us, but I would just show up at Alison's [McGhee] office. She would type and we'd just kick it back and forth. Writing is so scary for me, such a lonely endeavor, and it became a wonderful thing to show up and have somebody else go through it with me. It was actually a wonderful experience.

I never can understand how two men can write a book together; to me that's like three people getting together to have a baby.

I write by myself initially. That's the way I've always written, just working on pure thought by myself. Then I bring it to the table with whoever I'm collaborating with.

The real drawback when you write with a partner is that where you want it to go and where they want it to go is similar, but not exactly lined up, and that's where it's going to lead you into trouble.

I doubt I'll ever do another book collaboration; I've been spoiled. Roger and I both happened to move to New Mexico at about the same time, when we each had a family of young kids to raise. Socializing seemed to lead naturally to working together.

It's much like writing a screenplay with someone else and that's how we view it, I think.

Since I can barely write two books a year the best solution seems to be co-author projects. My goal isn't to get another writer to clone me... it's more to produce a book that shares my vision of positive, fun entertainment.

I like to write with people I have a relationship with; otherwise it's kind of scary, and you hold back because you don't want to pour your guts out to someone you never met.

I always go in very emotionally when I'm doing music. Sad or happy, I'm always into it. I have a hard time writing for other people, writing with someone else in mind.

Years ago, when I was writing westerns, other writers who were friends of mine wanted me to collaborate with them. And it just didn't work.

I love writing with other artists, I really do. Because you can try to guess what they would want to say and how they would sing it.

With writing, I prefer the solo effort, but when a team is working right, as it did on 'The Grifters,' boy, it's exhilarating.