One Drawback of Writing Partnerships...

The Waiting.

To quote Tom Petty: It's the hardest part.

See I did a round of revisions and sent them to Charlie a few days ago, and I've been waiting and waiting for his re-writes while he went off on some business trip to some rain-soaked city or another.

I have flashes of brilliance that I need to get down on screen, but I have to wait for Charlie to drag his sorry butt to the computer, away from his sick kid and from that stupid job that actually pays his bills.

Of course, I could go ahead and do my changes, but then we could send competing versions past each other in the ethernet and get all confused. So instead I wait.

It's one of the pitfalls of writing with a partner. You're not 100% in control of the process. You rely on someone else. And let's face it, no one is as smart as you are, right? You have all the good ideas, your partner is only there to fill in the blanks and take half the credit. Why do you even need your partner? Kill them! Kill them now!

Too much thinking like this can overwhelm reason and lead to a lot of broken partnerships. I try with all my might to get a hold of myself and remind myself from time to time that, at least in my case, my partner rocks. I can stand the occasional waiting (after all, it's not like I was doing a lot of writing while my wife was giving birth to our son earlier this month.) for the good that comes from this relationship.

Because there are times when having him right there (on IM, though he's a few thousand miles away) is priceless. We can just IM each other and bounce food analogies back and forth looking for the right thing for the bad guy to taunt the hero with.

"Time to eat."

"No."

"Order up."

"He already said that."

"Oh. Damn."

"We can't say Damn in the movie."

"I know, I know. The 'damn' was me to you, not for the script."

"Stay with me, David. Food."

"Sorry. Damn. Time to pay the check? Time to whip out the Diner's Club Card?"

"That's stupid."

"Diner's club is funny."

"Maybe, but it's still stupid. But maybe something with the check."

"Can he say Order Up here and something else back there?"

"Well, it would mess up his character development arc..."

Priceless.