How Two Write

by author Jay Asher

At several writing conferences, I’ve given a speech called “How to Sell a Book in Twelve Years…or Less!” It’s mostly about my twelve-year journey to publication, which was many more years than expected, and then I tell why I wouldn’t change a thing. When writers approach me after the speech, some say I inspired them to enter more contests. Most say I inspired them to never give up (even I get inspired re-reading the rejection letters for Thirteen Reasons Why). One thing I mention in the speech that people don’t immediately connect with, but which is the comment I hear most often via email a year or two after someone hears my speech, is that I inspired them to tackle a project outside their comfort zone.

Thirteen Reasons Why was far outside my comfort zone. I was only interested in writing humorous books. I only wanted to write books for elementary school kids. I had no desire to write anything serious, or anything for teens. When the idea for that book came to me, it felt like The Novel-Idea Stork accidentally gave me someone else’s baby. But the concept intrigued me, and although I was nervous about not being able to handle the story, I decided to raise the baby myself.

The book did rather well, and when it came time to write my next teen book, I got stuck. I wanted to write another book for teens because, in the three years it took to write Thirteen Reasons Why, I fell in love with teen literature. And since the book came out, I fell in love with my audience. But no matter what I did to try to unstick myself, nothing worked. Like quicksand, the more I struggled, the more I sank. After a while, I stopped writing. For a couple of years, I didn’t write anything. And then one of my favorite authors, Carolyn Mackler, asked me to write a book with her. Just getting asked was a huge honor, but I figured I was way too neurotic about word-choice to let another author’s words into my book. (Carolyn was neurotic that way, too.) I was also way too particular about what I think makes or breaks a story. (Carolyn had the same particulars.) Okay, but co-authoring a book was way outside my comfort zone.

So I gave it a try.

There are many ways people have co-written books, with varying degrees of brainstorming together vs. surprising each other and critiquing vs. letting-be. For us, we both wanted to have our hands in all aspects of the book, just as if we were writing it alone. We brainstormed every character, plot twist, and setting. Nothing happened in the story until we agreed on exactly what that would be. But we definitely didn’t want to water down the story by agreeing on things simply to keep the words flowing or keep from arguing. Instead, we challenged each other to come up with something more creative, just as writers should do when writing alone. Once a chapter was written, we gave it to the other writer. That writer then deleted, added, and altered whatever he or she felt was appropriate, then that writer returned the chapter without saying what had been changed. If the original writer didn’t notice something taken out, then it wasn’t necessary to begin with. Each chapter was swapped back and forth in that way multiple times. In the end, nearly every sentence was edited by both of us until we were both satisfied with every word.

The one thing that could’ve turned this dream collaboration into a nightmare is if Carolyn and I had different visions for the book. If we wanted to say different things with a certain character’s storyline, or wanted a different tone for a scene, the novel would’ve felt disjointed. But from the very beginning, even before we settled on a premise, we wanted this book to feel like it could’ve been written by one author. Oddly enough, if I hadn’t worked on The Future of Us and someone gave it to me, saying it was Carolyn Mackler’s next book, I would’ve read it and believed Carolyn wrote it herself. If two years ago someone handed me an e-reader with this ebook-from-the-future downloaded onto it and said it was my next book, I would’ve believed it.

Co-writing required one hundred percent respect for the other writer’s abilities and ideas. It required one hundred percent willingness to explore any idea, reject any idea¸ and accept the best idea no matter who came up with it. This type of writing worked for us because we wanted it to work. And yet, even thinking of co-authoring another book with any writer other than Carolyn terrifies me.

I know, I said you should step outside your comfort zone, but I never said you had to step outside the same comfort zone twice.

Jay Asher ‘s first novel, Thirteen Reasons Why, spent over a year on the New York Times bestseller list, with foreign rights sold in over 30 countries and more than 1,000,000 copies in print in the US alone. The movie rights sold to Universal Pictures. His next novel, The Future of Us (co-written with Carolyn Mackler), comes out November 2011. Its movie rights sold to Warner Bros.

THIRTEEN REASONS WHY by Jay Asher: Clay Jenkins returns home from school to find a mysterious box with his name on it lying on his porch. Inside he discovers 13 cassette tapes recorded by Hannah Baker–his classmate and crush–who committed suicide two weeks earlier.

On tape, Hannah explains that there are thirteen reasons why she decided to end her life. Clay is one of them. If he listens, he’ll find out how he made the list.