When the Solitary Pursuit of Writing Becomes a Team Sport

Humans have engaged in sport since the beginning of our time. Around the world people compete in camel racing and hot chili eating, ping-pong and cheese rolling, yo-yoing, bullfighting, and war games and team sports of all kinds. Reasons for participation include practicing discipline, seeking challenge, a quest for the perfection of skills, notoriety, and of course, fun. While countless new games are invented and traditional sports are constantly rewritten and refined, those of us not so blessed with physical talents often redefine entirely what counts as sport…. because we want to play, too.

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As authors we have faced times in our pursuit of publishing when we each felt like a marathoner struggling to find the right pace, a tennis pro worried about covering the span of the court, a chess player not able to anticipate a winning strategy. What we realized, respectively, is that we prefer to be in the company of a teammate rather than engaged in an individual exercise. Having found our competitive soulmate in each other, we, as a double author duo, approach writing as a sport. Thankfully, luck struck, and we are a dynamic duo. We enjoy the discipline of meeting deadlines, the challenge of developing new ideas, the joy of the finished product, improving in our craft, the anticipation of smiling readers with each novel, and of course, we have a lot of fun. The lit sport we have created is a jollity we call “Writer’s Leapfrog.”

We start our work sessions with what might be considered the warmup, dealing with any “business of the books” we have outstanding. This is not always an author’s favorite part of writerly life, but it is easily half of the work, must be tended to, and we enjoy it. This time may include anything that ranges from our LLC finances, action items to follow up on for our PR agent if we are in book launch mode, deadlines we may have with our editor if we are finalizing a manuscript, and reaching out via email for promotion possibilities we may be working on ourselves. Social media “to dos” (which really means Asha’s “to do” because Alli would rather pull weeds than post) and then calls with our literary agent who is in New York while we are in the West, making timing for calls and meetings tricky. While writing is freedom to get lost in the imaginary, these terra firma tasks inevitably lead to us chopping it up about life at home, books we are currently reading, shows we are streaming, and which of our dogs demands our attention most when we’re working. It’s during these busy work chats that we each share stories that help create our characters, recall funny moments that make their way into our writing, and laugh with abandon strengthening the core of our artistic relationship.

There are days when our work varies, dictated by where we are in each book’s progress. We have three formats in which we work: in person, on FaceTime, and times we are working solo. When kicking off a new book we have already brainstormed and loosely outlined together, Alli begins by emailing three rough chapters to Asha with a ton of notes attached. The storyline is there but the depth of emotion is barely an inch deep. Asha takes those chapters and brings the characters to life with authentic dialogue, inner thoughts, empathetic emotion, and believability. Alli moves on to getting the next three chapters down on paper, tackling twists and turns as she structures the story. We are, at this stage of the game, deep in our divided work, but both committed to the deadlines we have agreed upon when passing chapters back and forth. There is crossover in all our work, but we endeavor to stay in our respective lanes and support each other’s strengths.

If we get stuck on where the story should go, we rarely call a timeout. Instead, we rely on teamwork over FaceTime or while sitting together, for hours, building the next chapter word by word. Usually when this happens Alli is freaking out that the story is impossible to rework, our past books have been a fluke, we are doomed, it’s all over. Asha tolerates the freak out, but always with a slightly raised eyebrow, and they calmly move the chapter forward. Miraculously, words get down on paper, we survive another day as writers and Asha is always right, we’ve got skills, we can do this.

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After chapters have gone through Alli’s world building and Asha’s character building, it’s time to read out loud. Asha is always the voice as her dramatic intonation brings the characters to life. Alli is the scribe who also keeps all electronic files in order. We negotiate and agree upon EVERY. SINGLE. WORD. Most times this is easy, and we are on the same page. Sometimes, because we are writing about race, religion, class, privilege, love, heartache, and parenting through it all, our conversations are hard, heated, and we must give our work the time and deep discussion it deserves. Neither of us yields to the other, pushing our partner to their writing limits, because we are committed to getting to a place of alliance on everything we write. This is our non-negotiable. We read our books out loud, all the way through at least four times if not more. It may sound tedious, and it can be, but this is our practice. We have found it to be our most proven method to bring our stories to a level we are proud of when being coached by our editor and ultimately when our books end up on readers’ shelves.

As proud members of the human nerd herd, we acknowledge that most folks won’t consider writing to be a true sport. But we were the kids who begged for science kits, the teens who drifted into bookstores when mall crawling with friends, the young women fiercely focused on education who became educators ourselves. Academics was where we found our reasons to compete and in this unique partnership, we have each other to tag in and out when the work is tough as well as a teammate to high-five when a great line lands. We are a team and, leapfrogging along, we have many more book hits to score.

Check out Alli Frank and Asha Youmans’ Boss Lady here:

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