Literary Collaboration Quotes

I don't think we [with Kate DiCamillo] intended to write a book about friendship, I think we intended to write a book about two friends.

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?

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

A writer is, after all, only half his book. The other half is the reader and from the reader the writer learns.

Every novel is an equal collaboration between the writer and the reader and it is the only place in the world where two strangers can meet on terms of absolute intimacy.

We had so much fun together as friends that I suggested we [with Kate DiCamillo] write a book together.

And the Hippos were boiled in their tanks!

If Elmore Leonard met Jim Thompson down a dark alley at midnight they might emerge a week later with thick beards, bloodshot eyes and the manuscript for THE BIG O.

In 2011, I announced that I was going to retire, and my agent panicked. So she says: No, no, no. You have to write a book with your husband.

All of my books are about researching. I do all the research and I give it to a writer who can put it in the written word better than I could.

The writer after all is only half the book, the other half is the reader.

I've been so lucky to work with some great, great writers: Tony Kushner and Yasmina Reza.

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.

One of the pleasantest things about book writing is that sometimes it brings one in touch with old friends.

Alison [McGhee] and I have known each other since the summer of 2001. One evening we were sitting around talking about how we wished we had a good story to work on. Alison said: Why don't we work on a story together? I said: A story about what? And Alison said: A story about a short girl and a tall girl.

So we [with Kate DiCamillo] decided to give the friends an object and see what they did with it. The object was a sock and it went from there. Once we got going, once we got on a roll, it became very easy to work together and to figure out how to do it. We would meet for two-hour segments, usually from 10-12, two or three times a week. We met all one summer, and I think into the fall.

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.

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.

For me, an ideal novel is a dialogue between writer and reader, both a collaborative experience and an intimate exchange of emotions and ideas. The reader just might be the most powerful tool in a writer's arsenal.

Over a period of about year-and-a-half, Malcolm X and [Alex] Haley agreed to work with each other. They met usually after a long business day that Malcolm put in very tired. He would get there at about - either at Haley's apartment or they would meet at then Idyllwild Airport at a hotel, and Malcolm would be debriefed by Haley. He would talk, Haley would take notes.

It's common procedure in the industry for people with little or no professional writing experience to get a book deal because of their profile, and then hire a writer.

[On her and husband Michael Dorris:] We both have title collections. I think a title is like a magnet. It begins to draw these scraps of experience or conversation or memory to it. Eventually, it collects a book.

I have been lucky with writers. None have been real trouble. Some I never met. Some I meet only after the book is finished, and some, the easiest to get along with, are the dead ones. Most become friends.

Harper Lee and Truman Capote became friends as next-door neighbors in the late 1920s, when they were about kindergarten age. From the start, they recognized in each other "an apartness," as Capote later expressed it; and both loved reading. When Lee's father gave them an old Underwood typewriter, they began writing original stories together.

I was told that the fact that I had nothing but good things to say about Judith Regan distinguished me. I enjoyed writing for Judith. I really enjoyed working with Victoria Wilson at Knopf, and Simon & Schuster, they've all been great experiences.