Writing Partnership Quotes

I'd love to work on a script in collaboration.

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?

We'd decided to write a book about two friends. I gave her some coffee and then we sat there not knowing what to do. How do you start writing a book together? So Kate [DiCamillo] got up after about 10 minutes into this endeavor, and said, 'Well, that was fun,' and started to head out the door. I said, 'Wait, wait, wait, no no no,' because I'm a bit more patient.

My family is involved and my wife Brenda is a great, great writer. She helps me with the writing of everything and also sings with me. I owe a lot to Brenda.

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.

Writing 'Father Ted' with Arthur Mathews was like being hooked up to a drip full of endorphins.

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.

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.

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.

Mike Royce and I have always had success writing what we know. What we know now is that we're middle-aged, neurotic and fat.

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

I've never worked with a co-author before [Alison McGhee]. Writing for me is a pretty scary thing, so it was a huge comfort to have someone in the room working with me. It became less like work and more like play.

My husband wrote the story for my first book, but then he didn't want to do that anymore. So if I was going to go on being an illustrator, I had to start writing the stories, too.

David Mamet, Tim Kazurinsky, and Denise DeClue, who adapted [ About Last Night]. Between the three of them... I mean, it's always down to the writing. You're only as good as your writing.

One, we [with Alison McGhee] laugh a lot - that was great. Two, I enjoy writing, but it's a lonely undertaking. To have someone in the room with me is an absolute delight and makes it seem less impossible. It became a kind of comforting, joyful process.

Margot Livesey, my dear friend, reads all the drafts of what I write, and I read hers. We have an intense working relationship. I've been really lucky to know her. She's a great reader and teacher as well as an astonishingly good writer.

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.

I've continued to write fiction since being in television. TV is a different kind of writing, but it's all writing. It was David Milch of 'Deadwood' who helped me to see it that way. We later collaborated on the short-lived 'John from Cincinnati,' but I'm very proud of the work we did together.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

We had lunch that day [with Chris Ellis], and I was talking about this idea. I toyed with it a little bit on Twitter in story form at one point. And he thought it was a great idea, and he thought, "Well, let's bring my friend Harry Hannigan in, who's a wonderful writer, and let's see if we can put something together."