Marriage of Minds: Collaborative Writing

“a tremendous amount of information that is useful to any aspiring writer, a sort of quiz of required talents and a realistic, hard look at the difficulties involved in getting published and achieving success.”

Part how-to book, part relationship book, Marriage of Minds offers strategies and techniques for creating successful collaborations and successful fiction. Drawing on their own personal and professional relationship, and on the relationships of other well-known collaborative teams, the McGoldricks walk you through the essentials of successful collaboration:

– finding the “write” partner
– developing skills in communication and the art of compromise
– establishing guidelines
– providing constructive feedback
– working through “for better or worse”

All you and your partner need are the ideas and the talent. Marriage of Minds will supply you with the rest.

Step Write Up provides hands-on exercises for teachers and for any workshop leader endeavoring to bring 21st century collaboration and writing skills into the classroom.

To accomplish this, the authors have assembled lessons that can be modified for your own specific personalities, uses, and grade levels. Some are icebreakers that are aimed at promoting communication and collaborative teamwork. Some are lessons that provide for individual creativity and then lead into opportunities for group sharing and critiquing. And the authors go even further, showing how the products of these creative efforts can even carry us into areas of initiative and entrepreneurialism.

There is a short “lead-in” to many of the lessons. In each of those, they refer to New York State Curriculum Standards that the content of the lesson addresses.