hey Neil, I hope you are having a good day. There's this question that's been bothering me for years. I never knew who to ask, or how, and I was always sure it's only me who experiences these things. And then I looked back at my favorite book of yours -good omens- and I thought, of course! Neil! He's the perfect guy to ask! So here it is.
You wrote good omens with Terry Pratchett. You know that already, sorry. Here's the thing.
Whenever I work on things with people, no matter who they are, friends or colleagues or strangers, I always have a hard time collaborating. It's hard for me not to be in control of the project. I actually love the idea of making things with other people, and sometimes I have the best time doing it, but the minute they bring up an idea they have that I don't agree with or like- I have a hard time. I can never bring myself to say "sorry, i don't really like that idea", i hate hate hate saying no to people, or hurting their feelings, so I end up nodding politely and we end up with a finished project I dont like.
When you were writing good omens with Terry, how did you do it? How did you collaborate and make something so successful? Did you just never disagree with anything he came up with?
If you end up seeing this, thank you very much. This is a life- long problem of mine.
I suppose that both Terry and I knew that seeing that we were making art and telling a story, there wasn't any right or wrong about what we were making. It was art and it was fun. My only goal was to make Terry laugh, his goal was to make me laugh. With a subgoal of Get to the next Good Bit In The Plot Before The Other One did.
I don't remember any disagreements or arguments, any more than you see disagreements and arguments in people doing Improv comedy. We both knew the book we were writing, and each day we'd talk on the phone, the aim being to make the other one laugh. When we did that successfully we knew we were heading in the right direction.
One reason i suspect we never actually wrote the sequel after plotting it is that it would have been a job and not just fun.
It sounds like your collaborations aren't any fun. Better you should do solo stuff.