Writing Collaboration Quotes

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?

I love discussing the ins and outs of the collaborative nature of writing.

I'm working on a number of different things. I'm working on a couple of TV things and I'm working on a couple of film things too, and they're all very early stages. One of them I'm writing myself, one of them I'm writing with somebody else, and one of them I'm supervising a writer, and they're all sort of coming up at the same time and it'll be interesting to see which one kind of reveals itself first and jumps ahead.

The writers led by Mike Scully are fantastic. And they're creating original stories that not only don't repeat what we've already done, they also don't repeat anything I've seen on television.

When you're a writer in Hollywood, you don't get to work with other writers. You barely get to meet other writers. We're interchangeable, disposable pieces that never really get to collaborate.

My husband has no desire to work with me; don't get it twisted. He gets paid a lot of money to write giant movies. He's not into humoring me with my projects. But, that being said, I did have the story credit on 'Blades of Glory,' and writing is something that I've always been interested in pursuing more.

I tend to write, either myself, or I sometimes write with a co-writer, my friend that lives up the road. It's usually a relatively solitary thing, but I do like coming up with ideas.

I once made the mistake of writing a story with David Corbett. The man smoked me. He can delineate the character and personality of an accordion in three strokes. I didn't even know accordions had character. This act of generosity and wisdom from a very good writer will help anyone who is staring at a blank page, any day, any time. Highly recommended.

I ended up [doing video] meeting Gillian [Grassie] at the same time that we were getting together a book. We ended up working on it, and she recognized that I had a flair for certain things, and we've worked through it together so that the writing could be really good. It was the perfect partnership, just finding my literary voice and figuring out how comedy translates to the written word.

Anyway, he and I worked on the script together, and I must say he was a joy to work with. Very enthusiastic.

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.

I'm working with published authors and some very young undergraduates and lots of people in between. They are lovely people, and they can write.

As writers, our craft makes us sit alone at a desk and hammer away at our novel. Doing that day in and day out makes it really easy to forget that there's a whole community of writers out there, and they love contributing to other writers' success!

I am well aware that the writers of New York, London, and Toronto are more readily noticed, though the shadowy and potent Ozarks Literary Cabal does what it can for me, then nightly joins me for dinner and calls me 'honey.'

There's nothing more powerful to a showrunner than a truly invested writer.

I think I'm a reporter's editor. Being a good reporter is a specific skill, one I admire and don't possess myself - I appreciate people who know how to ask the right questions, who are excellent researchers, who know how to assemble information, and I enjoy working with them to shape their information into an article. Good reporters tend to be receptive to editing, and to a more collaborative form of writing in general, and you always end up learning more from how they work than you expect you will.

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.

Screenwriting is a much more collaborative effort. When you write a novel, it's just you, with input from your editor.

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

If you write in the same way over and over again, like, in the same place with the same techniques and with the same people, you're sort of writing the same song over and over again.

I've been really lucky to work with some of the best writers in the business.

I do enjoy working with writers.

In the case of The Loved One, I was hired to collaborate on an updated version of the book.

I can see how a relationship with a writer would be an easy thing.

A book comes and says, 'Write me.' My job is to try to serve it to the best of my ability, which is never good enough, but all I can do is listen to it, do what it tells me and collaborate.