Writing With A Partner
Dear All,
This is the latest episode of Don’t Press That Button, a newsletter about books and music and movies and cats and baseball and whatnot. As the name would indicate, we are very cautious about buttons around here. I really do not like it when I press a button on, say, a television remote and it’s got food residue on it. Someone had sauce or donut glaze or something on their fingers, but they were so eager to get clicking and see what was happening on Monday Night Football that their self-awareness failed. The result is a controller with gunk on the buttons. Bummer.
Beyond that, of course, there is the well-covered ground of the too-many-controllers problem, which can be boiled down to a too-many-buttons problem. Another bummer.
The button below, however, is digital. It’s not a bummer. All it does is subscribe you to this newsletter. If you’re new here, and you’d like to stick around, you can safely do so by clicking on it.
Collaboration and Ownership
With Self Help, my new comic co-created and co-written with Jesse Kellerman on the near horizon1 , I wanted to write a little something about writing with a partner.
I’ve had a number of wonderful collaborative creative experiences, and they’ve all been different in certain ways, but the key thing is that they’ve always been flexible on both sides. In the case of Self Help, Jesse and I have put together quite a detailed outline, but as soon as one of us is working inside the actual script, that person is free to improvise, to rewrite, and to edit as they feel necessary. We go over the new material and the changes together, figure out what will stay or go, and then the other writer takes a turn at bat. Whoever is writing has to hold ownership of the project.
There’s a moment in issue 5 of Self Help — apologies for the vagueness; I don’t want to spoil anything — where a character ambushes another character and the other character ambushes them right back. None of that was planned! It’s something that Jesse came up with on the fly, and it’s absolutely ingenious. To do it, though, he also wrote over something I’d done that I liked a lot, and losing that stuff required some backing up and filling in that was tricky — but I saw immediately that it was an improvement, worth the sacrifice of a couple of pages and worth the extra work and then some2.
Every creative project I’ve shared with another person has involved points like that, and it’s essential to approach unexpected alterations in a non-adversarial spirit. More than that, when your collaborator improvises something wonderful, you must recognize that you were still a part of it: you didn’t write it, but your contribution helped your collaborator figure out what did need to be written.
That notion connects to the great pleasure of collaboration, the fun of riffing off your collaborator’s ideas and of seeing how your collaborator riffs off your ideas. Jesse’s sense of humor and his (gleefully sinister) plotting instincts are wildly exciting. He gets me thinking in new ways.
In the case of a comic book, of course, the illustrator is also a crucial collaborator who brings their own ideas and improvisations to a story. Self Help’s is the brilliant Marianna Ignazzi. I plan to write about that different kind of partnership down the line, but I want to hold off until I can show you some examples of our script alongside more of Marianna’s art so you can really see how much she does.
The Latest
The Curator was chosen for inclusion in Barnes and Noble’s annual Book Haul program, which means you can buy it at their website and in their stores for 50% off until Labor Day!
It’s incredibly meaningful to me that Neil Gaiman took the time to read The Curator, and I’m over the moon that he enjoyed it. His is one of the great imaginations, continuously surprising us with new kinds of magic. I’m sure most of you have read some of his writing, or seen an adaptation of his writing, but if you haven’t: wow, are you ever in for a treat! I’m going to encourage you to start with my personal favorite. I also love every single thing he says about libraries.
In case you missed it, here’s the playlist I created for The Curator, which my friend and copy editor Jen kindly posted on Spotify.
Speaking of brilliant illustrators, Kathleen Jennings recently wrote two blog posts about her process for creating the stunning images in The Curator.
I scored a Vinegar Bend Mizell baseball glove at a thrift store in Maine! Vinegar Bend had a solid run for the Cardinals in the fifties and obviously he has one of the great names. The glove needs new laces, but it has a great pocket.
You Asked for It
If you ever have a question, and I have a half-decent answer for that question, I’ll answer it. Surachet asks, “Do [you] prefer books on paper or as ebooks?”
I’ve warmed ever so slightly to ebooks, but I find it harder to focus on screens, especially when it comes to novels, so most of what I read is on paper. The way paper books divorce you from the rest of the world — a book is just a book and nothing else — never loses its appeal to me.
Thank you, Surachet.
Recommendations
I was delighted to blurb Daniel Kraus’s Whalefall, and I’m not at all surprised that it’s getting rave reviews everywhere. Man vs. Whale, need I say more? You’ll love it.
The new William Matheny album is out and it is some proper rock and roll.
Robbie Robertson made so much beautiful music in his life, you just have to be grateful. Here’s a classic.
As ever, my thanks for subscribing, and in case you ever have a question or a comment or just want to say hi, if you reply to the email, I will see it. I might do a newsletter answering reader questions in the not too distant future, so feel free to send any of those that you might have. I’m over on Instagram, too, if you’d like to follow along there.
All Best,
Owen
Publication date announcement very soon!
One unique wrinkle in my collaboration with Jesse: he weight lifts competitively. When he’s not getting nominated for Edgar Awards, this guy tows cars with his bare hands. Have you ever been in the grocery store parking lot, certain that your car was in one place, and after wandering around for a while you find it in another place? That was Jesse Kellerman, being funny. So you might ask, do I feel like I can disagree with someone who could rip off my arm and hit me with it? Yes! He lives on the other side of the country!